Physics of the Future by Kaku
Ref: Michio Kaku (2012). Physics of the Future: How Science will Shape Human Destiny and our Daily Lives by the Year 2100. Anchor Publishing.
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Summary
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 medicine, computers, quantum physics, and space travel that will forever change our way of life and alter the course of civilization itself, including (Amazon):
The Internet will be in your contact lens, which will recognize people's faces, display their biographies, and even translate their words into subtitles.
You will control computers and appliances via tiny sensors 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.
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.
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—Humanity—
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Humans
The human genome Project is like a dictionary without definitions. Each of the genes of the human body is spelled out explicitly in this dictionary, but what each does is still largely a mystery. Each gene codes for a certain protein, but it is not known how most of these proteins function in the body.
In Optimal Conditions, DNA lasts about 1million years.
HOX genes: Describe how the body is constructed.
Miller and Schuster found that the hair follicle of the wooly mammoth, not the body itself, contained the best DNA.
The Brain
The human brain uses 20W.
ASPM gene: responsible for controlling brain size.
Nerve impulses travel at an excruciatingly slow pace of about 200 mph. But the brain has 100 billion neurons operating at the same time, each one performing a tiny bit of computation, with each neuron connected to 10,000 other neurons. In a race, a superfast single processors is left in the dust by a superslow parallel processor
Immigration
H1B Visa: Immigration visas granted to foreigners with special talents, resources, or scientific knowledge.
Consciousness
Sensing and recognizing the environment
Self-awareness
Planning for the future by setting goals and plans, that is, simulating the future and plotting strategy.
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—Medicine—
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Genomic Based Medicine
Your doctor will have a complete record of your genes, and will recommend a course of medical treatment that takes in account all your genetic risk factors.
Each cell in our body has the complete genetic code necessary to create our entire body. But as our cells mature, they specialize, so many of the genes are inactivated.
Gene therapy comes in two types: somatic and germ line. Somatic gene therapy involves fixing the broken genes of a single individual. Germ line therapy, in which one fixes the genes of the sex cells, so that the repaired gene can be passed on to the next generation, almost forever. Take a healthy version of that gene, inserts it into a “vector” (usually a harmless virus), and then injects it into the patient. The virus quickly inserts the “good gene” into the cells of the patient, potentially curing the patient of the disease.
Cancer
Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the US, responsible for about 25% of all deaths.
Whether caused by a virus, chemical exposure, radiation, or chance, cancer fundamentally involves mutations in four or more of our genes, in which a normal cell “forgets how to die.” The cell loses control over its reproduction and reproduces without limit, eventually killing the patient.
Two major types of cancer genes: oncogenes and tumor suppressors.
Oncogenes act like an accelerator stuck in the down position, so the car careens out of control, allowing the cell to reproduce without limit.
The tumor suppressor normally acts like a brake, so when it is damaged, the cell is like a car that can't stop.
~50% off all common cancers involve a mutation in the gene p53 that can be easily detected using sensors.
Doctors at MASS General Hospital: Normally, circulating tumor cells (CTC’s) make up fewer than one in a million cells in our blood, but these CTCs eventually kill us if they proliferate. The new biochip is sensitive enough to find one in a billion CTCs circulating in our blood.
Standard etching technology carves out chips containing 78,000 microscopic pegs (each 100 microns tall). Under an electron microscope, they resemble a forest of round pegs. Each peg is coated with an antibody for the epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM), which is found in many types of cancer cells but is absent in ordinary cells. EpCAM is vital for cancer cells to communicate with one another as they form a tumor.
Zapping cancer cells.
Some nanoparticles can absorb light of a certain frequency. By focusing laser light on them, they heat up, or vibrate, destroying any cancer cells in the vicinity by rupturing their cell walls. The key, therefore, is to get these nanoparticles close enough to cancer cells
TiO2 nanoparticles: bind to an antibody that naturally seeks out certain cancer cells called GBM. Then a white light is illuminated for 5 minutes heating and eventually killing the cancer cells.
In the future, nanotechnology will detect cancer colonies years to decades before they can form a tumor, and nanoparticles circulating in our blood might be used to destroy these cells. The basic science is being done today.
Tissue Engineering
Tissue engineering is one of the hottest fields in medicine, making possible a human body shop. So far, scientists can grow skin, blood, vessels, heart valves, cartilage, bone, noses, and ears in the lab from your own cells.
Hormones
The hormone erythropoietin (EPO) works by making more oxygen-containing red blood cells, which means increased endurance. Because EPO thickens the blood, it also has been linked to strokes and heart attacks. Insulin like growth factors (IGF) are useful because they help proteins to bulk up muscles, but they have been linked to tumor growth.
Pathogens
There is considerable genetic evidence that HIV began as SIV.
The Spanish flu virus, unlike other varieties, causes the body’s immune system to overreact, releasing large amounts of fluid that eventually kills the patient.
Scientists analyzed the genetic sequence of the flu virus; they were surprised to find its origin: birds.
Aging & Anti-Aging
Aging: The accumulation of errors at the genetic and cellular level. These errors can build up in various ways. For example, metabolism creates free radicals and oxidation, which damage the delicate molecular machinery of our cells, causing them to age; errors can build up in the form of “junk” molecular debris accumulating inside and outside the cells. The buildup of these genetic errors is a byproduct of the second law of thermodynamics: total entropy (that is, chaos) always increases.
Extending life span will be a combination of several methods.
Growing new organs as they wear out or become diseased, via tissue engineering and stem cells.
Ingesting a cocktail of proteins and enzymes that are designed to increase cell repair mechanisms, regulate metabolism, reset the biological clock, and reduce oxidation.
Using gene therapy to alter genes that may slow down the aging process.
Maintaining a healthy lifestyle.
Using nano-sensors to detect diseases like cancer years before they become a problem.
Caloric Restriction (lowering the amount of calories we eat by 30% or more): increases lifespan by 30%. Every organism studied so far- from yeast cells, spiders, and insects to rabbits, dogs, and now monkeys- exhibits this strange phenomenon. Animals given this restricted diet have fewer tumors, less heart disease, a lower incidence of diabetes, and fewer disease related to aging. In fact, caloric restriction is the ONLY known mechanism guaranteed to increase the lifespan that has been tested repeatedly, over almost the entire animal kingdom, and it works every time.
Hayflick Limit: seems to put an upper limit on the life cycle of certain cells. Cancer cells, for example, have no Hayflick limit and produce an enzyme called telomerase that prevents the telomeres from getting shorter and shorter. The enzyme telomerase can by synthesized. When applied to skin cells, they apparently reproduce without limit. They become immortal.
1970s: The scientific world was stunned when Michael Rose of UC-Irvine accounted that he was able to increase the lifespan of fruit flies by 70% by selective breeding. His “superflies,” or Methuselah flies, were found to have higher quantities of the antioxidant superoxide dismutase (SOD), which can slow down the damage cause by free radicals.
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—Future Technology—
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Computing
There is virtually no limit to the amount of information you can place on a laser beam. Light waves, because they vibrate much faster than sound waves, can carry vast more information than sound.
Light is a wave that vibrates at roughly 10-14th Hz. This means that fiber optic cable can carry roughly 1011 bits of information on a single frequency.
The computer revolution is driven by miniaturizing transistors. A transistor is a gate, or switch, that controls the flow of electricity. If an electric circuit is compared to plumbing, than a transistor is like a valve controlling the flow of water.
UV light can be tuned so that its wavelength is smaller and smaller, making it possible to etch increasingly tiny transistors onto silicon wafers. Since UV light has a wavelength as small as 10 nm, this means that the smallest transistor that you can etch is about thirty atoms across.
The current revolution in silicon-based computers has been driven by one overriding fact: the ability of UV light to etch smaller and smaller transistors onto a wafer of Si. Because the wavelength of UV light can be as small as 10nm, it is possible to use etching techniques to carve out components that are only thirty atoms across.
A transistor is a switch that allows you to control the flow of e- down a wire. It's possible to replace a Si transistor with a single molecule, made of chemicals like rotaxane and benzenethiol.
In one position, the knob allows e- to flow, which can represent the number 1. If the knob is turned, then the electric flow is stopped, which atom can store vastly more information than a single bit.
Quantum computers use “qubits” rather than bits. For example, it can be 25% spinning up and 75% spinning down.
Neural networks follow Hebb's: every time a correct decision is made, those neural pathways are reinforced. It does this by simply changing the strength of certain electrical connections between neurons every time it successfully performs a task.
Superconduction
Superconduction: materials that conduct electricity with no resistance. This means that, unlike the more familiar conductors such as copper or steel, a superconductor can carry a current indefinitely without losing any energy.
Physicists will eventually find their holy grail: room temperature superconductors.
It has been known since 1911 that Hg, when cooled to 4 degrees Kelvin, loses all electrical resistance.
Unlike previous materials like Hg or Pb, these superconductors were ceramics, previously thought to be unlikely candidates for superconductors, and became superconductors at 92 K.
Magnetic Lines of force cannot penetrate a superconductor. This is the Meissner effect. (When a magnetic field is applied to a superconductor, a small e- current forms on the surface and cancels it, so the magnetic field is expelled from the superconductor). When you place the magnet on top of the ceramic, its field lines bunch up since they cannot pass through the ceramic. This creates a “cushion” of magnetic field lines, which are all squeezed together, thereby pushing the magnet away from the ceramic, making it float.
C Fibers
The longest pure carbon fiber is only a few centimeters long.
X-Rays
One problem with ordinary X-rays is that you have to place X-ray film behind any object, expose the object to X-rays, and then develop the film. But backscattered X-rays solve all these problems. First, you have X-rays, emanating from a light source that can bathe a room. They bounce off the walls, and pass from behind through the object you want to examine. Your goggles are sensitive to the X-rays that have passed through the object.
Robotics
Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility (ASIMO): the world's most advanced robot can walk, run, climb stairs, dance, and even serve coffee.
Military
Pentagon projects include the Internet, which was originally designed to connect scientists and officials during and after a nuclear war, and the GPS system, which was originally designed to guide ICBM missiles.
Virtual Reality
1960’s: Virtual reality is first introduced by the military as a way of training pilots and soldiers using simulations.
Energy
The world consumes about 14T watts of power, of which 33% comes from oil, 25% from coal, 20% from gas, 7% from nuclear, 15% from biomass and hydroelectric, and a paltry .5% from solar and renewables.
Space Solar Power (SSP) involves sending hundreds of space satellites into orbit around the earth, absorbing radiation from the sun, and then beaming this energy down to earth in the form of microwave radiation. The satellites would be based 22,000 miles above the earth, where they become geostationary, revolving around the earth as fast as the earth spins. There is 8x more sunlight in space than on the surface of the earth.
Nuclear Energy- Fission
A typical 1GW reactor produces about 30 tons of high-level nuclear waste after one year.
Nuclear Energy- Fusion
27 million degrees Fahrenheit found in the center of the sun. If all goes well, it will generate 500 MW of energy, which is 10x the amount of energy originally going into the reactor.
Pound for pound, fusion releases 10 million times more energy than gasoline. An 8 oz glass of water is equal to the energy content of 500,000 barrels of petroleum.
In star formation, a H-rich ball of gas is gradually compressed by gravity, until it starts to heat up to enormous temperatures. When the gas reaches around 50 million degrees or so (which varies depending on the specific conditions), the H nuclei inside the gas are slammed into one another, until they fuse which causes the gas to ignite.
Lawson’s Criterion: For Fusion to occur, you have to compress H gas of a certain density to a certain temperature for a certain amount of time.
One advantage of fusion power is that its fuel is hydrogen, which can be extracted from seawater. A fusion plant also cannot suffer a catastrophic meltdown like the ones. we saw at Chernobyl and Fukushima. If there is a malfunction in the fusion plant (such as the superhot gas touching the lining of the reactor) the fusion process automatically shuts itself off. This is because the fusion process has to attain the Lawson criterion: it must maintain the proper density and temperature to fuse the hydrogen over a certain period of time. But if the fusion process gets out of control, the Lawson criterion is no longer satisfied, and it stops by itself.
NIF- fusion by laser
NIF Reactor at LLNL: With a 192 giant laser beams being fired down a long tunnel. It is the largest laser system in the world, delivering sixty times more energy than any previous one. After these laser beams are fired down this long tunnel, they eventually hit an array of mirrors that focus each beam onto a tiny pinhead-size target, consisting of deuterium and tritium. Incredibly, 500 trillion watts of laser power are focused onto a tiny pellet that is barely visible to the naked eye, scorching it to 100 million degrees, much hotter than the center of the sun. (The energy of that colossal pulse is equivalent to the output of half a million nuclear power plants in a brief instant). The surface of this microscopic pellet is quickly vaporized, which unleashes a shockwave that collapses the pellet and unleashes the power of fusion.
International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER): Fusion in a magnetic field.
Instead of using lasers to instantly collapse a tiny pellet of hydrogen rich material, ITER uses a magnetic field to slowly compress H gas. The magnetic field keeps the hydrogen gas inside the doughnut shaped chamber from escaping. Then an electrical current is sent surging through the gas, heating it. The combination of squeezing the gas with the magnetic field and sending a current surging through it causes the gas to heat up to many millions of degrees.
ITER is designed to produce 500 MW for a minimum of 500 seconds.
DEMO fusion reactor:
DEMO will be designed to produce energy continually. The DEMO adds one extra step lacking in the ITER. When fusion takes place, an extra neutron is formed, which quickly escapes from the chamber. However, it is possible to surround the chamber with a special coating, called the blanket, specifically designed to absorb the energy of this neutron. The blanket then heats up. Pipes inside the blanket carry water, which then boils. This steam is sent against the blades to a turbine that generates e-.
Sonoluminescence: Uses the sudden collapse of bubbles to unleash blistering temperatures. It is sometimes called sonic fusion or bubble fusion.
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Cosmos
Venus is a twin of the Earth, but a runaway greenhouse effect has created a hellhole: temperatures soar to 900F, its CO2 atmosphere is 100x denser than ours and it rains sulfuric acid.
The polar regions of Mars are made of frozen CO2, which disappears during the summer months, and ice, which makes up the permanent part of the ice caps.
Even if they exercise daily in space, your muscles atrophy, your bones lose Ca, and your cardiovascular systems begin to weaken. One solution is to spin the spacecraft, which creates artificial gravity inside the ship.
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Misc Quotes
Cave Man Principle: whenever there is a conflict between modern technology and the desires of our primitive ancestors, these primitive desires win each time.
“Out of the cacophony of debate emerges wisdom.”
“To the Ancients, the forces of nature were an eternal mystery to be feared and worshipped, so they created the gods of mythology to make sense of the world around them.”
“Simply trying to prop up obsolete businesses and overpaid jobs creates complacency, waste, and inefficiency. Subsidizing failing industries only prolongs the inevitable, delays the pain of collapse, and actually makes things worse.”
“The jobs that will survive in the future are, in the main, those that robots cannot perform.”
“We judge other humans by their ability to predict evolving situations and formulate concrete strategies. An important part of leadership is to anticipate future situations, weigh possible outcomes, and set concrete goals accordingly.”
“Sunlight easily passes through carbon dioxide. But as sunlight heats up the earth, it creates IR, which does not pass back through carbon dioxide so easily. The energy from sunlight cannot escape back into space and is trapped.”
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Chronology
1990-2003: The human genome Project led by Francis Collins; it is like a dictionary without definitions. Each of the genes of the human body is spelled out explicitly in this dictionary, but what each does is still largely a mystery. Each gene codes for a certain protein, but it is not known how most of these proteins function in the body.-Physics of the Future by Kaku.
1970s: The scientific world was stunned when Michael Rose of UC-Irvine accounted that he was able to increase the lifespan of fruit flies by 70% by selective breeding. His “superflies,” or Methuselah flies, were found to have higher quantities of the antioxidant superoxide dismutase (SOD), which can slow down the damage cause by free radicals.-Physics of the Future by Kaku.
1960’s: Virtual reality is first introduced by the military as a way of training pilots and soldiers using simulations.-Physics of the Future by Kaku.
1959-1990: Lee Kuan Yew is Prime Minister of Singapore; he and his party began a systematic process of revolutionizing the entire nation, stressing science and education and concentrating on the high—tech industries. Within just a few decades, Singapore created a large pool of highly educated technicians, which made it possible for the country to become one of the leading exporters of electronics, chemicals, and biomedical equipment. To enforce social order, they imposed draconian laws, outlawing everything from spitting on the street to drug dealing.-Physics of the Future by Kaku.
1956: The Sonogram (based on an instrument used to detect industrial flaws in ships) is invented by Obstetrician Ian Donald and Engineer Tom Brown and used in Glasgow Hospitals.
Although doctors innocently introduced the sonogram to help with pregnancies, this has led to a massive epidemic of abortion of female fetuses, especially in the countryside's of China and India.-Physics of the Future by Kaku.
1911: Researchers learn that Hg, when cooled to 4 degrees Kelvin, loses all electrical resistance.
1405: The Yongle emperor of China ordered a massive naval armada, the largest the world had ever seen, to explore the world.-Physics of the Future by Michio Kaku.
10 Ka: Domestication of Canis Lupis, the Grey Wolf; of which all modern dog breeds originally descended.
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