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Michio Kaku On Advanced Civilizations

Michio Kaku explaining his theories.

  • imtheone
  • posted by imtheone
  • Date 10/7/2009 8:43:07 AM
  • Views: 4271
  • All Ages
  • All Ages

Tags Tags: physics

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15 Comments

Current View: 15 / Show all Comments

alifeva1 : LVL 33: VP 4.2: said:

alifeva1

-7 votes NegativePositive

48 days ago...

kewls

Uzo : LVL 41: VP 4.9: said:

Uzo

25 votes NegativePositive

47 days 23 hours ago...

Good talk. Most scientists are not nearly so interesting. You can see that this guy is first and foremost a teacher.

And I bet he gets his kids vaccinated too. To whom I am speaking; you know who you are!!

LeighCedar : LVL 40: VP 4.8: said:

LeighCedar

11 votes NegativePositive

47 days 20 hours ago...

Love listening to this guy.

I hope certain other posters were paying attention.

fatninja : LVL 39: VP 4.7: said:

fatninja

-6 votes NegativePositive

47 days 19 hours ago...

He seems to be a great physicist but according to ratemyprofessors.com his students don`t like his teaching much.

koryo : LVL 36: VP 4.4: said:

koryo

2 votes NegativePositive

47 days 18 hours ago...

Love this guy

exploder : LVL 50: VP 5: said:

exploder

-6 votes NegativePositive

47 days 18 hours ago...

Very interesting. His ant analogy is a little thin though. We surely hope we have millions more years to learn and evolve, but we have already transcended our own biological sensory systems and developed a fairly sophisticated perspective on the universe (unlike ants). I don`t think we could stand beside a physical highway and not at least know that something big is happening. I also think that we will eventually (soonish) be of technological merit for contact. Unless the vast history of everyone else is paranoid of new company.

And unless of course it`s some multidimensional kind of thing, at which point who the hell knows? That would mean we would be blinded by our own kind of karple-tunnel-vision. I am inclined to think that if that`s the case, then as humans we are as good as alone in this dimension and physical place, given that this space is our practical physical limit and home. Those extra-dimensional guests are just such a total bore at a party, I don`t even know why we keep inviting them over.

Finally, there is the real possibility that space is really just as vast as it looks, and can`t be transcended by anyone by any means. That is the current best evidence we have, and it`s not like we are complete fools about these things, even if we are primitive. What if this dimensional existence is basically all that there is, and you can`t practically travel / communicate faster than light? Then contact will be virtually non-existent. Maybe we will some day, but maybe it will just have to be done the hard way, by searching the whole sky in broadband for millions of years, for some incredibly faint scrambled signal, and then going there very slowly in person somehow. Not very romantic I know, but quite likely.

In any case I think there`s plenty of work for us just coming to grips with ourselves first. We are probably headed for the Grand Darwin Award right now, in about every contest at the event, and we don`t seem to be very capable of coordinating any cogent response to that fact at this point in our civilized(?) infancy.

nerdicus : LVL 35: VP 4.3: said:

nerdicus

17 votes NegativePositive

47 days 9 hours ago...

Exploder, you make some rather large subjective leaps there. Firstly, the ant anology is bang on. We could literally be living in an intergalactic multi dimensional free way that works using technology that is not only beyond our ability to see or sense given it`s make up, but it could also be beyond our ability to even comprehend given our current state of understading of how things work.

Now, I`m not saying it is this way, but it is a very apt analogy about the scale of civilization and scientific understanding. Imagine how much less we could find 100 years ago. Imagine how much ore we will be able to find a hundred years in the future.


I have long felt that science should try to look at things like this guy suggests we should. That we should not assume that all things fit into the narrow confines of our thin grasp on reality. We are forever going to be learning new things, and with every discovery we will learn that there was more we did not know then we knew even existed.

MetalHeart : LVL 1: VP 1: said:

MetalHeart

2 votes NegativePositive

47 days 9 hours ago...

What we know is so little compared to what is out there. We can open our minds, but as said our technology is primitive. There is only so much we can learn and discover as technology itself, however "advanced" it may seem. Has become our barrier.

watchingu : LVL 39: VP 4.7: said:

watchingu

2 votes NegativePositive

47 days 8 hours ago...

@Exploder... The only thing you said that I have issue with:
`and you can`t practically travel / communicate faster than light`

I forget the details and the name of the experiment... but has something to do with 2 electrons (or particles or something) with identical spins are at a distance... they change the spin on one and the other instantly chances it`s spin... that`s communication faster than the speed of light... pretty sure this experiment was some fundamental part of quantum theory... FUCK, wish I could remember the details and name.... AAARRRGGG

well this link came up on a simple google search... might not be the exact experiment I was thinking but it`s the same idea:
http://kottke.org/08/08/fasterthanlight-communication


exploder : LVL 50: VP 5: said:

exploder

-1 votes NegativePositive

47 days 8 hours ago...

^ watchingu, you`re talking about quantum entanglement. Read Orson Scott Card, Starting with Ender`s Game, then keep going with Speaker for the Dead and sequels. They use a technology for doing that in those books, but it takes physically transporting an entangled receiver / transmitter unit to the destination at normal speeds.

Back in the real world, we are struggling to keep entanglement working for significant lengths of time. The individual particles just happen to be so sensitive that they get disturbed beyond what entanglement can endure. Almost any tiny disturbance will screw it up, and the prospects don`t look to good for major long distance entanglement.

Entanglement is how quantum computers work too, the bits are entangled particles. The frailty of the system is the big problem though, they can`t keep the particles from getting disturbed long enough to get very much done, and even a few bits is turning out to be a massive headache.

Milkman555 : LVL 34: VP 4.2: said:

Milkman555

-2 votes NegativePositive

47 days 8 hours ago...

Just wanted to take a moment and point anyone who found this interesting to check out http://www.whatthebleep.com/

Enjoy !

exploder : LVL 50: VP 5: said:

exploder

-2 votes NegativePositive

47 days 7 hours ago...

^ Nerdicus

It seems as though some things actually have a definite scale that is not repeated ad infinitum as per the flea on the flea on the flea. No, there is a dog, it gets a flea, the flea can have a virus, the virus is made of complex molecules, they are made out of atoms, atoms are made out of very small stuff, etc.. And going the other way, up in scale, things are obviously definite too. Even if our universe is some kind of analog to a part of a particle in a flea on the back of the cosmic dog standing on an alien highway, it is very likely to be forever irrelevant and impenetrable to us.

With that said, we have a good preliminary grasp of the shit happening at our local scale, from below atoms to way beyond galaxies. If there`s a highway next door in this dimension, then our limitation is not being able to see that something is happening, because our eyes aren`t good enough. And there are many possible practical limitations to EVER being able to see well enough. We can`t even see all the outer planetoids in our own solar system very well yet.

But the point is that whether we can see or not, we CAN UNDERSTAND. Which the ant cannot. We will at least recognize that phenomena are there if we can detect them at all, and we will start trying to figure them out. The ant can see and feel the highway, but will never be able to ask. If we can catch sight of the highway, we will be the glorious curious monkeys we are.

On this scale, within these dimensions, we have a good general idea of what`s going on. We need better sensors, and we will surely find some big surprises. But we won`t be like the ants on the road, never able to figure out that something big just went quickly by. Even if we can never figure out what it was.

As for the whole multidimensional stuff, who knows? It could just as easily turn out to be an impenetrable barrier for our physical reality, and we might never know anything other than that something else exists.

shocx : LVL 34: VP 4.2: said:

shocx

2 votes NegativePositive

47 days 7 hours ago...

i love when this guy goes on opie and anthony, he explains things to them like they`re children.

fanoodle : LVL 1: VP 1: said:

fanoodle

4 votes NegativePositive

47 days 6 hours ago...

I like his theories opens up some ideas and way of thinking

Tyvalius : LVL 31: VP 4: said:

Tyvalius

1 votes NegativePositive

47 days 4 hours ago...

I think the time frame at which ours and any civilization advances is slightly off. If you take in scale the advancements we have made since Stone Age through now we will see approx 90% of our advancements have come out of the Industrial and Information ages (less then 200 years). If we use this same scale to predict the advancement up to and including Faster then light travel we are looking at merely a few centuries. Michio Kaku is a amazingly brilliant mind and I don`t think anyone here is arguing this point but we need to really use a small percentage of logic in looking at other possible "civilizations". Logic and Mathematics will be the sole form of communication we have with them if we do see or find them. It begs to be used in the reality or realization that they too advanced in some way similar and we cannot let the notion that Stages 1-3 are millions of years more advanced then the others. How can the multi-verse theory have any credence or the big bang for that matter if things on our scale did not all come into being a fairly similar rates times and ways. Using this logic would help us in understanding we can`t be that much different then being 2 billion light years away.

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