Hyperspace by Michio Kaku — A Summary
Photo Credit: Huffington Post
To Be a God
Imagine being able to walk through walls. You wouldn’t have to go around buildings; you could enter them through their walls and pillars and out through the back wall. When hungry, you could simply reach through the refrigerator door without opening it. You could never be accidentally locked outside your car; you could simply step through the car door. Imagine being able to disappear or reappear at will. Instead of driving to school or work, you would just vanish and rematerialize in your classroom or office. You wouldn’t need an airplane to visit far-away places. You would never be stuck in city traffic during rush hours; you and your car would simply disappear and rematerialize at your destination. Imagine having x-ray eyes and being able to reach into an object without opening it. You could extract the sections from an orange without peeling or cutting it. You would be hailed as a master surgeon, with the ability to repair the internal organs of patients without ever cutting the skin, thereby greatly reducing pain and the risk of infection. No obstructions could stop you. You would truly be a miracle worker, performing feats beyond the comprehension of mortals.
What being could possess such God-like power? The answer: a being from a higher-dimensional world.
The above is one of the many things Michio Kaku explains from a physicist’s (or scientific) viewpoint in his book.
He also explains:
- ghosts
- aliens
- time travel, black holes, worm holes,
- multiverse
- religion
- science fiction books and movies
- quantum theory
- string theory, etc.
Space is Hyperspace
Simply put, Hyperspace is higher dimensional space. In case you did not know it, we live in hyperspace: 4-dimensional space to be exact. Our world was once 10-dimensional which physicists assume was a point when the world had maximum symmetry. This symmetry was unstable and so the world had a phase transition (BOOM: Big Bang) which split 10 into 4 and 6. 4-dimension expanded (and is still expanding) explosively to form out current universe with the numerous galaxies while the 6-dimension contracted violently and shrunk to almost infinitesimal size.
4-dimensional beings would be God-like in our world as we would be in a 2-dimensional world
Consider two-dimensional beings (flatlanders), living on a two-dimensional table top (flatland). To jail a criminal, the Flatlanders simply draw a circle around him. No matter which way the criminal moves, he hits the impenetrable circle. However, it is a trivial task for us (3-dimensional beings) to spring the prisoner from jail. We just reach down, grab the Flatlander, peel him off the two-dimensional world, and redeposit him elsewhere on his world. This feat, which is quite ordinary in three dimensions, appears fantastic in two dimensions. To his jailer, the prisoner has suddenly disappeared from an escapeproof prison, vanishing into thin air. Then just as suddenly, he reappears somewhere else. If you explain to the jailer that the prisoner was moved "up" and off Flatland, he would not understand what you were saying. The word up does not exist in the Flatlander’s vocabulary, nor can he visualize the concept. The other God-like feats can be similarly explained.
Viewing Flatland, notice also that we are omnipotent. Even if the Flatlander hides inside a house or under the ground, we can see him perfectly. He would regard our powers as magical; we, however, would know that not magic, but simply a more advantageous perspective, is at work.
The Theory of Everything
The move to unify the 4 laws of physics has been on for decades now
- Gravity
- Electromagnetism
- Weak Nuclear Force
- Strong Nuclear Force
Michio Kaku takes the reader on the journey of a unified theory. He writes of the efforts of physicists from Einstein all the way to Hawking. The book’s second premise is that these laws can only be unified in a highest dimension. You get to understand that Einstein’s Relativity Theory is a theory of the 4th dimension, Kaluza-Klein Theory is 5-dimensional, String Theory is only defined in 10 (and 26) dimensional space, etc. Quantum Theory (Yang-Mills et al) is not left out of the picture. It’s an amazing walk through the advancements in physics and the ingenuity of the minds that birthed them.
Masters of Hyperspace
Astronomer Nikolai Kardashev of the former Soviet Union once categorized civilization in the following way based on the power source that energizes the civilization
- Type I civilization is one that controls the energy resources of an entire planet. This civilization can control the weather, prevent earthquakes, mine deep in the earth’s crust, and harvest the oceans.
- A Type II civilization is one that controls the power of the sun itself. The energy needs of this civilization are so large that it directly consumes the power of the sun to drive its machines.
- Type III civilization is one that controls the power of an entire galaxy. For a power source, it harnesses the power of billions of star systems.
Currently, we are a Type 0 civilization millions of years from becoming a Type III civilization. If you think about it that all the advancements we have right happened in a few centuries, can you even begin to imagine where we could be in a thousand or a million years. Directly mining the sun’s energy does not seem too far-fetched.
This evolution to Type III is important to the survival of future generations provided they are able to survive the impending ecological collapse due to increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the air which traps sunlight and keeps increasing the average world temperature. Another hurdle is the uranium barrier; increasing number of countries have more than a few atomic bombs. There is Ice Age and the possibility of being hit by half-mile to 2-mile diameter meteors. Such a hit is speculated to have wiped out the dinosaurs. Then comes the death of the sun, our galaxy and universe.
Hopefully, they will be able to jump ship (pun intended) to other star systems, galaxies or universes through their technological advancements if something else has not caused the fall of civilization by then. In a lighter tone, our sun still has about 5 billion years of shining left and sharp minds are working to overturn the earth’s greenhouse effect.
Where there is quantum theory there is hope....for in an infinite quantum future anything that can happen, eventually will — John D. Barrow, Joseph Silk
Our world is so exciting and vast, I think it important to take a break from focusing on the things around and before us. Sink into the pages of hyperspace for an eye opening experience you won’t forget for a while..
This is the first book in a series of book summaries. I’m not a physicist so feel free to challenge (or add to) some of the points made above
You can follow here or on Twitter to see the next summary (Antifragile by
)