Michio Kaku’s “Physics of the Impossible” and Its Implications to the Clean Energy Field
I just finished Michio Kaku’s 2008 book Physics of the Impossible, which left me with a renewed admiration and respect for this great mind and true master-communicator of popular science. So warm and inviting is the language and its presentation that the reader doesn’t at all feel condescended to at the hands of the considerable “dumbing down” he’s receiving on subjects like string theory, quantum mechanics, special relativity, particle physics, etc.
The central concept of the book is excellent: the word “impossible” is relative, and thus needs to be applied very carefully. The history of science consists of thousands of years of man deeming certain ideas impossible — only to have many of them fully developed and operational a decade or so later. And there are so many doozies in recent memory, e.g., the declarations in the late 19th Century that heavier-than-air flight was impossible and that all the great discoveries in the field of physics had already been made.
So Kaku cleverly breaks the world of the “impossible” down into grades: Class I, II, and III impossibilities. Class I means “impossible now, but conceivable in the next 100 years,” as compared to Class III at the other end of the spectrum, which means “this violates the current and all possible future laws of physics.”
I was interested that Kaku views ideas that are not in accord with the First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics (which render perpetual motion unattainable) as Class III impossibilities. I.e., he thinks we’re more likely to travel in time or bend spoons with our minds than we are to build a machine that doesn’t consume energy.
I have to admit that I beamed with delight when Kaku discussed his experiences on this subject. He tells us that he has a stream of seemingly intelligent people in his life who bring him perpetual motion machines and ask him to check them out to verify that investors may be wise to back them.
Though I have about one-millionth the exposure to the people and concepts of physics as Kaku (not to mention the level of comprehension), I run into this kind of thing constantly. Just last week I had a discussion with an “inventor” of such a device who asked me to travel to New York to examine it, to whom I wrote:
I read your analysis, but it doesn’t show what you’re claiming it does. The energy lost in resistance will always be greater than the energy gained in regeneration. And there is no need for me — or anyone else — to see it physically to know that; it’s a condition imposed by the second law of thermodynamics, of which there has never been a valid counter-example.
I’ve seen dozens of attempts to prove that someone has worked around this, and they’ve all been bogus. In fact, I get assertions like this at the rate of at least one per week. Some of them (and I’m not suggesting yours in one) are bald-faced attempts at fraud; I ran into a guy out here in California trying to raise money from credulous investors to build a prototype of something that was theoretically impossible — and I believe he clearly understood that. He’s now under criminal investigation.
The relevance to all of us trying to develop clean energy solutions is clear: there is no free lunch. Having said that, there are many flavors of renewable energy whose efficiencies are improving steadily — as their costs are coming down. Depending on how you measure it, we’re only a few years away from “grid parity” — the point at which an incremental megawatt of energy from solar will be the same as that of a coal-fired power plant.
In any case, I hope readers will check out Kaku’s terrific book. It carries with it the master’s typical charisma, along with his characteristic sense of both humor and humility. It’s fast-moving and extremely well done — from its dramatic opening until its poignant closing remarks. Most important, it’s comprehensive in its dealings with dozens of things that curious people want to explore in addition to how we power our planet: UFOs, teleportation, time-travel, ESP, wormholes, parallel universes, the building blocks of the universe and its ultimate fate. Trust me: you won’t be disappointed.
The Standard Model is just the reigning paradigm. Paradigms come and go. The book here is ‘fundraising’ just as surely as the PM pitches your remark. The good doctor is another science superstar, making the rounds.
While many waste their time on perpetual motion, they remain well within the reigning paradigm. Michio is well aware of that.
Realizing that a paradigm is just a paradigm allows more freedom of imagination. The basic tests remain valid and necessary. The devices must prove out. But per se rebuttals are every bit as ridiculous. Skeptics need falsify.
This morning I heard it reported that in a nationally televised debate with Bobby Kennedy, Jr., the CEO of Massy Energy (a corporation that has made sock-puppets of WV state leadership, and admitted guilt in 67,000 violations of one statute alone – not to mention the killing of 29 miners in a single incident for which an official state report has cited the company’s “hubris” in its persistent and flagrant disregard for worker safety). Don Blankenship stated that it was “impossible” to profitably run his business within the law. The company has obviously come to the conclusion that it is more profitable to kill people and destroy the natural world than it is to obey the law – and it has used its influence to shave its fines for its many thousands of violations to a mere 1% of the amount appropriate under statute. Crime really is paying for this paper tiger, and this beast is not by any stretch of the imagination the sole practitioner of that cruel calculus.
I believe it is impossible to carry on the way we have in this country and survive as a nation and a civilization. We will either evolve to establish a bio-friendly energy and product stream, or we will collapse under our own weight and waste, and take hundreds of innocent species along with us in our crazed headlong stumble toward lemming-hood.
Progress is possible, but only if we pull the greedy claws out of our sock-puppet national leadership and stick our own up there instead.
Campaign Finance Reform (the prohibition of bribery, the abolition of “corporate personhood”, and the nationalization of electioneering) is the first step – all else is a side show until we achieve that goal.
Go to MoveToAmend.org and lend a hand! Find some other places to help yourself and your progeny to a survivable future.
I guess i missed something here. I thought the topic was Kaku’s book, or did someone just want to have a rant. Anyway thanks Craig. Have a good day,
Ron
I am glad to hear that, at the end, an expert on physics presents ideas to “free our minds”, as Morpheus was saying to Neo. The new age is here, we are creating the future…a new world wherein impossible becomes possible
Bah! Humbug ! I know Michio Kaku has for years being trying to steal the plans for my Thetean Super-fluxcapacitor and dial-a-matic Handy-dandy sponge sharpener (avail in 6 different colours)!
Craig, while the belief in perpetual motion machines may be easily disproved, the faith in unrealistic claims of Solar, wind etc being able to replace all power needs for an industrialised society, is far more widespread. Inherently the same suspension of reality is needed, and the best way to support any inconvenient facts, is to invent a conspiracy theory. Never-mind that the technology is immature and may never work, it must be a plot by ‘Big Oil’ .
It’s of no use explaining to these enviropests that BP, has since 1973 been the worlds biggest developer and investor in Solar energy technology, or that Chevron is the largest developer/investor/operator of Geo-thermal power plants. No, the old idiotic EV 1 battery conspiracy is trundled out by people with no concept of patent law, or any interest in reality.
Why do I keep being rational? Why indeed! What I should do is issue proceedings against Shell oil for stealing my patent X, and when they deny it, create a website and reel in the ‘investors’ with my ‘proof of a Big Oil cover-up, once all the ‘investor have parted with their cash, change my name to Esterházy and migrate to Brazil!
After all, the world has gone mad! As I type, the US and NATO are trying their damnedest to kill Qaddafi , while denying it furiously, to benefit Total Oil and Conoco-Phillips. But, I digress…..
I would agree that perpetual motion and free energy is unattainable. However I believe there are efficiencies to be had in a system which both uses and generates energy.
For example, a commercial building needs to use electric exhaust fans to continuously vent air from a space. Those fans, being part of a energy generating system, force a volume of air directly through an air turbine which spins and generates electricity.
Physics rightly says the electricity generated by the turbine will not be as great as the electricity used to spin the fan but the the delta between the electricity used and the electricity generated in the system could mean the fan is more efficient at its job than if it were not part of the system.
If that delta (electricity loss within the system) is less than the electricity which would have been used to spin fan alone than the air is being vented from the space at a reduced overall electricity usage.
This setup could never be optimized enough to be perpetual. At best it would partially subsidize the electricity usage by the fan with electricity generation from the turbine.
Its easier to see with numbers
Fan Electricity Usage = 100
Turbine Electricity Generation = 75
System Delta = 25
25 < 100 means the system less electricity to vent air than the fan alone.
Science naturally takes the attitude that nothing is impossible, and nothing is, but some things are impractical or impossible in a practical sense. Also, while science hasn’t reached it’s “limit” there is plenty of evidence to suggest one day it will reach a feasible limit, at least in certain doctrines. String theorists, like I believe Kaku is, really can’t bother themselves with notions of “impossibility” because they are attempting to answer questions of such great magnitude they have to entertain very wild and Treky notions of science.
Let me start by saying I’d love it if much of what Michio Kaku says comes to pass. Faster than light travel? Bring it on my brotha! The problem is faster than light travel presents many problems.
Allow me though to take on something I have a better sense of, and that’s genetics. I’ve heard Kaku talk about genetic engineering, and it always makes me groan, not because genetically engineering meta-humans isn’t exciting, but because it’s pretty unrealistic. When a geneticist says “decoding the [human] genome opens up the possibility of “designer” humans” they are not lying, it does. The problem is tampering with genetic information is in it’s infancy (pun very much extended) and is already highlighting some practical problems. Notice how many clones are dying shortly after birth? That’s a practical problem that may or may not have a feasible solution. Also since genes come in a sequence, and often tampering with one can destroy or damage an entire organism. We may never be able to make a ‘designer baby’ – or we may be limited to a few very minor changes (such as immunities, gender or preventing genetic disorders from manifesting – and even those things are far off).
This is where people have to be careful with Dr. Kaku. He has a habit, or I should say he’s encouraged to present the exciting [possible] future of science in a very matter of fact manner that suggests these possibilies as if they are as real as an iPod. They’re not. The entire reason we can fly, or decode the genome, or look at a planet is because we learned enough about something to learn what we could and COULD NOT do. The Wright Brothers successfully deviced a flying “plane”, and while their invention will go down in history, it will go down in history alongside a million failures. Kaku is more than likely presenting a “fail” when he speaks.
I wish to defend him on that point though. If he never presents these overly imaginative possibilities they can’t be pursued to find out if they truly are failures. If there ever comes a day where we can travel to another gallaxy we absolutely should, but I truly doubt such a thing is possible, practical or in our even distant future. I can think of too many practical limitations.
I do share some people’s concerns that popular science can enrode scientific understanding, but I am also wary that trying to constrain overactive imaginations also can erode scientific understanding. People like Michio Kaku are truly double edged swords.
Thanks very much for this quite interesting comment. Please consider becoming a guest blogger; I’m sure everyone would like to read more of your thinking here.
I am no Physicist, but it seems to me that as long as the most comprehensive theory we have to date completely ignores gravity then it’s very difficult for anyone to conclusively say what is and isn’t possible. I liked what Prof. Brian Cox said when the Higgs boson was finally announced “I’m shocked that something so weird has turned out to be real” – that seems to sum it up. Quantum physics IS weird.
But on the free energy topic, I hate to sound ‘conspiracy theorist’ but given the number of ‘weird’ topics Kaku is quite willing to entertain, I can’t help wondering if there is some other reason he won’t even go there on ‘free’ energy.
Even putting aside the 2nd law of thermodynamics for a moment, how can he flatly say something OF THIS NATURE is impossible when we don’t even know how something as important as gravity works, and whether or not there are 11 dimensions that make gravity weak – etc etc etc……?
You’re all idiots, Kaku is KAKA, he’s a FOX New schill! He denies free energy exists? Yet 2 people have proven that it DOES exist… Tesla (and we all know what happened to him) and John Searle.
Wake up, you’ve been lied to, AGAIN. He dumbed it down alright, and you bought it, hook, line and sinker.
Just wait, he’s waiting in the shadow to take credit for all of those people he now denies, and he will do it right in front of your faces.
You’re just looking for someone to lead you, and you’ll allow it to be anyone, so long as they “speak to you”.
Sad, very sad that so-called educated adults buy the crap that Kaku peddles.
Dear Sir;
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Sincerely,
Oldrich Nos
025 Apitong St., Sto. Niño, Bilibiran
Binangonan, RIZAL, Philippines
Great post Craig. Keep up the good work!