xv,
PREFACE
principle. In fact, to the contrary, physicists have now demonstrated
that a law that prevents time travel is beyond our present-day mathematics. Today, because there is no law of physics preventing the existence of time machines, physicists have had to take their possibility
very seriously.
The purpose of this book is to consider what technologies are considered "impossible" today that might well become commonplace
decades to centuries down the road.
Already one "impossible" technology is now proving to be possible: the notion of teleportation (at least at the level of atoms). Even a
few years ago physicists would have said that sending or beaming an
object from one point to another violated the laws of quantum physics.
The writers of the original Star Trek television series, in fact, were so
stung by the criticism from physicists that they added "Heisenberg
compensators" to explain their teleporters in order to address this flaw.
Today, because of a recent breakthrough, physicists can teleport atoms
across a room or photons under the Danube River.
PREDICTING THE FUTURE
It is always a bit dangerous to make predictions, especially ones set
centuries to thousands of years in the future. The physicist Niels Bohr
was fond of saying, "Prediction is very hard to do. Especially about the
future." But there is a fundamental difference between the time of Jules
Verne and the present. Today the fundamental laws of physics are basically understood. Physicists today understand the basic laws extending over a staggering forty-three orders of magnitude, from the interior
of the proton out to the expanding universe. As a result, physicists can
state, with reasonable confidence, what the broad outlines of future
technology might look like, and better differentiate between those
technologies that are merely improbable and those that are truly impossible.
In this book, therefore, I divide the things that are "impossible"
into three categories.
PREFACE
principle. In fact, to the contrary, physicists have now demonstrated
that a law that prevents time travel is beyond our present-day mathematics. Today, because there is no law of physics preventing the existence of time machines, physicists have had to take their possibility
very seriously.
The purpose of this book is to consider what technologies are considered "impossible" today that might well become commonplace
decades to centuries down the road.
Already one "impossible" technology is now proving to be possible: the notion of teleportation (at least at the level of atoms). Even a
few years ago physicists would have said that sending or beaming an
object from one point to another violated the laws of quantum physics.
The writers of the original Star Trek television series, in fact, were so
stung by the criticism from physicists that they added "Heisenberg
compensators" to explain their teleporters in order to address this flaw.
Today, because of a recent breakthrough, physicists can teleport atoms
across a room or photons under the Danube River.
PREDICTING THE FUTURE
It is always a bit dangerous to make predictions, especially ones set
centuries to thousands of years in the future. The physicist Niels Bohr
was fond of saying, "Prediction is very hard to do. Especially about the
future." But there is a fundamental difference between the time of Jules
Verne and the present. Today the fundamental laws of physics are basically understood. Physicists today understand the basic laws extending over a staggering forty-three orders of magnitude, from the interior
of the proton out to the expanding universe. As a result, physicists can
state, with reasonable confidence, what the broad outlines of future
technology might look like, and better differentiate between those
technologies that are merely improbable and those that are truly impossible.
In this book, therefore, I divide the things that are "impossible"
into three categories.