Some Cool Topics

As always, Michio Kaku talked about some interesting scientific theories and events in general tonight. He has a new book coming out called Physics Of The Impossible, which I know will be a good book.

Here are some things talked about on the show tonight:

1. Teleporting has been done on a small level. Not entire objects transported, but I believe molecules and atoms. He said we are hundreds of years away from being able to teleport people, but when we do get to that point teleportation is actually destroying the person, object, etc... and it is reassembled on the other end. So technically you are a different person, but with the same brain and thoughts. Thus they don't know exactly what it would be like and if you have a soul.

2. The Pentagon is funding experimentation with invisibility. So at some time in the fairly near future soldiers could be invisible and later on people in general could be invisible. Basically they know how to make things invisible to one of the three primary colors, but they would need to make it work with all of the colors at the same time.

3. In the year 2020 computers will stop being more powerful. At that point they hopefully will start being able to use quantum computers (I think, I get the computer types mixed up...).

4. In 10-15 years gas prices and hydrogen prices will intersect, so then we will shift to a hydrogen based society, no longer using oil.

5. Currently chips can be placed in a person's brain. These chips allow your thoughts to move things. For example currently paralyzed people can have a chip in their brain which allows them to play video games, surf online, answer emails, etc... by thinking about the cursor moving.

6. Brain scans can show if you lie. When you lie your brain must be thinking at the same time about the truth, the lie you are making up, the consequences of you telling the truth, the consequences of you lying. Thus your brain is using more energy when you lie than when you tell the truth. In the very near future brain scans may be used in court to try to prove guilt or innocence. Current lie detector tests only measure your anxiety symptoms so some people can beat those tests. In studies this new method worked for 98% of college students.

7. The star WR104 is unstable. It will explode at some point. The Earth is right in its path so it COULD send gamma radiation toward us and fry everyone on the Earth. They do not expect it to blow up for hundreds of thousands of years ( http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,2...791-663,00.html ). HOWEVER, Dr. Kaku pointed out that since it's 8,000 light years away from us IT MAY HAVE already blown up 8,000 years ago and if it did then we could suddenly see it blow up NOW and once that happens we only have a few days before it could kill everyone. When they look into space they are basically seeing the past. So stars up there may not even really be there any more.

8. Time Traveling. It's widely believed that if you go back in time, it IMMEDIATELY breaks the universe into a new parallel universe. So if you kill people, for example, they only die in your new universe, but not your old one. Thus you still would be alive if your parents died from someone going into the past.

9. Scientists think that if you go into a black hole you may come out the other side in a parallel universe.