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Book Summary and Reviews of Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku

Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku

Physics of the Impossible

A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel

by Michio Kaku

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  • Published:
  • Mar 2008, 352 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

A fascinating exploration of the science of the impossible—from death rays and force fields to invisibility cloaks—revealing to what extent such technologies might be achievable decades or millennia into the future.

One hundred years ago, scientists would have said that lasers, televisions, and the atomic bomb were beyond the realm of physical possibility. In Physics of the Impossible, the renowned physicist Michio Kaku explores to what extent the technologies and devices of science fiction that are deemed equally impossible today might well become commonplace in the future.

... In a compelling and thought-provoking narrative, he explains:

  • How the science of optics and electromagnetism may one day enable us to bend light around an object, like a stream flowing around a boulder, making the object invisible to observers "downstream"
  • How ramjet rockets, laser sails, antimatter engines, and nanorockets may one day take us to the nearby stars
  • How telepathy and psychokinesis, once considered pseudoscience, may one day be possible using advances in MRI, computers, superconductivity, and nanotechnology
  • Why a time machine is apparently consistent with the known laws of quantum physics, although it would take an unbelievably advanced civilization to actually build one

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Science and science fiction buffs can easily follow Kaku's explanations as he shows that in the wonderful worlds of science, impossible things are happening every day." - Publishers Weekly.

"This tour de force of science and imagination is for advanced high school students and up." - Library Journal.

"Starred Review." - Kirkus Reviews.

This information about Physics of the Impossible was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Michio Kaku

Michio Kaku is the Henry Semat Professor of Theoretical Physics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the cofounder of string field theory and has written several books, including Parallel Worlds and Beyond Einstein, and his bestseller, Hyperspace.

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