In the history of science, this happened more than once: scientists argued that this or that phenomenon was impossible, and then it turned out that they were wrong. Just a hundred years ago, lasers, television and the atomic bomb were considered nothing more than a fantasy, but today both of them really exist. What daring predictions of science fiction writers and filmmakers about the future have a chance to come true before our eyes? The American theoretical physicist Michio Kaku has long been seriously concerned about this issue
Like any boy, Michio dreamed of time travel, ray cannons, force fields and encounters with aliens as a child. The fantasies of the little Japanese American fueled Jules Verne's novels and youth television series. “They started my enduring love and interest in the impossible,” writes Michio Kaku.
Wanting to make his dreams come true, Michio took up physical experiments. The first serious success overtook the young experimenter in high school.
Working on a project for a youth science exhibit, he found 400 pounds of transformer steel scrap and wound 22 miles of copper wire in the school stadium over the Christmas holidays. And then, in my mother's garage, I built a particle accelerator that created a magnetic field 20,000 times the power of the Earth's magnetic field. Michio wanted to get a beam of gamma rays to create antimatter, but received … the support of the prominent physicist Edward Teller and a scholarship at Harvard …
Today Kaku lives in New York, works on string theory, teaches and actively popularizes science. His book "Physics of the Impossible" became a real bestseller. Not every scientist is able to tell about complex things in such an accessible, vivid and simple way. And even more so, not everyone provides a unique chance to look into the distant future and see what the Earth will be like and what a person will become after centuries.
Michio Kaku at the presentation of his book on parallel worlds.
Photo: Credit unknown / paranormal-news.ru
Kaku is a hopeless optimist. The impossible, he says, is very relative. During his life, he was repeatedly convinced that fairy tales can turn into reality, even such as travel in time.
Time Machine
Previously, scientists firmly believed in the law derived by Isaac Newton: time flows uniformly and linearly, one second on Earth is equal to one second at any point in space. But Einstein proved that time at different points in the Universe flows in different ways - sometimes it slows down, then it accelerates. And when an astronaut on his rocket leaves the earth's atmosphere, there, in space, he obeys other laws. If he moves at near-light speed, then it will take him only a minute to get to the nearest star. At the same time, four years will pass on Earth, but for him personally, time will shift a little, because time in the ship slows down a lot. It turns out that the astronaut will move into the future of the Earth four years ahead.
With a trip to the future, everything is more or less clear, but what about a voyage to the past? This is also possible! It is enough to fall into a wormhole, and you can freely move back in time. Traveling through wormholes doesn't appeal to you? If you please, in a cruise, in the truest sense of the word. If the Universe rotates, and scientists have been talking about this more and more often lately, then, having rounded it, you can - ale oops! - to be in the past. However, so far only civilizations that have reached a higher level of development than ours are capable of such tricks. And they exist! There are civilizations that have learned to control the weather, others know how to control earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and still others have settled across the whole galaxy, as in Star Wars.
Parallel Worlds
For the time being, it was believed that the whole world is three-dimensional. But with the advent of string theory, it became clear that there are "additional" dimensions in the Universe - the fourth, fifth, sixth, etc. This discovery prompted scientists to think about the existence of parallel universes. If you do not go into details, then something like this looks like this. Imagine a lot of soap bubbles floating in the air. One bubble - one universe. Bubbles are able to unite with each other, divide into several small bubbles, disappear and reappear. It is possible that we live on the shell of one such bubble-universe. And around there are countless universes, each with its own laws and orders. Perhaps some one is hovering right above us in its bubble. We feel its gravity, but we do not see it, because the light of any universe is locked in itself. But someday we will still be able to make out our neighbors in space.
Invisibility cloak
Harry Potter's invisibility cloak haunts not only children, but also adults. However, until recently, any textbook on optics said that such a phenomenon is possible only in science fiction books and films. The experts had an ironclad argument: light cannot bend around an object, like water flowing around a stone from different sides. But a miracle happened a few years ago - scientists invented the invisibility cloak. Rather, a new material that is invisible to microwave radiation. For the first time in history, a technique has appeared that allows you to make ordinary objects invisible. When this miracle tissue is created, tiny implants are implanted into it, which force electromagnetic waves to take non-standard paths. If this material learns to hide all shadows and reflections, then the object will become completely invisible. Harry Potter will be jealous!
Flights in reality
Who among us does not dream of going straight from home to work? Or from one city to another, from one country to another. Is this impossible? Scientists would have agreed with you yesterday, but not today!
Isaac Newton's law, based on the idea that objects move only when they are pushed, is no longer relevant. Based on quantum theory, atoms and their particles are capable of wave motion, therefore, they can make quantum jumps. Which has been proven on an inanimate object - a light beam. Scientists are just getting close to teleporting complex molecules. After that, it will take several decades to develop a method for teleporting DNA or some kind of virus. Most likely, Kaku predicts, it will be several centuries before humans can teleport ordinary objects. Whether his turn will come up is a question, but the discovery of teleportation at the atomic level is already a huge breakthrough.
The thought is material
How convenient it would be if we could read other people's thoughts! You can find out, for example, what the “beloved” mother-in-law thinks about you, what the precious offspring is up to, what kinds of views you have with your superiors. Alas! Other people's thoughts are a secret behind seven seals (we don't take psychics and clairvoyants into account). So is there a chance for humanity to learn to read other people's thoughts? Michio Kaku, as always, is reassuring. Our brain is the transmitter through which thoughts are carried through very weak electrical signals and electromagnetic waves. It remains only to invent a device capable of picking up these signals, and this, as they say, is a matter of technology. According to Kaku's forecasts, such a device will be invented already in this century, which means that if not us, then our children and grandchildren will be able to use it.
Vladimir Otrogov