ウィスパリング同時通訳研究会コミュのMichio Kaku: The Future of Humanity @ Talks at Google

FEMALE SPEAKER: So I think before we get into some of the exciting things that come up in your book, today was a pretty big day in astronomy. There is some news about a black hole. Can you talk about that?

MICHIO KAKU: Yes. A black hole is a cosmic roach motel. Everything checks in, nothing checks out. And we photographed this. This is incredible. History was made when we actually showed a photograph of a gigantic black hole. It weighs 6.5 billion, with a B, billion times more massive than the sun. It is 55 million light years away. It is a gigantic monster. And it’s sort of like a unicorn.

We physicists knew at some point this exotic object would be found. Einstein’s equations predicted it in 1916. We’ve known for a hundred years that a black hole could be lurking in the heavens, but we finally — we finally photographed it. And it was revealed this morning.

Next, in a few weeks, we’ll reveal the black hole at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy.

So tonight, when you go outside, look in the direction of Sagittarius. There’s a raging black hole in the constellation Sagittarius, in the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. It weighs about two to four million times more massive than the sun. And it’s in our backyard.

So children ask the question — if the moon goes around the Earth and the Earth goes around the sun, what does the sun go around? And the answer is — a black hole.

FEMALE SPEAKER: So you talk about children asking questions. And you’ve talked about that you had a moment when you were growing up, of what sparked your interest in science.

MICHIO KAKU: Yeah, when I was eight years old, something happened which changed my life completely. They made the announcement, when I was in elementary school, that a great scientist had died. And they flashed a picture in the newspaper of his desk. And on the desk was a book, an unfinished book. And the caption said, this is the unfinished manuscript of the greatest scientist of our time.

So I was eight years old. I said to myself, why couldn’t he finish that book? It’s a homework problem, right? Why didn’t he ask his mother?

So, I went to the library. And I later found out his name was Albert Einstein. And that book was “The Theory of Everything.” He wanted an equation no more than one inch long that would allow us to, quote, “Read the Mind of God.”

So I said to myself, wow, that’s for me. I want to work on this theory of everything. And in fact, that’s what I do for a living. I’m the co-founder of string field theory, one of the main branches of string theory. And we think that that is the theory of everything, that everything we see around us is nothing but vibrations of tiny strings. Each subatomic particle is a note on a vibrating string.

What is physics? Physics is the harmonies we can write on vibrating strings. What is chemistry? Chemistry is the melodies we can play on vibrating strings. What is the universe? The universe is a symphony of strings.

And then what is the mind of God? The mind of God is cosmic music resonating through 11 dimensional hyperspace. That is the mind of God.

FEMALE SPEAKER: I think for all of us who are not theoretical physicists in the room, we appreciate that clarifying explanation, really elegant metaphor as well. One of the things that I found when I was sort of thinking about questions that I might want to ask you, or that might be interesting, is that, in looking at the breadth of your work, it’s really hard to know where to start, because your work spans an incredible range of fields from the history of astronomy, to string theory, to theories of consciousness.

And so I was going to ask you, what do you feel like is at the heart of your work? If your body of work were a solar system, say, what would be the sun at its center?

MICHIO KAKU: Well, when I write books, I write for myself as a child. Because when I was a child going to the library, I would look up things like the fourth dimension, like anti-matter, like parallel universes. And there was nothing, absolutely nothing in the library for a young kid who wants to know about all these fantastic things they see in the movies.

So I said to myself, when I grow up, and I become a professor of theoretical physics, and I work at the unified field theory, I want to write for myself, as a child.

And then when I was in high school, I decided to put this into motion. So I went to my mom one day, and I said, “Mom, can I have permission to build an atom smasher in the garage?”

FEMALE SPEAKER: As one does.

MICHIO KAKU: Yeah. I grew up in Palo Alto, where a lot of young people in their garages built machines. So I built a beta-tron particle accelerator. I got 400 pounds of transformer steel, 22 miles of copper wire, and I built a 6-kilowatt, 2.3 million electron vol beta-tron in my mom’s garage. I plugged it in finally. I closed my eyes. I shut my ears. And I heard this huge crackling sound as 6 kilowatts of raw power surged through the capacitor bank. And then I heard this pop, pop, pop, sound, I blew out all the circuit breakers and fuses in the house.

So my poor mom, she’d come home from a hard day’s work and say to herself, why couldn’t I have a son who plays baseball? Maybe if I buy him a basketball — and for God’s sake, why can’t you find a nice Japanese girlfriend? Why does he have to build these machines in the garage?

But it earned the attention of another physicist. A physicist took an interest in me at the National Science Foundation — at the National Science Fair in Albuquerque. And he arranged for me to get a scholarship to Harvard. His name was Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb.

FEMALE SPEAKER: And from then to now, how do you feel like the course of your career has changed, or what — have your interests shifted since then, since that beginning of you want to solve the theory of everything?

MICHIO KAKU: Yeah, that’s still the goal. But as a hobby I like to read science books. I’m a science junkie. And I have the privilege of interviewing hundreds of scientists for BBC Television, the Discovery Channel. And whenever I interview these scientists — about one a week, for my radio show and TV — I always ask them the key question, the question of all questions. And that is — is there intelligent life on the earth?

Well, I was watching the Kardashians on TV last night. And I’m convinced that there’s no intelligent life on this planet. But maybe in outer space, maybe in outer space there’s intelligent life out there.

FEMALE SPEAKER: So, in your book, you talk about how we might leave the earth to possibly meet intelligent life elsewhere.

MICHIO KAKU: And we may have to. The dinosaurs — the dinosaurs did not have a space program and that’s why they’re not here today. That’s why there are not dinosaurs in this room, because they didn’t have a space program. But we do have a space program. And prices are dropping every day. Things are getting cheaper. Silicon Valley billionaires are writing checks.

And, for example, how many people in this room have seen the movie, “The Martian”– raise your hand– with Matt Damon? Whoa. That movie cost $100 million. But the Indian government sent a probe to Mars for $70 million. So a Hollywood movie about going to Mars costs more than actually going to Mars. That’s how much prices have dropped.

And rockets are going to be reusable in the future. When we commute to work, and you drive your car to work and park the car, do you junk your car and sell it for scrap after one trip? That’s what we do for rocket ships. We take one trip in a rocket ship and dump it in the ocean. You’d bankrupt the world if every car had to be junked after one ride. That’s going to change the economics of space travel when we have reusable rockets.

FEMALE SPEAKER: So, one thing I like about your book is you’ve structured it as sort of like, we’re starting with, how do we get off the planet? How do we colonize our solar system? And then how do we think beyond that and beyond that? So, when someone asks you, like, well, how close are we actually to living on Mars, how do you answer that?

MICHIO KAKU: Well, first of all, we’re going to the moon next year. After a 50-year gap, the SLS booster rocket is going to be fired up and we’re going to go to the moon. And not only that, there’s going to be a traffic jam around the moon, because Elon Musk has his Falcon Heavy rocket capable of going not just to the moon, but Mars. He has sent a Tesla sports car on a trajectory to Mars.

And then we also have the richest man in the world, Jeff Bezos — or the former richest man in the world — he has the Neil Armstrong rocket. And then the Chinese have the Long March rocket. We’re going to have a traffic jam around the moon pretty soon. And I think our grandkids — our grandkids may have the option of honeymooning on the moon. The moon is — the moon is only three days away. It’s a hop, skip, and a jump.

FEMALE SPEAKER: So the moon is closer, Mars is a little bit farther. So, you talk in your book about also possibly colonizing some of the moons around Jupiter and Saturn. How do you imagine us getting there? How far — I mean, is this within our generation, our lifetime?

MICHIO KAKU: Well starting next year, we’re going back to the moon with an unmanned space probe that will orbit around the moon. Around 2023, humans will go back to the moon. And so we’ll begin the process of making the moon a base, to eventually go to Mars. And then SpaceX already has the preparations for a Mars rocket. It is a huge rocket, the biggest one ever conceived. It’s called the BFR, the biggest rocket. B for Big, R for Rocket, and F for your imagination. It’s already being built. So we’re already laying out the steps to go to Mars.

And when Elon Musk was a high school student, he read the book, “Foundation” by Isaac Asimov. How many people have read the “Foundation” series by Isaac Asimov? Then you know that that is a dream of becoming a multi planet species. It’s not going to happen anytime soon. But we begin the process of terraforming Mars perhaps in this century.

FEMALE SPEAKER: I love how you talk a lot about science fiction and that there’s — that science fiction has both inspired and predicted some of the technological advances that we’ve seen and some of the things that we learn about our universe. Do you have a favorite anecdote or story of where fact and fiction have intersected?

MICHIO KAKU: Well, I’m on radio. And people call me. And many times people say, professor, you’re wrong. You’re wrong because the aliens are already here. They’re not in outer space. They’ve already landed with their flying saucers.

So, I tell them, well, how do you know? And they say, well, they’ve been kidnapped, kidnapped by flying saucers. So if any of you have ever been kidnapped by a flying saucer, for God’s sake, steal something. There’s no law against stealing from an extraterrestrial civilization, no law whatsoever. Steal anything — an alien chip, an alien hammer, an alien paperclip, anything, so you have bragging rights about going into outer space on a flying saucer.

FEMALE SPEAKER: I like that idea. Noted. Not that Google endorses any kind of that activity.

MICHIO KAKU: But there’s no law against stealing from an extraterrestrial civilization.

FEMALE SPEAKER: Should there be?

ICHIO KAKU: No.

FEMALE SPEAKER: No. So what are the — once we’ve established a presence within our solar system, and we know how to get around, what’s beyond that?

MICHIO KAKU: Well, already we physicists are looking at starships. NASA has a 100 year starship program. My colleague, the former Stephen Hawking, already was responsible for the break through Star Shot program to send the first starship to a nearby star. It would be the size of a postage stamp. It’s a chip with a parachute, inflated by a bank of laser beams, which would accelerate it to 20% the speed of light. And it would reach Alpha Centauri in 20 years.

And so we are talking about the first microchip starship to take us to the heavens. And then we physicists have looked at Ram jet fusion engines. Fusion engines — of course, we don’t have them yet, but one day we will — Ram jet fusion engines require no fueling whatsoever. They scoop up hydrogen in the forward direction like an ice cream cone, burn interstellar hydrogen in the engine, and run forever with no refueling whatsoever. That’s the Ram jet fusion engine, which could possibly take us to the nearby stars.

And then even beyond that, there’s a possibility of maybe using a black hole. And, of course, just this morning we had the first picture ever of a black hole that’s been revealed to the public.

And what is a black hole? A black hole is a cosmic roach motel. Everything checks in, nothing checks out. And we photographed it. And there’s a controversy as to what’s on the other side of the black hole. Some people say nothing. Things just fall in, and that’s the end of the story.

But if you look at the mathematics, we have an exact solution of Einstein’s equation, given by Roy Kerr in 1963, of a rotating black hole. A rotating black hole does not collapse to a dot. That’s the old fashioned thinking. It collapses to a ring, a ring of neutrons. And if you fall through the ring of neutrons vertically, you wind up in Wonderland. You wind up on the other side of forever. It’s a gateway to a wormhole.

And if you fall through a second time, you wind up on a second parallel universe. So it’s sort of like hitting the up button of an elevator. You have different floors. Each time you go to a different floor, every time you go through the gateway. And then the question is, is that a solution of Einstein’s equations? And the answer is, yes.

What’s the catch? There’s always a catch someplace. And that is, we don’t know how stable the wormhole is. That requires us to go beyond Einstein. Einstein’s equations give us rotating black holes, where there’s a gateway to a parallel universe. That’s Einstein’s theory. However, we don’t know whether radiation effects, as quantum effects, will destabilize it. That’s where string theory comes in.

String theory is a quantum theory. Now we can calculate quantum corrections and calculate the stability of the wormhole, but that is still an active area investigation. And then the question is, if you go through the wormhole, can you go backwards in time? And the answer is, yes. These things are potentially time machines as well.

And then the question is, what happens if you go backwards in time meet your mother before you’re born, and she falls in love with you? Well you’re in deep doo doo if that happens. But yeah, the quantum theory does make possible the fact that you might be able to build a time machine if you can stabilize the Kerr metric.