U.S. $26.95/Canada $32.00
A fascinating exploration of the science
of the impossible—from death rays
and force fields to invisibility cloahs—
reuealing to what entent such technologies might be achieuable decades or
millennia into the future
O
ne hundred years ago, scientists would have
said that lasers, televisions, and the atomic
bomb were beyond the realm of physical
possibility. In Physics of the Impossible, the renowned
physicist Michio Kaku explores to what extent the
technologies and devices of science fiction that are
deemed equally impossible today might well become
commonplace in the future.
From teleportation to telekinesis, Kaku uses the
world of science fiction to explore the fundamentals—and the limits—of the laws of physics as we
know them today. He ranks the impossible technologies by category—Class I, II, and III—depending on
when they might be achieved, within the next century, millennia, or perhaps never. In a compelling
and thought-provoking narrative, he explains:
• How the science of optics and electromagnetism
may one day enable us to bend light around an
object, like a stream flowing around a boulder,
making the object invisible to observers "downstream"
• How ramjet rockets, laser sails, antimatter engines, and nanorockets may one day take us to
the nearby stars
• How telepathy and psychokinesis, once considered pseudoscience, may one day be possible
using advances in MRI, computers, superconductivity, and nanotechnology
• Why a time machine is apparently consistent with
the known laws of quantum physics, although it
would take an unbelievably advanced civilization to actually build one
A fascinating exploration of the science
of the impossible—from death rays
and force fields to invisibility cloahs—
reuealing to what entent such technologies might be achieuable decades or
millennia into the future
O
ne hundred years ago, scientists would have
said that lasers, televisions, and the atomic
bomb were beyond the realm of physical
possibility. In Physics of the Impossible, the renowned
physicist Michio Kaku explores to what extent the
technologies and devices of science fiction that are
deemed equally impossible today might well become
commonplace in the future.
From teleportation to telekinesis, Kaku uses the
world of science fiction to explore the fundamentals—and the limits—of the laws of physics as we
know them today. He ranks the impossible technologies by category—Class I, II, and III—depending on
when they might be achieved, within the next century, millennia, or perhaps never. In a compelling
and thought-provoking narrative, he explains:
• How the science of optics and electromagnetism
may one day enable us to bend light around an
object, like a stream flowing around a boulder,
making the object invisible to observers "downstream"
• How ramjet rockets, laser sails, antimatter engines, and nanorockets may one day take us to
the nearby stars
• How telepathy and psychokinesis, once considered pseudoscience, may one day be possible
using advances in MRI, computers, superconductivity, and nanotechnology
• Why a time machine is apparently consistent with
the known laws of quantum physics, although it
would take an unbelievably advanced civilization to actually build one