Kaku states that “as a physicist learned that the impossible is often a relative term.” By this definition of 'impossible', he poses the question 'Is it not plausible to think that we might someday build space ships that can travel distances of light years, or think that we might teleport ourselves from one place to the other?' Types of impossibilities Įach chapter is named by a possible, or improbable, technology of the future. Such advances were considered impossible because the basic laws of physics and science were not understood as well as they would subsequently be. Even in the 1920s and 1930s, Robert Goddard was scoffed at because it was believed that rockets would never be able to go into space. 19th century science had determined that it was impossible for the earth to be billions of years old. Black holes were considered science fiction and even Albert Einstein showed that black holes could not exist. Televisions, computers, and the Internet would seem incredibly fantastic to the people of the turn of the 20th century. “He thought X-rays were a hoax, and that radio had no future.” Likewise, Ernest Rutherford (1871–1937), a physicist who experimentally described the atom, thought the atom bomb was impossible and he compared it to moonshine (a crazy or foolish idea). William Thomson Kelvin (1824–1907), a mathematical physicist and creator of the Kelvin scale said publicly that “heavier than air” flying machines were impossible. The concept of impossibility Īccording to Kaku, technological advances that we take for granted today were declared impossible 150 years ago. With each discussion of science fiction technology topics he also 'explains the hurdles to realizing these science fiction concepts as reality'. The cover of his book depicts a TARDIS, a device used in the British science fiction television show Doctor Who to travel in space and time, in its disguise as a police box, continuously passing through a time loop.

The topic of Star Trek 'phasers' becomes a lesson on how lasers work and how laser-based research is conducted. The topic of invisibility becomes a discussion on why the speed of light is slower in water than in vacuum, that electromagnetism is similar to ripples in a pond, and Kaku discusses newly developed composite materials.

Kaku uses discussion of speculative technologies to introduce topics of fundamental physics to the reader.

Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration Into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel is a book by theoretical physicist Michio Kaku.

Kaku physics of the impossible