By Isaac DeVille, staff reporter.
Michio Kaku, a well known physicist, visited SVSU on Oct. 24. Kaku is the co-founder of the String Field Theory, making him the best candidate for “A Theory of Everything” uniting the many schools of thought in physics. He visited SVSU to talk about his next book, “Physics of the Future,” where he predicts what science will accomplish within the next thirty years.
Kaku says his life changed when he was eight years old, when he learned about the death of Albert Einstein. He saw a picture in the newspaper of Einstein’s unfinished manuscript, and felt he needed to finish it.
“I thought that was for me,” says Kaku. “Einstein was looking for an equation that was no longer than one inch long, which would ‘read the mind of God.’ Well, today we can begin. It’s called String Theory. String Theory says that all the particles that we see in the universe are really nothing more than vibrating strings. Behind the atoms, the universe is an orchestra of strings,” says Kaku.
Michio Kaku has appeared on the History Channel, Discovery Channel, CNBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, FOX and Fox Business, as well as The Daily Show and the Colbert Report. He has popularized science and made it engaging.
According to Kaku, “We are all born scientists. We ask how do things work, where do we come from, what will the future be like?”
However, Kaku claims that students don’t stay that way.
“By the time you turn 15 it’s all over, because in high school, science is made boring. It’s drummed out of you; it’s crushed. Interesting science is crushed out of you, like memorizing the periodic chart of elements or memorizing the amino acids. Why? In the future you will simply blink and see all the facts you have to memorize,” says Kaku.
And what technology will make that possible? Augmented Reality will remember names of faces at parties and place subtitles at the bottom of your vision when you are experiencing a different language. Such technology will make memorization in the classroom defunct. What will be more important, according to Kaku, will be the underlying meaning behind the memorization. Quizzes will test key concepts rather than rote memorization. All of this will happen because chips will be small enough to fit in your eye contacts of the future. In the future, your glasses will replace the VR Goggles that are popular now.
But the technology isn’t only going in your glasses, it’s going into your wallpaper, according to Kaku. In the future, you’ll ask your wall “Who’s available tonight” and your wallpaper will tell you who is available. New technology will even show up in you bathroom. A sample will be taken from the toilet and you will find out something like cancer is just 100 cells large, when most of the time it’s caught when the cells reach thousands. Doctors and lawyers will be available as AI surrogates for common problems. All of this will be done without leaving your home.
Doctors and lawyers aren’t the only things being digitized. In the future, according to Kaku, you’ll be able to upload your personality onto a computer. “A library of souls” will emerge and at libraries you’ll be able to talk to people like Michio Kaku or Albert Einstein.
Daniel Murawski, Delta alumni, said, “I read his book ‘Physics of the Impossible’ and it was really interesting. Super fascinating guy. How lucky are we to be here today.”
With all this talk of the future, one forgets that there will be many changes in the upcoming years. According to Kaku, the driverless car is set to be released in the year 2020. With all this information, it is sure, the the future is now.
