What is the common theme about these three? Elon musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson. They all are successful entrepreneurs, and, more importantly, they are dreamers. They all are dreamers and founded a company, on top of their other companies, with a goal of sending people to space. Whether you are a dreamer like Elon Musk or Star trek/Star Wars fans as a child, if you want to see a glimpse of what lies ahead of you, Michio Kaku's the future of humanity will be a book for you. In this book, the author walks you through from humans' efforts for leaving the earth, all the way to theoretical scenarios into immortality and advanced civilization, and the end of universe.
This book to me was one of the most difficult books to digest, and therefore made me really proud to finish reading. I must admit my knowledge about space was very limited. I don't remember being interested in physics outside of school curriculum. I remember picking up String Theory book in college, read the first 30 pages, and never finished it. Were it not for the ABBA(Adobe Business Book Association), I would not have chosen it on my own. With that I am just thankful. I now can at least nod when I hear the terms like black hole, white hole, antimatter, casimir effect, negative energy, dark matter, and string theory.
From this book, I could see author's efforts to back up all of his future scenarios with scientific theory and discovery. I particularly enjoyed the endless human beings' efforts to discover the explanation about where, when, how we can cultivate and evolve to prepare our future. It was interesting to see the big shift in prediction paradigm whenever new theories and discoveries are introduced - Newton's law of motion, Einstein's Theory of relativity, String Theory all guided the next step of what is possible for humanity.
The journey starts with development of rocket and spacecraft, moon landing, and exploration for journey to Mars. Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, and Elon Musk all have a huge interests in this. Then, attention moves into Asteroid Belt, and some enterprises are trying to extract resources like Platinum that are in Asteroid Belt.
Exploration continues. Scientists deployed Kepler, exploratory spacecraft, and confirmed 200,000 additional planets and stars. Kaku dedicated a good section of the book on various ways to provide fuel for the spacecraft: nano spacecraft, ion engine, nuclear energy, fusion energy, space elevator, anti-matter, and lastly, wormhole, black hole and white hole with negative energy.
The last section of the book was the most imaginative as if Dr. Kaku is whispering 'Relax and imagine with me'. It really gets into the border line between philosophy, religion, and physics. As a Christian believing in eternal life after death, the last section of the book were a bit hard to chew. However, I wanted to be open minded. So should you. Immortality, Transhumanism, Search for extraterrestrial life, Advanced Civilization (I - IV), and end of universe. Yes the end of universe as if it tries to explain how science could explain if super intelligence decide to end the universe. The author did mention that the science can't explain the existence of God. I think he was trying to be delicate how to bridge the gap between Christianity and Buddhism since after all predicting future is very much depending on philosophy and belief.
I would like to share one striking story about a scientist mentioned in the book as a closing remark: Giordano Bruno. He was a teacher of Galileo Galilei. Bruno chose to be burned alive for his philosophical position. His cosmological theories are that stars are distant sun, surrounded by its own planets. He proposed that these planets might foster its own life, and universe is infinite and could have no center. Such remark before even Galileo were definitely provoking. After 7 years of prison, he was publicly mocked and tortured. When given a choice of 'giving up his belief and live', he chose to die, and was burned alive. In the face of death, he chose to die for an idea, his philosophy. Can you do that?
Comments