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On Bill Moyers on Faith & Reason, airing Friday, July 28 at 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings), writers Margaret Atwood and Martin Amis show how the imagination of the creative mind can help cross the boundaries between faith and reason and to see the best and worst of human possibilities. Atwood's most famous novel, The Handmaid's Tale, depicts a democracy transformed into a theocracy of God-quoting true believers who strip women of their rights. Bill Moyers explores how these two confessed agnostics come to grips with a world immersed in belief.
For more of the interviews, and a chance to share what *you* find important on matters of Faith & Reason, visit the program's website (www.pbs.org/moyers) and watch the broadcasts on PBS.
source: dracumelenios 2009-12-22
This video discusses the spiritual beliefs of Prof. Albert Einstein and how they have been a subject for debate in recent years.
source: PrinceOfLogic 2010-09-02
Stephen Hawking makes the claim in his new book Grand Design (to be published next week). The media took the story to mystifying heights... I thought we knew that one does does not need God in physics since the time of Laplace?
Scientists discuss what sort of life could be found in the eleventh dimension. With talk of world of lightning bolts, electricity, unstable atoms and more, this video from BBC show 'Parallel Universe' is full of mind-bending theories to set your imagination racing.
source: TED-Ed 2012-03-11
View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/questions-n...
In the first of a new TED-Ed series designed to catalyze curiosity, TED Curator Chris Anderson shares his boyhood obsession with quirky questions that seem to have no answers.
Lesson by Chris Anderson, animation by Andrew Park.
source: TheCircuitMojoHD 2008-05-26
WIll We Ever Be a Galactic Civilization?
Asked the biggest question that he would like answered, Physicist Michio Kaku answers:
Will we survive long enough as a species to evolve into an advanced "type 1" civilization?
source: Phystory Channel
Parallel Universes is a 2001 documentary produced by the BBC's Horizon series. The documentary has to do with parallel universes, string theory, M theory, supergravity, and other theoretical physics concepts. Participants include Michio Kaku, Paul Steinhardt, and other physicists.
Galaxies were built up through collisions and mergers, but this process isn't over - and our own Milky Way galaxy provides a prime example of how it continues today. Credit: NASA/GSFC
Credit: NASA / GSFC
JWST Web Feature: Colliding Galaxies
Written By: Frank Reddy
Produced By: Mike McClare
Release Date: September 28, 2010
Total Run Time: 03:57.00
Transcription:
Galaxies are the building blocks of the universe. The giant galaxies we see today - even our own - were built up from many smaller galaxies. But construction isn't done yet. It continues even today.
Full-grown galaxies approach and interact with each other. They may collide and eventually merge. As the galaxies approach, the tug of gravity creates tides that distort their shapes. Stars and gas stream into new orbits.
Sometimes, they're completely ejected, trailing into the depths of intergalactic space.
Gas clouds compressed in the chaos light up with intense rounds of star formation.
Because stars create most of the chemical elements, such episodes have a profound effect on a galaxy's chemical makeup.
This infrared image of the entire sky shows half a billion stars. Most are in our galaxy.
Some are not. These are companion galaxies that orbit our Milky Way.
And some are in between. In 1994, astronomers discovered that some of these stars actually belong to ...a different galaxy. It's called the Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical, and the Milky Way is tearing it apart.
As the dwarf galaxy passes through the Milky Way's disk, gravitational tides stretch the dwarf's stars into long streams that wrap around the galaxy's orbit. For the dwarf, it's a fatal attraction.
For the Milky Way, it's but one of many similar events that shaped our home galaxy.
But there's something much bigger headed our way.
M31, the Andromeda Galaxy. This is no dwarf. It's the Milky Way's biggest neighbor; of roughly the same size, mass and type.
Astronomers say the crash will begin about 2 billion years from now. This supercomputer simulation shows how the event may unfold over billions of years.
The first pass distorts the two great spirals. Stars are tossed into the intergalactic night like sparks thrown from a campfire. Our sun, complete with planets in tow, could be similarly ejected.
Each pass blurs the identities of each galaxy. Eventually, Andromeda and the Milky Way will merge into a single entity some astronomers call "Milkomeda."
How did the shape, structure, and chemical content of galaxies change over the sweep of cosmic history?
Deep surveys by the James Webb Space Telescope will capture the full panorama, from the earliest dwarfs that formed to the familiar galaxies we see around us today.
source: Singularity University 2012-07-04
Following the CERN announcement, Theoretical physicist Garrett Lisi explains the discovery of the Higgs Boson particle by CERN scientists. Previously, LHC results have strongly signaled the existence of a Higgs with a mass of 125 gigaelectronvolts (GeV), or roughly 125 times more massive than the proton.
Read the full article here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/singulari... http://singularityhub.com/2012/07/04/...
Michio Kaku speaks on "Higgs Boson"
source: KaluzaPryme
What is a Higgs Boson? - Physicist Michio Kaku responds
source: CNN
What next?
source: Luc Anderssen
2012-07-04
Dr. Kaku aborda a questão de saber se o chamado Bóson de Higgs, ou "Partícula de Deus" foi exagerada, e que sua descoberta significa para a Física.
O Bóson de Higgs foi revelado como detectado no dia 04 de Julho de 2012 pelo CERN (Centro Europeu de Pesquisa Nuclear).
source: Big Think 2012-04-24
Michio Kaku: I believe in solar power, but there are problems that we have to face, and one of them is low efficiency.
Michio Kaku: Some people think that the time is right for the solar revolution, that one day solar power will replace oil and we'll all live in a world that is clean and renewable. Well, not so fast. I believe in solar power. However, there are problems that we have to face, and one of them is low efficiency. The other one is lack of a storage facility like a battery. That's' the weak link. We simply don't have the efficiency of solar cells necessary to make it economical and competitive today, and the ability to store the energy for long periods of time when the sun is dark, when there are clouds and your solar panels don't work.So my point of view is this: I think in the coming decade, as oil prices start to rise and as the cost of wind and solar and renewables start to drop, the two currents will probably cross in maybe ten years. So in ten years it will be the marketplace which then begins to drive the whole thing forward because of the dropping cost of solar cells and rising efficiency and the rising price of oil. Now, why do I believe that oil prices will rise? Because of something called Hubbert's Peak. Hubbert was a Shell Oil engineer way back in the 1960s who predicted that we would hit the halfway point for the production of oil in the United States and after that the bell-shaped curve would curve the other way and we would become an importer of oil. Well, people laughed at him because they said that, "Well, wait a minute. We have Alaska. We have Texas. We have lots of oil fields, and so we're not going to hit the 50% point. America will always export oil." Well, wrong. Hubbert hit it right on the nose to within the year at which US oil supplies peaked and then it went to the other side of the bell-shaped curve. That's called Hubbert's Peak, when we hit the 50% point. Now we know that Hubbard was right and the next big question is, are we hitting Hubbert's Peak for world oil production? That is the $64,000 question. Many people that I've talked to, senior oil analysts, energy analysts, say that we are either at Hubbert's Peak or within ten years of hitting Hubbert's Peak. Now some people say, "Well that's stupid. We discover new oil deposits all the time. Look at Canada. We have tar sands of Canada, right?" Wrong. It turns out that we will always have oil. We will never run out of oil, except oil will become more expensive as we go down the other side of Hubbert's Peak. We would have to discover a new Saudi Arabia every five to ten years in order for this curve to simply go on forever. That's not going to happen. I don't care how many tar sands you're talking about in Canada. You're not going to create a new Saudi Arabia, which produces very clean, very cheap oil, oil that is prized by the oil companies because it is relatively less polluting and has tremendous amounts of profits associated with it. So we do know that oil prices will fluctuate because of politics, but on average it will start to rise because we will be hitting Hubbert's Peak. Meanwhile, solar power is going to become cheaper and in 10 years or so the two curves could actually cross, and in 20 years a new game changer arrives and that is fusion power. The Europeans are betting the store on the ITER fusion reactor to be built outside Cadarache, France in Southern France, and if we have the power of the sun on the earth then sea water could drive all our machines. So if this scenario plays out as I predict, it means that global warming could actually be a problem only for the next several decades as we enter the solar era and the fusion era. The problem is we have already lofted so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and we will continue to do so for decades to come, that even before we enter the solar age and the fusion age we will have so much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that we will really screw up the weather. But on a long-term basis I think that solar energy and fusion power will be the solution, the ultimate solution, for the greenhouse problem.
Directed / Produced byJonathan Fowler & Elizabeth Rodd
source: Singularity University 2012-07-19
A brief interview with Vernor Vinge at Singularity University. Vinge gives his insights on life, groupminds, the future, and of course, the Singularity.
Article here: http://singularityhub.com/2012/07/17/...
source: Big Think 2012-05-11 http://bigthink.com/
Dr. Michio Kaku addresses this question: What is the most dangerous technology?
Directed / Produced by Jonathan Fowler and Elizabeth Rodd
source: Big Think 2011-11-15 http://bigthink.com
When will we be able to enter a room and create an imaginary scenario so realistic that it seems as if we are really there? Sooner than you think, says Dr. Kaku.
source: StanfordUniversity 2012-08-16
(July 30, 2012) Professor Susskind presents an explanation of what the Higgs mechanism is, and what it means to "give mass to particles." He also explains what's at stake for the future of physics and cosmology.
Stanford University: http://www.stanford.edu/

Stanford University Channel on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/stanford
source: Big Think 2012-08-30
What is the Higgs boson? Michio Kaku describes the so-called "God particle" as a fuse. "It's a match. It's the spark that set off the Big Bang. It put the bang in the Big Bang."
Transcript--
A few months ago the headlines were dominated by the fact that physicists think they found the Higgs boson. Well, the media said, this is a great discovery, but what do you mean you think you found the Higgs boson? Well, to within five standard deviations, yes, we think we found the Higgs boson. And the media said, what do you mean by that?
Well I would have answered the question differently. I would have said, "With 99.9999% confidence, we have bagged the Higgs boson. If you are an odds maker in Las Vegas, and the bets are that you are 99.9999% confident that you have it, then yes, you have it."
So experimental data is not ironclad. You have a bell-shaped curve of information, a bell-shaped curve where the data indicates that you're sitting right here on the top of the bell-shaped curve, but as you go away from the bell-shaped curve, you undergo one standard deviation, two standard deviations, three standard deviations . . . and here we have five standard deviations of proof. So in physics we use that as the gold standard: if you can say you found something within five standard deviations, then it means that, within 99.9999% accuracy, you have actually found it. Most people would say, of course you have found it.
The Higgs boson is important not just because it gives particles mass. That's how the media played it, and people say, well, so what; ten billion dollars for another god darn subatomic particle that gives us mass; what's the big deal; why call it the God particle; why say that it's one of the great achievements of modern science? Well, you have to understand something: we physicists squirm when we hear "God particle," but, you see, there is some truth to the name "the God particle" because the Bible says that God set the universe into motion. That's what God did in Genesis, chapter one, verse one. However, we physicists say that the universe was created in a big bang 13.7 billion years ago. But then the question is, why did it bang? What set off the bang? We don't know. It's a big mystery. Well, the answer is a Higgs-like boson set off the Big Bang. It put the bang in the Big Bang.
See, the purpose of Higgs bosons—and there is more than one—the purpose of the Higgs boson is to break a symmetry. And when you break symmetries like the symmetry of the universe, then you get big bangs. So what is the Higgs boson? The Higgs boson is a fuse. It's a match. It's the spark that set off the Big Bang. It put the bang in the Big Bang.
Directed / Produced by
Elizabeth Rodd and Jonathan Fowler
source: GoogleTechTalks 2008-09-05
Google Tech Talks September 2, 2008
ABSTRACT
We have been brought up to believe that the mind is located inside the head. But there are good reasons for thinking that this view is too limited. Recent experimental results show that people can influence others at a distance just by looking at them, even if they look from behind and if all sensory clues are eliminated. And people's intentions can be detected by animals from miles away. The commonest kind of non-local interaction mental influence occurs in connection with telephone calls, where most people have had the experience of thinking of someone shortly before they ring. Controlled, randomized tests on telephone telepathy have given highly significant positive results. Research techniques have now been automated and experiments on telepathy are now being conducted through the internet and cell phones, enabling widespread participation.
Speaker: Rupert Sheldrake
Rupert Sheldrake, Ph.D. is a biologist and author of more than 75 technical papers and ten books, the most recent being The Sense of Being Stared At. He studied at Cambridge and Harvard Universities, was a Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge and a Research Fellow of the Royal Society. He is currently Director of the Perrott-Warrick project, funded from Trinity College Cambridge.
source: bigthink 2013-02-06
How can you create a universe from nothing? Well if you calculate the total matter of the universe it is positive. If you calculate the total energy of the universe it is negative because of gravity. Gravity has negative energy. When you add the two together what do you get? Zero, so it takes no energy to create a universe. Universes are for free. A universe is a free lunch.
Michio Kaku: We have found the Higgs boson. So then the next question is what's next? Well the Large Hadron Collider, this machine that is 27 miles in circumference, costing 10 billion dollars is big enough to create the next generation of particles. So the Higgs boson in some sense is the last hurrah for the old physics, the old physics of what is called the standard model, which gives us quarks and electrons. The new theory is going to take us into dark matter. Now we know dark matter exists. Dark matter is invisible, so if I held it in my hand you wouldn't see it. In fact, it would go right through my fingers, go right through the rock underneath my feet and go all the way to China. It would reverse direction and come back from China all the way here to New York City and go back and forth.
So dark matter has gravitational attraction, but it is invisible and we are clueless as to what dark matter really is. The leading candidate for dark matter today is called the sparticle. The sparticle is the next octave of the string. Now look around you. Everything around you, we think, is nothing but the lowest vibration of a vibrating string, the lowest octave in some sense, but a string of course has higher octaves, higher notes. We think that dark matter could in fact be nothing but a higher vibration of the string. So we think that 23% of the universe, which is the dark matter's contribution to the universe, comes from a higher octave of the string. Now the standard model which we have ample verification of only represents four percent of the universe. So the universe of atoms, protons, neutrons, neutrinos - that universe only represents four percent of what there is. 23% is dark matter, which we think is the next vibration up of the string and then 73% of the universe is dark energy.
Dark energy is the energy of nothing. It's the energy of the vacuum. Between two objects in outer space there is nothing, nothing except dark energy, dark energy, which is pushing the galaxies apart. So when people say if the universe is expanding they say two things, what's pushing the galaxies apart and what is the universe expanding into. Well what's pushing the galaxies apart is dark energy, the energy of nothing. Even vacuum has energy pushing the galaxies apart. And then what is the universe expanding into? Well if the universe is a sphere of some sort and we live on the skin of the sphere and the sphere is expanding what is the sphere expanding into? Well obviously a bubble, a balloon expands into the third dimension even though the people living on the balloon are two dimensional.
So when our universe expands what does it expand into? Hyperspace, a dimension beyond what you can see and touch. In fact, string theory predicts that there are 11 dimensions of hyperspace, so we're nothing but a soap bubble floating in a bubble bath of soap bubbles and so in some sense the multiverse can be likened to a bubble bath. Our universe is nothing but one bubble, but there are other bubbles. When two bubbles collide that could merge into a bigger bubble, which could be the big bang. In fact, that is what probably the big bang is or perhaps a bubble fissioned in half and split off into two bubbles. That could be the big bang. Or perhaps the universe popped into existence out of nothing. That is also a possibility.
And so the universe could essentially be nothingness, which was unstable and created a soap bubble Now you may say to yourself well that can't be right because that violates the conservation of matter and energy. How can you create a universe from nothing? Well if you calculate the total matter of the universe it is positive. If you calculate the total energy of the universe it is negative because of gravity. Gravity has negative energy. When you add the two together what do you get? Zero, so it takes no energy to create a universe. Universes are for free. A universe is a free lunch. And then you may say to yourself well that can't be right because positive and negative charges don't cancel out, therefore, how can the universe be made out of nothing. Well if you calculate the total amount of positive charge in the universe and calculate the total amount of negative charge in the universe and you add it up what do you get? Zero, the universe has zero charge. Well what about spin? Galaxies spin, right? But they spin in all directions. If you add up all the spins of the galaxies what do you get? Zero, so in other words, the universe has zero spin, zero charge and zero matter energy content. In other words, the universe is for free.
Directed / Produced byJonathan Fowler & Elizabeth Rodd
source: Big Think2012-09-20
Dr. Kaku answers the question of whether it is possible to resurrect the dinosaurs by "turning on" their ancient genes? Moreover, now that we have also sequenced the genes of the Neanderthal man, at some point in the future it may be possible to bring him back. And then of course, if a young Neanderthal boy is born then the question is where do you put the boy, in a zoo or at Harvard?
Transcript--
Michio Kaku: We have taken cells from the carcass of an animal that died decades ago and brought them back to life and so it is possible using today's technology to take bodies, carcasses of animals that died decades ago and resurrect them in the form of clones. Now we have also sequenced the genes of the Neanderthal man, meaning that at some point in the future it may be possible to bring back the Neanderthal man. In fact, at Harvard University one professor even made a proposal as to how much it would cost to reassemble the genome of the Neanderthal man. And then of course, if a young Neanderthal boy is born then the question is where do you put the boy, in a zoo or at Harvard?
This is a question that we're going to be facing in the coming decades because it is possible that we might be able to bring back the mammoths. We're talking about creatures that walked the surface of the earth tens of thousands of years ago and we have their genome and it's a serious proposal now that we're closing in on sequencing all the genes of a mammoth to bring the mammoth - by inserting a fertilized egg inside the womb of an elephant and having an elephant give birth to a mammoth.
Now dinosaurs are much more difficult. They perished 65 million years ago, not tens of thousands of years ago. However, something has happened that I thought would not happen in my lifetime and that is we have soft tissue from the dinosaurs. I never thought it would be possible in my lifetime. If you take a hadrosaur and crack open the thigh bones, bingo. You find soft tissue right there in the bone marrow. Who would have thought? T-Rex's too and scientists have analyzed not the DNA, but the proteins inside the soft tissue. Not surprisingly, we find the proteins of chickens and also frogs and reptiles, which means of course that dinosaurs we can now show biochemically are very closely related to birds. In fact, we think birds are dinosaurs that survived the cataclysm of 65 million years ago.
Now there is another proposal to use what is called epigenetics. Nature does not simply throw away good genes. Nature simply turns them off. For example, we have the genes in our own body that would put hair all over our body and you can actually turn that gene and create, quote, unquote, a werewolf. In fact, in Mexico City there are two young boys with hair all over their bodies that are acrobats in a circus and scientists have sequenced the genes and yes, it is a very ancient gene that they have.
With chickens we can actually see the genes for chickens that were turned off because of epigenetics, genes that give webbing between the toes of a chicken because a long time ago chickens had webbed feet and also teeth. You can actually bring back teeth inside chickens. So then the question is, is it possible to make the next big leap to use epigenetics, to use gene therapy, to use all the different kinds of therapies we have, mix all these things up in the memory of a computer and have the computer give the best fit for a reptile that is like a dinosaur, insert that perhaps, into the womb of maybe an alligator or a whatever and perhaps give birth to an egg, which will hatch something resembling a dinosaur.
Well that's not possible today, but it's not out of the question. It's not out of the question that at some point in the future we'll use a computer to take all these bits of DNA from living lizards, from the—extracting information from the proteins of soft tissue from hadrosaurs and assemble the best mathematical approximation to a dinosaur and have it give birth to an egg.
Directed / Produced by Elizabeth Rodd and Jonathan Fowler
source: bigthink 2013-01-02
Michio Kaku says that God could be a mathematician: "The mind of God we believe is cosmic music, the music of strings resonating through 11 dimensional hyperspace. That is the mind of God."
Transcript--
Some people ask the question "Of what good is math?" What is the relationship between math and physics? Well, sometimes math leads. Sometimes physics leads. Sometimes they come together because, of course, there's a use for the mathematics. For example, in the 1600s Isaac Newton asked a simple question: if an apple falls then does the moon also fall? That is perhaps one of the greatest questions ever asked by a member of Homo sapiens since the six million years since we parted ways with the apes. If an apple falls, does the moon also fall?
Isaac Newton said yes, the moon falls because of the Inverse Square Law. So does an apple. He had a unified theory of the heavens, but he didn't have the mathematics to solve the falling moon problem. So what did he do? He invented calculus. So calculus is a direct consequence of solving the falling moon problem. In fact, when you learn calculus for the first time, what is the first thing you do? The first thing you do with calculus is you calculate the motion of falling bodies, which is exactly how Newton calculated the falling moon, which opened up celestial mechanics.
So here is a situation where math and physics were almost conjoined like Siamese twins, born together for a very practical question, how do you calculate the motion of celestial bodies? Then here comes Einstein asking a different question and that is, what is the nature and origin of gravity? Einstein said that gravity is nothing but the byproduct of curved space. So why am I sitting in this chair? A normal person would say I'm sitting in this chair because gravity pulls me to the ground, but Einstein said no, no, no, there is no such thing as gravitational pull; the earth has curved the space over my head and around my body, so space is pushing me into my chair. So to summarize Einstein's theory, gravity does not pull; space pushes. But, you see, the pushing of the fabric of space and time requires differential calculus. That is the language of curved surfaces, differential calculus, which you learn in fourth year calculus.
So again, here is a situation where math and physics were very closely combined, but this time math came first. The theory of curved surfaces came first. Einstein took that theory of curved surfaces and then imported it into physics.
Now we have string theory. It turns out that 100 years ago math and physics parted ways. In fact, when Einstein proposed special relativity in 1905, that was also around the time of the birth of topology, the topology of hyper-dimensional objects, spheres in 10, 11, 12, 26, whatever dimension you want, so physics and mathematics parted ways. Math went into hyperspace and mathematicians said to themselves, aha, finally we have found an area of mathematics that has no physical application whatsoever. Mathematicians pride themselves on being useless. They love being useless. It's a badge of courage being useless, and they said the most useless thing of all is a theory of differential topology and higher dimensions.
Well, physics plotted along for many decades. We worked out atomic bombs. We worked out stars. We worked out laser beams, but recently we discovered string theory, and string theory exists in 10 and 11 dimensional hyperspace. Not only that, but these dimensions are super. They're super symmetric. A new kind of numbers that mathematicians never talked about evolved within string theory. That's how we call it "super string theory." Well, the mathematicians were floored. They were shocked because all of a sudden out of physics came new mathematics, super numbers, super topology, super differential geometry.
All of a sudden we had super symmetric theories coming out of physics that then revolutionized mathematics, and so the goal of physics we believe is to find an equation perhaps no more than one inch long which will allow us to unify all the forces of nature and allow us to read the mind of God. And what is the key to that one inch equation? Super symmetry, a symmetry that comes out of physics, not mathematics, and has shocked the world of mathematics. But you see, all this is pure mathematics and so the final resolution could be that God is a mathematician. And when you read the mind of God, we actually have a candidate for the mind of God. The mind of God we believe is cosmic music, the music of strings resonating through 11 dimensional hyperspace. That is the mind of God.
Directed / Produced by Jonathan Fowler & Elizabeth Rodd
source: Big Think 2012-11-06
Dr. Kaku addresses the question of the possibility of utopia, the perfect society that people have tried to create throughout history. These dreams have not been realized because we have scarcity. However, now we have nanotechnology, and with nanotechnology, perhaps, says Dr. Michio Kaku, maybe in 100 years, we'll have something called the replicator, which will create enormous abundance.
Transcript--
Throughout human history people have tried to create utopia, the perfect society. In fact, America, the American dream, in some sense was based on utopianism. Why do we have the Shaker movement? Why did we have the Quakers? Why did we have so many different kinds of religious movements that fled Europe looking to create autopia here in the Americas? Well, we know the Shakers have disappeared and many of these colonies have also disappeared only to be found in footnotes in American textbooks, and the question is why?
One reason why is scarcity because back then the industrial revolution was still young and societies had scarcity. Scarcity creates conflict and unless you have a way to resolve conflict, your colony falls apart. How do you allocate resources? Who gets access to food when there is a famine? Who gets shelter when there is a snowstorm and all of the sudden you've eaten up your seed corn? These are questions that faced the early American colonists, and that's the reason why we only see the ghost towns of these utopias.
However, now we have nanotechnology, and with nanotechnology, perhaps, who knows, maybe in 100 years, we'll have something called the replicator. Now the replicator is something you see in Star Trek. It's called the molecular assembler and it takes ordinary raw materials, breaks them up at the atomic level and joins the joints in different ways to create new substances. If you have a molecular assembler, you can turn, for example, a glass into wood or vice versa. You would have the power of a magician, in fact, the power of a god, the ability to literally transform the atoms of one substance into another and we see it on Star Trek.
It's also the most subversive device of all because if utopias fail because of scarcity then what happens when you have infinite abundance? What happens when you simply ask and it comes to you? One of my favorite episodes on Star Trek is when the Enterprise encounters a space capsule left over from the 20th century, the bad 20th century. People died of all these horrible diseases, and many people froze themselves knowing that in the 23rd century or so they'll be thawed out and their diseases will be cured. Well, sure enough, it's the 23rd century now. The Enterprise finds a space capsule and begins to revive all these people and cure them of cancer, cure them of incurable genetic diseases, and then one of these individuals, however, was a banker. He is revived and he says to himself, "My God, my gamble worked; I'm alive; I'm in the 23rd century," and he said, "Call my stock broker; call my banker; I am rich; I am rich; my investments, they have been sitting there in the bank for centuries; I must be a quadrillionaire!" And then the crew of the Enterprise looks at this man and says, "What is money; what is a bank; what is a stock broker? We don't have any of these in the 23rd century," and then they say, "If you want something, you simply ask for it and you get it."
Now that's subversive. That's revolutionary because if all utopiansocieties vanished because of scarcity and conflict, what happens when there is no scarcity? What happens when you simply ask and you get what you want? This has enormous philosophical implications. For example, why bother to work? Why bother to go to work when you simply ask for things and it comes to you?
... Remainder of transcript here: http://bigthink.com/ideas/48030 ...
Directed / Produced by Jonathan Fowler & Elizabeth Rodd
source: Big Think 2012-09-26
Michio Kaku says this brain-to-brain communication would involve not just the exchange of information, but also the transmission of emotions and feelings, "because these are also part of the fabric of our thoughts."
Michio Kaku: There's no doubt that the internet is creating what is called an intelligent planet, that is, the skin of the planet earth is becoming a network by which intelligent creatures communicate with each other. But that's just the first step. Some people think that the next step in the coming decades is not going to be the internet. It's going to be Brain Net because we're at the point now where we can actually connect computers to the living mind. In fact, I was just at Berkeley a few weeks ago where I had a demonstration of this: we can actually create videos of your thoughts. These videos are not perfectly accurate, but I saw a demonstration in a laboratory at Berkeley where you can actually see in a video screen what people are thinking.So with electrodes, perhaps, or EEG sensors in a helmet connected to our brain, perhaps one day we'll be able to have brain-to-brain communication, and that gives us the possibility of Brain Net. In fact, some of the leading neurologists doing these experiments have seriously proposed a brain net whereby you would exchange not just information like typing, but also emotions, feelings, because these are also part of the fabric of our thoughts. And then what comes beyond that? Well, of course, beyond that is science fiction, and science fiction gives us all sorts of horror stories of things like Sky Net: maybe one day the internet will become sentient; maybe one day the internet will think that humans are in the way and perhaps the internet will take over just like in the Terminator series. Well, I don't think so.The internet is simply a way in which minds can communicate with other minds. We see no self-awareness in the internet. Now some people say,"Well, what about some kind of collective consciousness that arises by an emergent phenomenon?" Well, that's a lot of gobbledygook. That's a lot of nice words. Maybe. Maybe not. But it's pure speculation at the present time. Even in the laboratory with our finest instruments and the latest developments in artificial intelligence, we cannot make a computer become self-aware. You realize that one of our most advances computers was the IBM computer Watson, which defeated two humans on the program Jeopardy. At that point, many pundits said, "Oh my God, the end is near; the robots are going to put us in zoos; they're going to throw peanuts at us; make us dance behind bars when they take over, just like we make bears dance behind bars today." Well, just remember that Watson, no matter how fast it is, was so stupid you couldn't congratulate it. You can't go up to Watson, slap its transistors and say, "Good boy!. You just beat two humans on Jeopardy. You made history. Let's drink to it!" You see, Watson is an adding machine, a very sophisticated adding machine. It adds billions of times faster than the human brain, but that's all it is. It's what is called an expert system. It deals with formalized inputs, formalized outputs. You talk to an expert system every time you're on the telephone, and the telephone says, "Please hit button one; please hit number two for the next option." That's called an expert system. It's basically a sophisticated adding machine that sounds like it's thinking, but it's not. It's simply using a formalized logic. If you hit one, then you go there. If you hit two, you go someplace else. That's Watson -- of course on a very, very sophisticated level. So I personally think that we don't have to worry that that internet is going to become sentient.
Directed / Produced byJonathan Fowler & Elizabeth Rodd
source: TheCircuitMojoHD 2008-05-25
Speaking about his new book "Physics of the Impossible," Dr. Kaku explains with how Physics one day may allow us to go back in time.
2012-04-24