Recap

Our Universe and Beyond

Michio Kaku (mkaku.org), an author and professor of theoretical physics, returned to Coast this Wednesday evening, with his trademark blend of thought-provoking science. He spoke of a "hyper nova"—a new kind of object recently discovered, even though its energetic burst took place two billion years ago. The staggering intensity of this event would be like if "the entire energy of our sun burst in a tenth of second," he said, adding that the explosion likely left a black hole in its wake which could be a gateway to a parallel universe.

"What happened before the Big Bang was the Multiverse, a universe of universes," Dr. Kaku said as he traced back time before our universe was created. Parallel universes he explained could exist in the "ten, possibly eleven dimensions" that physicists have speculated may exist beyond our awareness. Further, he believes at some point in the future, we may have instruments to detect these universes, and could even escape in a "cosmic lifeboat," should our universe become uninhabitable.

By the year 2020, "computers will be everywhere and nowhere," like electricity, Kaku said. We'll have intelligent walls and internet connections in our glasses. A "Body Shop" that would "allow us to grow livers and kidneys," may also be coming he said. Next up for Kaku will be two books. One will be a new biography of Einstein from a modern point of view, and the other titled Parallel Worlds will contain "delicious paradoxes" and "mind bending ideas."

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Visionary Scientist

I had the occasion to interview and photograph tonight's guest, Dr. Michio Kaku for After Dark back in 2000. It was a crisp September morning, when I dropped by Dr. Kaku's office at City College in New York City, where he has been a professor for the last 28 years. As might be expected, his office was filled with books, papers and journals—it even had a blackboard in it! Here is an excerpt from our interview:

LL: It seems like the future is littered with certain dangers that you outlined in the book (Visions), such as by 2050 there could be self-aware styled robots. You can imagine the Frankensteinian possibilities that they could replace or destroy us.

MK: There's that possibility. There's also a possibility that we may want to merge with them. By the late 21st century we should be able to tinker with not just one gene at a time but hundreds or thousands of genes at a time and we may be able to interface the human brain better than we can today. So it gives us the option of redesigning ourselves or becoming part cyborg.

So we may not want to simply banish robots, we may want to merge with them. That sounds repulsive to a lot of people but I believe in democracy. I think people should democratically vote towards the ends of the 21st century as to how far we want robots to evolve. By this time we should have robots that can move very very fast and may actually be self-aware. They'll have a different architecture than us. They'll probably have silicon consciousness. They'll not be conscious in the way that we are conscious.

I'm not that worried about robots replacing us because I think that by the time our machines become as smart as dogs we should put an Asimov chip in their brain. Isaac Asimov had (written) the three laws of robotics—one being, once robots want to harm people we shut them off.

--L.L.