Physics of the Future

Title: Physics of the Future

Author: Michio Kaku

Publisher:  Allen Lane, 2011 (First)

ISBN: 978-1-846-14268-0

Pages: 368

A good work to guess the road science will take in the next hundred years. Michio Kaku, himself a world-class theoretical physicist, has produced this book after interviewing hundreds of distinguished scientists, each one master of their own particular field of study. The greatest pitfall one has to overcome in hazarding guesses about the future is the severe underestimate one normally makes of the potential of science. We are so groomed to the way things are at present, that we fail to appreciate how science can jump over the seemingly insurmountable obstacles we face today. Even renowned scientists are not free from such prejudices, as Lord Kelvin noted in a self-satisfied way in the 1890s that physics will be over in a few years! This was even before the development of quantum mechanics, relativity and the computer revolution that was to transform the 20^th century into the most productive one in the entire human history.

The book is well categorized into salient points which are going to define the coming century. The future developments possible in computers, artificial intelligence, medicine, nanotechnology, energy, space travel, wealth creation and human civilization are identified and explained. Computers would become so cheap and ubiquitous that we may fail to see them as chips begin to be at the core of every conceivable thing we may use in the future. Kaku’s only alarm is the date on which Moore’s law may break down. The famous hypothesis states that computer power doubles in roughly 18 months. The law, formulated in the 1960s when computer age was just kicking off has stood intact so far, resulting in cheap computing power so that the masses can afford it. However, physical constraints would sooner or later put brakes on the application of the law, which would be a great barrier in progress for mankind existing at that time.

Human comfort will be boundless, with medicinal facilities in full stream, to eliminate all our diseases and dangerous conditions. Our life spans will be increased several fold and one would be able to choose the age to remain for a long time. Robots would accompany us everywhere, whose intelligence would be on near par with humans. The horrendous amount of energy required for all these endeavours will be generated by super-efficient mechanisms, like hydrogen, cold fusion, or antimatter. Interstellar travel may start to become possible around the end of the century. Kaku introduces a classification of civilizations based on the amount of energy they consume. A Type 1 civilization uses all the available energy of a planet, and can control the living conditions in the planet. A Type 2 civilization exploits all the energy of star, while a Type 3 civilization uses the energy available in a whole galaxy. On this scale, our existing society is yet to reach Type 1 status, the most we can claim is a Type 0.7 society!

Kaku muses over the nature of human relations in this advanced era. The nature of jobs available would radically differ from the current ones. Those who do repetitive and purely mechanical work may find themselves unemployed by robots. But pattern recognition and common sense are two aspect which the robots would not be able to achieve in the foreseeable future. So, people indulging in creative work like art, design, music and similar areas would flourish. Wisdom would be the one thing badly in need at that time. Commerce and trade also would transform dramatically. In place of the commodity capitalism in vogue, intellectual capitalism would dominate the earth. Information is poised to become a prized commodity of the coming era.

The book is splendidly researched, with inputs from hundreds of experts. However, Kaku’s narration pales into mere reporting when fields other than his specialization come into view. When confronted with the advances plausible in various areas like medicine and commerce, the quality of the output is not comparable to those from the fields of space travel or computers or artificial intelligence. The book ends with a relevant quote from Mahatma Gandhi, which every nation and every person should keep in their hearts, irrespective of the technical excellence of the society they live in. On the layout, the book spans 368 pages, which should be cut down a bit in future editions. Readers would definitely appreciate some brevity.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Beyond Einstein

Title: Beyond Einstein

Author: Michio Kaku, Jennifer Thompson

Publisher: Oxford University Press 2010 (First published 1987)

ISBN: 978-0-19-286196-2

Pages: 206

A best seller from the leading popularizer of science. Himself being a player in the scientific arena, Kaku’s comments carry weight due to the sharp insight and incisive reasoning that goes behind every one of his works. This book is also not much different. The quest for a unified theory of everything is at the centre-stage of this work. Albert Einstein carried on a futile quest for finding the elusive unified theory which would combine all the four fundamental forces of nature. Though touted as the greatest genius ever lived, Einstein worked in isolation in the latter part of his career and was against the application of quantum mechanics in any sphere of physics. Partly due to these factors, he failed miserably to produce the theory which would explain everything. Kaku describes the work done by other scientists in this field and how much they had moved beyond Einstein. The author was instrumental in some way in the research on superstrings, which is considered to be the most viable (so far) theory of the universe and promotes it in great detail.

Kaku was attracted to science with awe to the great scientist, Albert Einstein. When he died, he was in the search for the unified theory and this impressed the young author so much that he himself wanted to plunge into the arena which baffled even the great intellect like Einstein. Superstring theory unites all forces in nature, but the enormous energy needed to test its postulates prevents us from testing it in the particle accelerators in the world. The Superconducting Super Collider, which was proposed but rejected in the U.S would have tested some aspects of it, but in the present circumstances only the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in CERN, Geneva can come anywhere close to it.

History of unification of forces begins the Isaac Newton. The common belief during the 17^th century was that celestial and terrestrial objects were obeying different laws, with the celestial objects being perfect in every way. Newton proposed the theory of Gravitation which didn’t differentiate between the position of objects in describing how a force acted between them. No matter what object you are interested in, say, the sun, mars, jupiter, an apple or another human being, all are acted upon by the same force which directly depended on the mass of each object and the square of the distance between them. This was the first unification which combined the celestial and terrestrial objects. The next step came only in 1860, when James Clerk Maxwell proposed his theory of electromagnetism, which showed that electricity and magnetism and different aspects of the same force. As a byproduct, he also found that light is also an electromagnetic wave and its velocity is constant. This theory was the inspiration behind Einstein’s Special theory of relativity published in 1905. He came out with his general theory of relativity in 1915, combining gravity to it. The general theory unified the three dimensions of space and one dimension of time and put forward the idea of space-time. Einstein’s fecundity seems to end with the general theory as the next three decades were fruitless. Until then, he was thinking in terms of abstract mental pictures, but the search for unified theory put him in the wild path of exotic mathematics which finally came to nothing.

Quantum Mechanics developed in the 20^th century with pioneering works of Verner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrodinger. Though the theory is so weird that Niels Bohr once remarked that if anyone was not shocked by quantum mechanics, he hasn’t understood it, no experiment has repudiated it so far. Not only that most of the modern equipments in the electronics and computer fields are the products of quantum mechanics. Computers, lasers, television, medical equipment, the list is endless. However, physicists are unanimous in declaring that the theory is as yet incomplete. It breaks down when the speed of electrons approach the speed of light, that is, relativistic velocities. Quantum field theory combined quantum mechanics with electromagnetism, but was riddled with infinities which came out as the result of mathematical operations on the equations. Richard Feynman proposed Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) to combine these. Electroweak theory was developed by Weinberg, Glashow and Salam which unified electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force. Attempts to integrate this framework with the strong force resulted in more understanding of it as the researches of Murray Gell-Mann came out with quantum chromodynamics (QCD) which postulated that quarks constitute protons and neutrons and gluons were the particles through which the strong force is effected.

The Standard Model of particle physics consists of 36 quarks. The heaviest quark was termed ‘top quark’ and was observed in particle experiments in 1994. This variety tells us that a deeper level of unification is possible at which the number of particles are lesser. We know that it cannot be the final theory because:

1. It has such a bizarre collection of quarks, leptons, gluons and W, Z bosons

2. It has exactly three generations, in both the quark and lepton sector, which are indistinguishable (except for their masses)

3. It has nineteen arbitrary parameters, including the mass of the leptons, the mass of the W and Z particles, the relative strength of the strong and weak interactions, and so on. (p.76)

Grand Unified Theory (GUT) integrated the electro-weak theory and the strong force. Though elegant, the theory was still riddled with arbitrary constants.

In 1968, Gabriele Veneziano and Mahiko Suzuki found the relationship behind the strong interaction in a formula developed by Euler in the 18^th century. The hypotheses was further improved by John Schwarz, Andre Neveu and Pierre Ramond and came to be known as superstring theory in 1970. The theory flew against commonsense as it required ten dimensions to operate as compared to the four familiar dimensions of spacetime. Everyone thought that it was nothing more than a mathematical curiosity and it was promptly abandoned around 1974. The principle was enunciated as a solution to the strong force, but gravitons and photons appeared in it. In 1976, Joel Scherk and John Schwarz suggested that the theory be reinterpreted as the universal theory of everything. Such arbitrary propositions met with strong skepticism. In 1984, Michael Green and John Schwarz found superstring theory possess enough symmetries to ban all anomalies. This development provided a facelift for the theory.

Superstring theory considers the Big Bang as the byproduct of a much stronger explosion in which a pre-existing ten-dimensional universe broke into a four-dimensional one familiar to us. All systems tend to be in a low energy state like water which flows to the lowest level at which it is stable. However, water can be made to stay at a level at which the energy is not the lowest, for example, in dams. Such states are called ‘false vacuum’ and the system rushes to its true low-energy state whenever it gets a chance. Perhaps, the ten-dimensional word might have been in a false vacuum which spontaneously turned into a 4-dimensional one which is having lower energies.

The book also explains state of the art concepts like dark matter and how it was confirmed through the painstaking cosmic observations by Vera Rubin. Cosmic strings are not related to superstrings, but scientists believe that gigantic cosmic strings stretching across millions of light-years formed immediately after the Big Bang. These cosmic string create ripples in the fabric of spacetime called gravitational waves. Experiments are in full swing to detect these waves which was one of the predictions of general relativity.

The book is an essential ingredient in the book shelf of a science enthusiast. The description is very lucid and clear. A lot of diagrams are included which brings out the concepts in pictorial detail. Even readers who have only a glancing familiarity with scientific concepts can enjoy the work. The author’s gentle admonition of the western way of thinking makes interesting reading, “This peculiar hostility (to new ideas from junior colleagues) comes from the unconscious tendency of most physicists who suffer from the mechanistic process of thinking, often found among physicists in the West, which tries to understand the inner workings of an object by examining the mechanical motions of its individual parts. Although this thinking has produced undeniable success in isolating the laws of particular domains, it blinds one from seeing the overall picture and noticing larger patterns” (p.106). There was also one quote from Stephen Hawking arresting our attention, “When one’s expectations are reduced to zero, one really appreciates everything that one does have”. This was when the gifted scientist was denied his freedom of movement by the motor neuron disease.

The book is however marred by the salesman’s tone’ expressed by Kaku in promoting the string theory. He brings it up every now and then, when describing the drawbacks of previous theories and promptly declares that it is taken care of in string theory. The early research in strings was dominated by Japanese scientists and one may also wonder whether there is indeed a patriotic tinge to the passionate arugments of the author to prop up the theory. The glorification of lesser known scientists like Mahiko Suzuki, Nambu, Yukawa, Bunji Sakita etc seems out of place. Another drawback is that the book is outdated as the latest concepts described in it are of 1995. A lot of research and observations were made thereafter but the book fails to incorporate them. For example, the observation that the expansion rate of the universe is slowing down prompted scientists to came out with the explanation that 73% of the universe is in the form of dark energy, 23% as dark matter and 4% as ordinary matter. Dark energy is not even mentioned in the book and dark matter is stated to compose about 90% of the universe. This reduces the suitability of the book of matters of recent origin.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Parallel Worlds

Title: Parallel WorldsAuthor: Michio KakuPublisher: Penguin Books 2006 (First published 2005)ISBN: 978-0-141-01463-0Pages: 381

Michio Kaku’s colossal work on what’s going on in cosmology and leading-edge physical research. Every topic imaginable in the confines of these disciplines is collated and elucidated in fine detail in the inimitable Kaku style. Though the subject and the title is a little esoteric, the world renowned author makes them understandable even to the layman. The book is divided into three main parts, subtitled The Universe, The Mutiverse and Escape into Hyperspace. In part 1, the origin and expansion of the universe is described in a lucid manner. The Big Bang and the subsequent inflation (the incredible, superliminal expansion of the Universe right after the instant of the Big Bang) are explained. Several paradoxes associated with the development of cosmology like Olber’s paradox are brought into clear light. In the second part, advanced concepts such as dimensional portals, time travel, parallel quantum universes, string and M-theories are described. Part 3 concerns itself with the eschatological models of the universe. Several variations of the end, like the Big Crunch, Big Freeze etc are given and analysed in detail. As per the latest scientific findings, the universe will continue to expand and the most likely scenario is the Big Freeze, when all the heat is dissipated due to the unabated expansion, combined with the increased separation of particles. Such a ‘heat death’ seems inevitable in several tens of billions of years which might end all intelligent life, unless such life finds a wormhole to another habitable parallel universe which exist side by side with ours all the time, but which is inaccessible to us by the limiting nature of our current technology.

Experimental results and the current state of knowledge on matters relating to the age and composition of the cosmos is illustrated. According to physicists, the universe consists of 4% matter, 23% dark matter and the remaining 73% dark energy (in the form of antigravity). Also, the data obtained from the WMAP satellite (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) proves that the universe continues to expand and the age of the universe is 13.7 billion years. As one group of scientists believe, parallel universes are spawning from the current one in infinite numbers, in several big bangs occurring at every instant. The Newton’s Principia Mathematica was the most famous single science publication of all time. The motivation behind the enterprise is described. Edmund Halley, an amateur astronomer studied the comet which appeared in 1682 and found the periodicity of it. The comet was later made eponymous to Halley. He was a friend of Newton and asked him what force might possibly exert on the comet for this regularity of appearances, to which Newton replied that the comet was moving in an ellipse as a consequence of an inverse square law. He said he was observing the comet with a telescope he has built and found that it was obeying the law. Halley was shocked and Newton simply said that he had calculated it. Impressed by the significance of this monumental breakthrough, Halley encouraged and financed the publication of the seminal work of which 250 copies were printed in that first run.

A nice elucidation of Olber’s paradox is given. This starts by asking why the night sky is black. Astronomers as early as Johannes Kepler realized that if the universe were uniform and infinite, then wherever you looked, you’d see the light from an infinite number of stars. Gazing at any point in the night sky, our line of sight will eventually cross an uncountable number of stars and thus receive an infinite amount of starlight. Thus the night sky should be white, instead of black. The paradox is deceptively simple, but has bedeviled many generations of philosophers and astronomers. The answer comes from the Big Bang, which states that though there may be infinite number of stars, many of them are so far away by the initial explosion that there has not been sufficient time for their light to reach earth. Also, the fixed life of stars may cause those in the visible universe to die out too.

George Gamow, a Russian scientist was the man behind the theory of the Big Bang. A curious anecdote is given of how he veered his career to science. The turning point in his early life came when he went to church and secretly took home some communion bread after the service. Looking through a microscope, he could see no difference between the communion bread, representing the flesh of Jesus Christ, and ordinary bread. He concluded, “I think this was the experiment which made me a scientist” (p.53). The origins of elements are described as, “The very light elements up to mass 5 and 8 were created by the Big Bang, as Gamow believed. Today, as the result of discoveries in physics we know that the Big Bang did produce most of the deuterium, helium-3, helium-4 and lithium-7 we see in nature. But the heavier elements up to iron were mostly cooked in the cores of the stars. If we add the elements beyond iron (such as copper, zinc and gold) that were blasted out by the blistering heat of a supernova, then we have a complete picture explaining the relative abundances of all the elements in the universe” (p.65).

There are immense gamma ray bursters in deep space as a result of immense nuclear interactions. “The discovery of them makes interesting reading. In the 70s, at the height of cold war, U.S. launched the Vela satellite to specifically spot nuke flashes or unauthorized detonation of nuclear bombs. Because a nuclear detonation unfolds in distinct stages, microsecond by microsecond, each nuke flash gives off a characteristic double flash of light that can be seen by satellite. (It picked up two such flashes in the 1970s off the coast of Prince Edward Island near South Africa, in the presence of Israeli warships, sightings that are still being debated by the intelligence community). But what startled the Pentagon was that the Vela satellite was picking up signs of huge nuclear explosions in space. Was the Soviet Union secretly detonating hydrogen bombs in deep space, using an unknown, advanced technology? Concerned that the Soviets might have leapfrogged over the U.S. in weapons technology, top scientists were brought in to analyze these deeply disturbing signals. After the breakup of USSR, there was no need to classify this information and these data was dumped on the astronomical community” (p.126).

A theory on the origin and development of the universe appealing to most of the believers is the anthropic theory. It states that the physical parameters so crucial to intelligent life are finetuned to a fine margin which implies that a superior being, sometimes called God had tweaked these settings. This is the strong anthropic principle. The weaker version of this principle states that the settings are exactly as required, otherwise we won’t be able to observe it. There may be universes in which these constants have different values in which life may not exist. Alan Guth, the scientist who discovered inflation immediately after the big bang commented on anthropic principle as, “I find it hard to believe that anybody would ever use the anthropic principle if he had a better explanation for something. I’ve yet, for example, to hear an anthropic principle of world history…The anthropic principle is something that people do if they can’t think of anything better to do” (p.249). Religionists and other god-believers often gloat over the supposed religiosities of prominent scientists like Newton and Einstein. Though the personal beliefs of scientists are no matter which need to involve the great principles they formulated, the bravado and false sense of glory of the religious propagandists are often grating on the nerves. However, Einstein’s comments on God may be useful to put them in their proper place. He said, “I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals Himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings….I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation….Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body” (p.357).

The book however, unnecessarily attempts to reconcile scientific concepts to religious dogmas like the creative and eschatological myths prevalent in many civilizations. Kaku virtually supports the ideas of the Big Bang and parallel universes supports divine creation and nirvana. Such thoughts are disturbing in a scientific anthology. Instead of laying threadbare the illogic behind such religious concepts, he goes out of the way to suit advanced physical theories to fit the loose coat of religious fantasies which are adaptive to any theory. Also, the long list of acknowledged personalities, including nine Nobel laureates and several aspirants, is a little boastful! The author is an expert of String theory and contributed greatly to its invention. This has resulted in a long and dense description of the finer details of the theory like symmetries, n-dimesional membranes etc, which goes on top of average readers. Attempts describing the end of the universe lacks convincing detail and on many occasions, falls to the level of mere speculation and metaphysics. An unduly long portion of the book is dedicated to such theories, like escaping to parallel universes the existence of which is not verified and is not probable that they be verified for a considerable time to come.

In the final consideration, the book is of tremendous value to a reader on science and is a must if you collect such books. Michio Kaku’s books are a delight to read and the satisfaction we extract out of these magnificent works of sheer research and intuition is most gratifying. Highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

Physics of the Impossible

Title: Physics of the ImpossibleAuthor: Michio KakuPublisher: Penguin, 2008Pages: 303

Michio Kaku, himself a noted physicist who popularizes science so that it is made enjoyable even to lay people has produced a splendid example of how a book which deals on advanced scientific concepts can become a best seller. In a simple to understand way, he describes profound ideas in an inimitable style full of interesting anecdotes and historical diversions which accentuates its appeal to all classes of readers. Kaku is deeply attracted to the popular science fiction movie series, ‘Star Trek’ and several of the impossible machines (impossible with today’s technology) he describes trace their origin to some of the lesser known episodes of Star Trek. The book details some of the ideas which are classified as impossible in today’s world, but may become realities in a short period of time when the underlying science and technology has advanced enough. He lists some of the examples which were marked as impossible by 19^th century physics but which were proved to be so useful in our everyday lives that we often take them for granted! Lord Kelvin, one of the most prominent scientists of the Victorian era, declared that ‘heavier-than-air’ devices such as the airplane was impossible, X-rays were a hoax and radio had no future. Lord Rutherford, who discovered the nucleus of the atom, dismissed the possibility of building an atomic bomb, comparing it to moonshine. Einstein himself wrote a paper in 1939 that ‘proved’ that black holes could never form. Great as these men are, we can’t help smile at the short-sightedness of their approaches with our advantage of hindsight.

Three categories of impossibilities are discussed in this work. The first is the Class 1 impossibility, which is impossible today, but does not violate the known laws of physics. So they might be possible in this century, or perhaps the next, in modified form. Class 2 impossibility, on the other hand, are technologies that sit at the edge of our understanding of the physical world. If they are possible at all, they might be realized on a scale of millennia to millions of years in the future. Class 3 impossibilities are a class of its own, indeed. These violate the known laws of physics and if they do turn out to be possible, they would represent a fundamental shift in our understanding of physics. He then explains several technologies based on this classification.

Class 1 impossibilities

1. Force fields: This is a thin, invisible yet impenetrable barrier able to deflect lasers and rockets alike. This may be created with plasma windows, laser curtains and carbon nanotube shields. Magnetic levitation is also a related aspect which may become feasible when high-temperature superconductivity is mastered.

2. Invisibility: Metamaterials may render objects invisible. These are substances created by embedding tiny implants within a substance that force electromagnetic waves to bend in unorthodox ways. This will become available for the entire spectrum including visible light.

3. Phasers and death stars: Death star is a colossal weapon, the size of an entire moon, incinerating any object it collides with. Phasers are ray or beam weapons which are found only in science fiction now. Advances in laser technology may make this a reality.

4. Teleportation: It is the ability to transport a person or object instantly from one place to another. Quantum entanglement is an idea from quantum theory which will prove to transport information place to place.

5. Telepathy: Mind reading and projecting one’s ideas into another head had fascinated man kind from the very beginning. Brain scans, recognition of EEG waves, MRI scans etc have enabled researchers to associate specific wave patterns to particular thoughts and one day, this may advance further to know what’s going on in the brain.

6. Psychokinesis: This is the ability to move things by the power of the mind. The technologies for telepathy may also help in this.

7. Robots: The word ‘robot’ comes from the 1920 Czech play R.U.R by playwright Karel Capek which means ‘drudgery’ in the Czech language and ‘labour’ in Slovak. Attempts to enable them with language and speech processing is going on.

8. Extraterrestrials and UFOs: The search for extraterrestrial life will venture to further stars and galaxies. Kepler satellite is able to detect up to hundreds of earth-like planets in outer space. Kaku classifies alien civilisations according to the energy they handle like

1. Type 1 civilisations: those that harvest planetary power, utilising all the sunlight, power of volcanoes, manipulates the weather and build cities on the ocean. All planetary power is within their control

2. Type 2 civilisations: those that can utilise the entire power of their sun, making them 10 billion times more powerful than a type 1 society.

3. Type 3 civilisations: those that can use the power of an entire galaxy. They are 10 billion times more powerful than a type 2 civilisation. They have colonised billions of star systems and can exploit the power of the black hole at the centre of their galaxy.

9. Starships: Ion and plasma engines will replace the conventional thruster designs for rockets. Solar sails, Ramjet fusion, nuclear electric rockets, nuclear pulsed rockets and space elevators are budding technologies. Nanoships may also gain credence in the near future.

10. Antimatter and anti-universes: According to the standard model of quantum theory every subatomic particle has its counterpart with the opposite charge, like electron and positron. When these particles meet, they annihilate each other releasing a burst of energy and a shower of neutrinos. Such antimatter may provide the energy for spaceships of the future.

Class 2 impossibilities

1. Faster than light travel: Even though the theory of relativity denies the presence of anything that goes faster than light, tachyons are thought to be faster. Search is on for tachyons to see whether they have remained after the big bang. Worm holes and black holes are researched to find if they connect to other universes.

2. Time travel: Along with the plethora of paradoxes it offers, such as the ‘grandmother paradox’, theoretically it is possible to travel to the future if sufficient power is available to travel at speeds comparable to that of light.

3. Parallel universes: Hyperspace, which contains more than the three space dimensions and string theory which proposes 10 dimensions are due for more study in the future.

Class 3 impossibilities

1. Perpertual motion machines: Unless our understanding of thermodynamics is not altered in a big way, such machines won’t exist.

2. Precognition: The ability to predict things to come is also a remote possibility which can’t be materialised with our current state of knowledge.

There is a good passage about why scientists may often prove to be unreliable judges for phenomena put forward by freaks and frauds. “….scientists are easily fooled by those claiming to have psychic power. Scientists are trained to believe what they see in the lab. Magicians claiming psychic powers, however, are trained to deceive others by fooling their visual senses”.

Speculations about futuristic technologies in the ancient Greek texts are mentioned. “In Greek mythology, the god Vulcan forged mechanical handmaidens of gold and three-legged tables that could move under their own power. As early as 400 BC, the Greek mathematician Archytas of Tarentum wrote about the possibility of making a robot bird propelled by steam power. In the first century AD, Hero of Alexandria (credited with designing the first machine based on steam) designed automatons, one of them with the ability to talk, according to legend. Nine hundred years ago, Al-Jazari designed and constructed automatic machines such as water clocks, kitchen appliances and musical instruments powered by water”. Probably, our home legion of vedic scientists may take a clue of two from them and ascribe them to the ever more burgeoning list of inventions in the Vedic era of India!

The Copenhagen school of quantum theory speculates that there is an invisible wall separating the microscopic world with the macroscopic and every quantum phenomenon will be in an uncertain state until an observation is made of it. ”One minority point of view is that there must be a ‘cosmic consciousness’ pervading the universe. Objects spring into being when measurements are being made, and measurements are made by conscious beings. Hence there must be a cosmic consciousness that pervades the universe determining which state we are in. Some, like Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner, have argued that this proves the existence of God or some cosmic consciousness. In fact, he even expressed an interest in the Vedanta philosophy of Hinduism, in which the universe is pervaded by an all embracing consciousness”.

The fallacy of Nostradamus’ predictions are analysed in one section. One quatrain from the predictions reads thus.

Earth-shaking fires from the world’s center roar:
Around ‘New City’ is the Earth a-quiver
Two nobles long shall wage a fruitless war
The nymph of springs pour fourth a new, red river.

This can be interpreted in any way we need. Recently, arguments have surfaced that this indicates the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York!

Doomsday cults have plagued mankind from the very ancient period to the present. In the US, William Miller declared that the End would arrive on April 3, 1843. A spectacular meteor shower by chance lit up the night sky in 1833, one of the largest of its kind, further enhancing the influence of Miller’s prophecy. Tens of thousands of devout followers, called Millerites, awaited the coming of Armageddon. When 1843 came and went without the arrival of the End of Days, the Millerite movement split into several large groups. One large piece regrouped in 1863 and changed their name to the Seventh-day Adventist Church while another group formed in 1914 called themselves, ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses’.

Altogether, a fine book by any standard and this book should be owned by any student of science irrespective of their age. This may become a motivator for many children to see in science the future of mankind and the earth. Highly recommended.

Overall rating: 4 Star