All Entries in the "Spotlight" Category
The Last Ten Blog Entries from Dr. Kaku’s Universe (Hosted by BigThink.com) 12/09 – 01/05
Read the last ten blog entries on Dr. Kaku’s BigThink.com blog; Dr. Kaku’s Universe. Don’t forget to register on the Big Think website so you can make comments on the blog entries where Dr. Kaku will be answering questions
- The Digital Age in an Analog World
- Personal Genome Sequencing Technology is Now Faster and Cheaper—And Fits on a Tabletop
- Parts of Me Ooze in All Directions
- Could We Transport Our Consciousness Into Robots?
- Ice Volcano Identified on Titan
- Rare Cosmic Event to Transpire Tuesday Morning
- The Metaphysics of Teleportation
- Scientists Discover the First Carbon-Rich Planet—Which May Have Mountains of Diamonds
- “The Colbert Report,” “Conan,” and Science Education
- A New Era for NASA?
Nominate Dr. Kaku for 3rd Annual Shorty Awards (Outstanding Contributor to Twitter & Social Media)
It’s time for the third annual Shorty Awards, which honors the most outstanding contributors to Twitter and Social Media. If you want to give Dr. Kaku your vote in the category of Science – Please Click Here and follow the Instructions.
Michio Kaku to Appear on CONAN — Thursday, December 9th @ 11/10c
Don’t miss Dr. Kaku this Thursday, December 9th, when he appears as Conan’s special guest. CONAN on TBS at 11PM E/P (10c ). Other guests include Comedian & Actress Sarah Silverman and the Indie Folk Band, She & Him. This is a Must Watch – Visit www.teamcoco.com for more information and become a Fan of CONAN on Facebook @ http://www.facebook.com/teamcoco!
The Last Ten Blog Entries from Dr. Kaku’s Blog; Dr. Kaku’s Universe (Hosted by BigThink.com) 10/28 – 11/11
Take a look at the last ten blog entries on Dr. Kaku’s BigThink.com blog; Dr. Kaku’s Universe. Don’t forget to register on the Big Think website so you can make comments on the blog entries where Dr. Kaku will be answering questions.
- The Physics Behind Ball Design
- The Multiverse Has 11 Dimensions
- Advances in Holographic Technology Could Have Far-Reaching Implications
- What Travels Faster Than the Speed of Light?
- NASA Sending First Humanoid Robot Into Space
- Humans Have Lived in Space for a Decade (And Counting)!
- Intergalactic “G” Mail?
- China Creates the Worlds Fastest Supercomputer, Operating at 2.507 Petaflops
- Time Travel in a 1928 Chaplin Film?
- The 1000 Genomes Project Will Help Us Understand Genetic Variations
ABC News Interview about the California Missile Mystery (A Missile? A Plane?)
Michio Kaku sits down with ABC News and provides a few explanations into the recent California Missile Mystery. Dr. Kaku leans towards the fact that the plume was most likely caused from an airplane. The recent air scare prompted prompted people to think it was a missile but both the U.S. NAVY and NORAD dismissed the claims of an accidental launch. Shortly after Dr. Kaku’s interview, it was confirmed that the contrail was caused by a passenger jet traveling from LAX to Phoenix.
Which Came First, the Galaxy or the Black Hole?
Every Wednesday Michio Kaku will be answering reader questions about physics and futuristic science on his blog at Big Think. If you have a question for Dr. Kaku, just post it in the comment section on his blog; Dr. Kaku’s Universe and check back on Wednesdays to see if he answers it. Today, Dr. Kaku addresses a question posed by Andy Speight: Are the supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies involved in the formation of those galaxies?
What’s New @ Big Think (Video Interview & Blog Entries)
Dr. Kaku’s recent video interview at the Big Think studio has finally been published and split into three parts: Inventions of the Future, Will Mankind Destroy Itself and How to Stop Robots from Killing Us.
The three most recent blog entries on Dr. Kaku’s Universe are:
1) Water and Organic Compounds Found on a Second Asteroid
2) With WMAP’s Primary Mission Finally Complete, It’s Time to Say Goodbye
3) Graphene Will Change the Way We Live
The Last Ten Blog Entries from Dr. Kaku’s Blog; Dr. Kaku’s Universe (Hosted by BigThink.com)
Take a look at the last ten blog entries on Dr. Kaku’s BigThink.com blog; Dr. Kaku’s Universe. Don’t forget to register on the Big Think website so you can make comments on the blog entries where Dr. Kaku will be answering questions.
- Found: The Holy Grail of Planetary Science
- Successful Test of NASA’s New Composite Material “Unobtainium”
- Breakthroughs Are Slow but Steady in Quantum Computers
- U.N. to Establish Protocals for When We Make Contact With Aliens
- Tracking Space Junk from the Ground — And Now From Space
- Alien Invasions — Should We Be Worried?
- Take a Ride into Space — And Circumnavigate the Moon
- Is Our Moon Really Shrinking?
- Should We Use Nuclear Weapons to Deflect Comets From the Earth?
- Should We Use Comets and Asteroids to Terraform Mars?
Book TV’s In-Depth 3 Hour Interview with Dr. Kaku
Michio sits down with Peter Slen of Book TV (C-Span2) for a 3 hour In-Depth interview talking about his life, career, and his work. Dr. Kaku also responded to telephones calls and electronic communications.
Please visit http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/id/234213 to watch the entire interview.
The Book TV Interview will air again on Monday, October 4th at 12am (ET) on C-Span2
Physics of the Future: How Science Will Change Daily Life by 2100 by Michio Kaku (To be Released on March 22, 2011)
Physics of the Future: How Science will Change Daily Life by 2100 by Michio Kaku – To Be Released on March 22, 2011
Based on interviews with over three hundred of the world’s top scientists, who are already inventing the future in their labs, Kaku—in a lucid and engaging fashion—presents the revolutionary developments in medi cine, computers, quantum physics, and space travel that will forever change our way of life and alter the course of civilization itself.
Pre-Order Your Copy of Physics of the Future by clicking on one of the vendors below:
Dr. Kaku’s astonishing revelations include:
- The Internet will be in your contact lens. It will recog nize people’s faces, display their biographies, and even translate their words into subtitles.
- You will control computers and appliances via tiny sen sors that pick up your brain scans. You will be able to rearrange the shape of objects.
- Sensors in your clothing, bathroom, and appliances will monitor your vitals, and nanobots will scan your DNA and cells for signs of danger, allowing life expectancy to increase dramatically.
- Radically new spaceships, using laser propulsion, may replace the expensive chemical rockets of today. You may be able to take an elevator hundreds of miles into space by simply pushing the “up” button.
Like Physics of the Impossible and Visions before it, Physics of the Future is an exhilarating, wondrous ride through the next one hundred years of breathtaking scientific revolution.
Debut of Season 2 of Sci-Fi Science is September 1st on The Science Channel
I am proud to announce that the second season of “Sci Fi Science: Physics of the Impossible,” debuts next Wednesday, Sept. 1, at 9 pm, on the Science Channel (check your local listings for details). It was a pleasure working for six months with the Science Channel to produce 12 exciting episodes that I am sure will fascinate and educate the audience. Visit the Sci-Fi Science website for more details about airing dates, episodes and even video clips.
Opportunity to have Dr. Kaku answer some of your Science Questions on Camera in a BigThink.com Interview
My new television show “Sci-Fi Science” on The Science Channel is inspired by my book “Physics of the Impossible.” The first season of the show takes viewers through the wildest frontiers of science with a real-world look into the world of phasers, teleportation, light-sabers, invisibility, time travel and more. Filming for the second season is nearing an end, and will be launched on The Science Channel on Sept. 1 at 9 pm. I’ve decided to try something new with my Big Think blog—offering you the opportunity to have me answer some of your questions on camera. The basis of the topics are “shows” from the first season of “Sci-Fi Science.”
All you have to do is post your questions in the comments section on my Big Think Blog (Links Bleow). Some time in the near future, I will choose questions from each topic in the series and answer them on camera in another Big Think interview. The final product will prominently be displayed on my Big Think Blog (Dr. Kaku’s Universe).
Please find the links to the 3-Part series below (each with different topics):
PART 1) Video Blog Series– How to Explore the Universe & Travel to a Parallel Universe
PART 2) Video Blog Series– How to Become a Superhero & How to Build a Sci-Fi Robot
PART 3) Video Blog Series– How to Teleport & Become Invisible
What We’ve Learned from the Gulf Spill (WSJ Op-Ed)
WSJ Opinion Editorial (Originally Published on July 19th)
What We’ve Learned from the Gulf Spill
In the future, relief wells should be drilled simultaneously with the main well.
by Michio Kaku
If the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico were a tragedy, it would be in three acts. In Act I, there was the chaos caused by a methane explosion that killed 11 workers and unleashed the greatest environmental catastrophe in U.S. history. In Act II, we saw the floundering of BP officials, as eight failed attempts were made to cap, siphon, stuff, smother or seal the leak.
We are now slowly entering Act III, where engineers have painfully learned some valuable lessons and are on the verge of slowly killing this raging monster.
The nagging question is: Why did it take so long? Why couldn’t they have capped the leak months ago?
For three agonizing months, BP’s engineers and executives were essentially making things up as they went along, conducting a billion dollar science project with the American people as guinea pigs. The basic science of stopping oil leaks at 5,000 feet below sea level should have been done years ago.
All eight failed attempts to control the leak might have worked if the blowout had taken place at 200 feet. The 1979 Ixtoc oil leak in Mexico, which was the mother of all oil disasters, took place at 160 feet and raged for 10 months. It was eventually stopped by a relief well. The lessons learned from that and other oil disasters gave confidence to engineers in the industry that they could handle any leak.
Physics are different at 5,000 feet than they are at 200 feet. The pressure at 5,000 feet is enormous, about 2,000 pounds per square inch. Think of placing a passenger car on every square inch of your chest. You would be crushed like an egg shell within a fraction of a second. Even military submarines cannot operate at those depths. Instead, special remote controlled robotic subs are required. They are often hard to control and sometimes even collide.
Furthermore, methane, which is found as a gas in our kitchen stoves, solidifies into an ice-like hydrate at those tremendous depths and cold temperatures. The original explosion, it is conjectured, was caused when heat was applied to set the well’s cement seal, expanding the methane hydrates into gas that shot up the riser pipe and ignited. The presence of methane hydrates also foiled the first attempt to cap the leak. Later, BP engineers had greater success by sending warm water down the pipe to prevent methane hydrates from clogging it without creating gas bubbles like the one that caused the explosion.
BP officials initially low-balled the size of the leak. Although they originally stated that 1,000 barrels of oil were leaking per day, they also released video that gave a startlingly different picture.
In our freshman physics courses we teach the students that the flow rate from a pipe is the product of the area of the pipe times the velocity of the fluid. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to multiply these two numbers. Even a simple back-of-the-envelope estimate of the leak from watching the video will give you estimates of 40,000 to 60,000 barrels of oil per day. Did BP officials knowingly release misleadingly low figures, perhaps because they can be fined more than $4,000 per barrel by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency?
In the future there should be much tighter controls on deep-water drilling, and there should be redundant systems on hand so that the well can be capped or siphoned immediately if the blowout preventer fails. Perhaps relief wells should be drilled simultaneously with the main well, since they are the gold standard for stopping oil leaks and work nearly without fail. There also has to be a standby fleet of ships with skimmers, centrifugal pumps and booms ready to handle oil once it is leaked.
More importantly, the basic science of plugging oil leaks at great depths has to be completed, so that any future tragedies will not be repeated as farce. Until we end our oil addiction and develop alternative energy sources, similar plotlines will no doubt recur.
Last Round of Autographed Books & Photos are Available for Purchase
The last round of Autographed Books & Photos are now available for purchase. A new community driven website is currently in development, so all proceeds from sales go towards the continued advancements of the Mkaku.org community including hosting fees and new software. Each of the books (Physics of the Impossible, Hyperspace, Beyond Einstein, Visions & Parallel Worlds are $40.00 and includes U.S. and International Shipping. You may also purchase all 5 Autographed Books for $150.00.
Please allow 2-4 weeks for delivery (International Shipments vary by Country). https://mkaku.org/home/?page_id=743
WIN! a Chance to Meet me and Take Part in Filming for SCI-FI Science in New York City on July 16th
I’m nearly done filming a second season of “SCI-FI Science: Physics of the Impossible” on The Science Channel. In this exciting new series, I’ve identified 12 more familiar science-fiction movie, TV and literature notions and technologies. I’ve been explaining how we can build some of these SCI-FI ideas into science fact and — once again — I want to know what YOU think of my designs.
The next two episodes will be: “How to Stop the Rise of the Machines” and “How to Defeat a Cyborg Army” — I’m inviting lucky winners of our competitions to the studio shoots where I will reveal my designs.
