[MUSIC PLAYING] TAYLOR WILSON: All right. Take a seat. All right. Welcome, everybody. I'm Taylor Wilson. For those of you
who know who I am, I'm a nuclear physicist
in my day job. I built a nuclear
reactor when I was 14. I think that's one
of the many things that we share in common
our interests in things of that nature when
we were really young. So I'm excited to be here
today to interview Dr. Kaku about physics and the future. So I guess with that
we'll get started. I will say that when we
finish our talking up here, we're going to take
questions from the audience. So if you want to start thinking
about some questions that you have for Dr. Kaku about the
future of humanity or physics, we're happy to try to
give you an answer. So with that, thank you for
joining us this morning. MICHIO KAKU: My pleasure. TAYLOR WILSON: Yes. I wanted to start with something
that's been in the news the last couple of weeks
and I'm sure a lot of people are really interested in. And that's that picture of
a black hole that was taken by the Event Horizon telescope. Maybe you could
talk a little bit about how you feel
seeing that image and what that tells us about
the physics of the universe. MICHIO KAKU: Well, when I was
a grad student at Berkeley, black holes were
considered science fiction. It was considered like
finding a unicorn. It's a fabled animal. Everyone talks about unicorns. But no one's ever seen one
because they don't exist. Now we've got it in the bag. We've actually photographed
the silhouette, the shadow of a black hole. But that's just the beginning. You see, this black hole is
spinning, spinning rapidly. We've clocked black holes at
about a million miles an hour. And if you look at
Einstein's equations and have a spinning black hole,
they don't collapse to a dot. They collapse to a ring,
a ring of neutrons. So it's that centrifugal force
prevents it from collapsing. It's stable. If you were to fall through
the north pole of the ring, you wind up, mathematically,
on a parallel universe. And if you go a second
time, you wind up on another parallel universe. And you keep on going
through the ring. It's like going through
an apartment building, hitting the elevator, each
floor being another universe. And we want to
know is that real, or is it just a mathematical
fiction, a unicorn, in other words, a
wormhole at the center of a spinning black hole. And that's what we want to
do with the next generation of radio telescope technology. TAYLOR WILSON: OK. That's fascinating. So this idea that black holes,
40, 50 years ago were something that we might have had
theoretical evidence of or even indirect
observational evidence of, but now we have
that real, first, true, direct observational evidence of. So what you're saying
is maybe what's next-- what could those other
possibilities be for objects that we have not yet seen. MICHIO KAKU: Right. In other words, a black hole
is a cosmic roach motel. Everything checks in,
nothing checks out. But then the question
is, where does it go? Where does all that stuff go
if it falls into a black hole? Some theorists have
stated that maybe it's blown out the other
end as a white hole. So maybe there's a white hole on
the other side of a black hole such that it spews out matter. TAYLOR WILSON: Yeah. MICHIO KAKU: Now doesn't
that sound like the big bang? Some people even think
that maybe our universe is a white hole and
that we are connected with an umbilical cord
to another universe. TAYLOR WILSON: Fascinating. MICHIO KAKU: This is
the multiverse idea which is now gaining
a tremendous amount of theoretical credibility. Though, of course, we have not
yet proven this theory at all. TAYLOR WILSON: Well,
that's a good segue, talking about multiverses
and into something that you're quite familiar
with, string theory. So maybe you want
to tell everyone kind of your background and
how you ended up in physics. You're from this area
originally, correct? MICHIO KAKU: That's right. I'm a local kid. I was born in San Jose. I grew up in Palo
Alto, went to school, up to high school in Palo Alto. But when I was eight
years old, when I was eight years old
something happened which changed my whole destiny. And that is in the
newspapers they announced that a great
scientist had just died. And they put a picture of
his desk on the front page. And the caption said this
is the unfinished manuscript from the greatest
scientist of our time. And I thought to myself,
why couldn't he finish it? What's so hard that a
great scientist could not finish this theory? It's a homework problem, right? Why didn't he ask his mother? What could be so hard? So I went to the library. I found that this man's
name was Albert Einstein. And that book, that
book on the desk was the unfinished
theory of everything. He wanted an equation
one inch long that would allow him to
quote, "read the mind of God." So I said to myself, wow. That's for me. TAYLOR WILSON: Yeah. MICHIO KAKU: That's
what I want to work on. I want to help finish this great
theory that Einstein could not finish. Well, today, we
think we have it. It's called string theory. It has not yet been tested. But we think that this
could be the final unicorn, the final theory of everything. So that every
neutron, every proton, every electron is nothing
but tiny vibrations on a tiny string. This is an electron. That's a quark. This is a neutrino. Nothing but musical
notes on a string. Physics, therefore,
is the harmonies you can write on a string. Chemistry is the melodies you
can play on vibrating strings. The universe is a
symphony of strings. And then the mind of
God, the mind of God that Einstein wrote about for
the last 30 years of his life, the mind of God is cosmic
music resonating through 11 dimensional hyperspace. TAYLOR WILSON: Amazing. MICHIO KAKU: That
is the mind of God. TAYLOR WILSON: So this idea,
this grand unified theory that's based on
string theory, is something you've spent your
entire career working on? MICHIO KAKU: That's right. We want that equation
one inch long. Now for strings, not membranes,
but just for strings, we have that equation. TAYLOR WILSON: Yes. MICHIO KAKU: That's my equation. I'm the co-founder of
string field theory, which allows you to summarize
this vast body of knowledge into an equation one inch long. But today we have
membranes, M-theory, which makes things more complicated. So it's unfinished. So if one of you in the
audience ever figures out the final theory, be
sure to tell me first. [LAUGHTER] We'll split the
Nobel Prize together. [LAUGHTER] TAYLOR WILSON: Now that's
not a bad deal for you. That's really interesting. So this is the idea of taking
the physics [INAUDIBLE] large, like, the laws
that govern gravitation and the like, and unifying
it with the theories that govern the very small
and the very hot, the quantum rules
of the universe. So your idea is
that the best way to solve this problem is
through string theory? MICHIO KAKU: That's right. Nature has a left
hand and a right hand. The left hand, as you said, is
the theory of the very big-- black holes, the big bang,
Einstein's theory of gravity. But the other hand of God
is the quantum theory, the theory of the very small. So why should we have
two hands that don't coordinate with each other. And that's why we do believe
that there is a final theory. TAYLOR WILSON: Yes. MICHIO KAKU: And we're
going to test it. The Large Hadron Collider has
given us the Higgs Boson, given us the so-called God particle. But now, we're going to build
a successor to the Large Hadron Collider. The Japanese, with the
International Linear Collider, the Chinese with the
Circular Collider, and the European Union-- three ventures have been
proposed for the successor of the Large Hadron Collider. But unfortunately, not
from the United States. We're left in the
dust once again. TAYLOR WILSON: Yeah. But that's the
way to really test the theory is to build
a very large collider, collide the particles,
and see what comes out. MICHIO KAKU: Our super collider
was canceled in the 1990s to be built outside
Dallas, Texas. One reason why it was canceled
is because a congressman asked a physicist on the last
days of hearing quote, "Will we find God
with your machine? If so, I will change my vote." Well, the physicists
didn't know what to say. $10 billion to find God-- so he said, we're going
to find the Higgs boson. Well, all the jaws hit the floor
in the United States Congress. $10 billion for another
goddamn subatomic particle. They took the vote,
and it was canceled. Since then we physicists
had to ask ourselves, how would we answer
that question? TAYLOR WILSON: Yes. MICHIO KAKU: The
next time someone asks us will we find
God with your machine, how will we answer it? TAYLOR WILSON: Mm-hmm. MICHIO KAKU: I would have
answered it differently. I would have said God, by
whatever signs or symbols you ascribe to the deity, this
machine, the Super Collider will take us as close as
humanly possible to his greatest creation, genesis. This is a genesis machine. It will recreate, on a small
scale, the most incredible event in the history of
the universe, its birth. Unfortunately, we
said Higgs boson. [LAUGHTER] TAYLOR WILSON: Not as exciting. MICHIO KAKU: Wrong answer. TAYLOR WILSON: Wrong answer. And you have a little personal
experience with colliders. Maybe you want to talk a
little bit about what you built when you were in high school? MICHIO KAKU: Yeah. Well, just like you, when I
was a junior in Cubberley High School, which is just
about two miles from here, I decided to build a particle
accelerator, an atom smasher, in my mom's garage. So I went to my mom,
and I said, mom, can I have permission
to build a 2.3 million electron volt betatron electron
accelerator in the garage? And she kind of looked
at me and said, sure. TAYLOR WILSON: Yeah. MICHIO KAKU: Why not? And don't forget to
take out the garbage. TAYLOR WILSON: Yeah. MICHIO KAKU: So I
went to Westinghouse. I got 400 pounds of
transformer steel. I went to Varian, got
22 miles of copper wire. And on the football
field over Christmas, we [INAUDIBLE] 22
miles of copper wire. TAYLOR WILSON: Wow. MICHIO KAKU: It
finally was finished. It consumed six
kilowatts of power. I would plug it in,
I closed my ears. TAYLOR WILSON: Yeah. MICHIO KAKU: And I heard
this crackling sound as all this energy surged
in the capacitor bank. And then I heard this
pop, pop, pop sound as I blew out all the
fuses in my mom's house. TAYLOR WILSON: Yeah. MICHIO KAKU: The whole house
would be plunged in darkness. And my poor mom, she must have
said to herself, why couldn't I have a son who plays basketball? Maybe if I buy him a football? And for God's sake,
why can't he find a nice Japanese girlfriend? Why does he build these
machines in the garage? TAYLOR WILSON: I think our
parents would get along. I think they have similar
opinions about these things. So that's really exciting. So that was something
you did in high school. And then you went on to college
to study theoretical physics and develop string theory. And now I guess you spend
a lot of time thinking about the future and what all
this science and technology means for our species
and our evolution. That leads me into
kind of a segue away from basic
theoretical physics, which is the topic of the brain. It's something I
think a lot of people are interested in, knowing what
is the nature of consciousness, and this thing inside our
head that controls our lives. But it's something we know
very little about today. I know you've
spent a lot of time thinking and writing about the
brain and human consciousness. I was recently in
China with what China calls the father
of quantum Pan Jianwei. And he was talking about this
idea of quantum consciousness or the quantum mechanics
that underlie consciousness. So I give you that
question, for your thoughts. What are kind of the quantum
mechanical possibilities that underlie the functioning
of the brain and consciousness? MICHIO KAKU: Well, the
two greatest mysteries in all of science, in all
of science, the two greatest mysteries are one, what
happened before creation? Why did we have a big bang? What banged? Are there other
universes, a multiverse, before the Big Bang? That's outer space. Then the second
mystery is inner space. TAYLOR WILSON: Yes. MICHIO KAKU: What goes
on behind your eyeballs? We have 100 billion neurons in
your brain, as many as stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Each neuron is connected
to 10,000 other neurons. And so what is the brain? We made a mistake 50 years ago. And we're still paying
the price for it today. 50 years ago, we
made a huge mistake. We thought the brain was a
computer, a digital computer. But you see, the brain
has no operating system. It has no programming. It has no windows. It has no CPU. It has no Pentium chip. It has no subroutines. The brain doesn't have
anything resembling the brain except neural activity. 50 years later, after
this wild goose chase, we now understand that the
brain is a pattern seeking neural network, a
learning machine, and it learns and rewires every
time it learns something new. For example, your laptop
today is just as stupid as it was yesterday. Your laptop never
learns anything, except now we have
deep learning. But our brain constantly
rewires itself. And that process can be
recreated with MRI machines. With physics, we can look at
the blood flow in the brain now and actually see thoughts
as they move in the brain-- amazing. We can actually test
Freudian theory. We can actually test
old wives tales. For example, there's
an old wives tale that everyone believes but
no one could prove until now. That when a man talks
to a pretty girl, he starts to act stupid. TAYLOR WILSON: Hm. [LAUGHTER] MICHIO KAKU: Now
everyone believes it. TAYLOR WILSON: Yes. MICHIO KAKU: But
we now know why. When a man talks
to a pretty girl, blood drains from the
prefrontal cortex, and they start to act
mentally retarded. Absolutely truem we can
quantify this effect now. TAYLOR WILSON: Yes. MICHIO KAKU: We can
actually measure this dropping of blood in
the prefrontal cortex because of MRI machines. We can now extract images. Images can be extracted from
the living brain with an MRI machine. Meaning that art, design
will be revolutionized. Artists of the future
will simply think, think of a conception, and we'll
print it out on a 3D printer. Designers of
buildings, architects, will dream of their
creation, and a 3D printer will then print it out. And when you go to
sleep, the MRI machine keeps on plugging away and
will print out your dream. In the future, when you
wake up in the morning, you may push a button and see
the videotape of the dream you had the previous night. Just don't tell your
wife or husband. [LAUGHTER] MICHIO KAKU: So
these are things that were considered science
fiction, but now we can put these on the internet. The future of the
internet is brain net. Instead of sending
digital signals, we'll send emotions, memories,
feelings on the internet. The first memories were
recorded about three years ago at Wake Forest University,
also in Los Angeles. Memories from animals
can now be recorded. Next will be
memories in monkeys. We're doing that today. Next is Alzheimer's patients-- Alzheimer's patients will
push a button and memories, memories will come
flooding into their mind. And after that, who knows? Maybe we'll be able
to upload calculus or learned disciplines
inside our mind. And by the way, let me
ask you guys a question. Let me ask you guys a question. One day we may be able
to upload reality itself, just like in the
movie, "The Matrix." Right? How many of you early,
late at night, just before you go to sleep,
how many of you have ever had that weird feeling,
that strange feeling that maybe life is an illusion? Maybe everything has been
uploaded into your mind. Maybe you're the only real
thing and life is an illusion. Raise your hand. Raise your hand if you've
ever had that feeling. Oh, my God. You're all crazy. We have so many crazy
people in this audience. How can you be the only
person in the world when I'm the only
person in the world? [LAUGHTER] I'm just dreaming
I'm here at Google. I'm just dreaming. I'm in New York right
now, you know that? TAYLOR WILSON: Yeah. MICHIO KAKU: I'm just about
to go to sleep in New York. I mean, come on. Give me a break. TAYLOR WILSON: But this
is this idea of humanity and our brains
interfacing with machines and that being kind of a
future step in our evolution as a species. I think that's a very
interesting topic to think about. What are the implications
of that, both positive, talking about being able to
learn things at a fast rate or download memories,
but potentially the negative
consequences of that. We can definitely see, with
digital architecture today, the problems that we face. So imagine if we're a
part of that architecture. MICHIO KAKU: Well, there's
good news and bad news. The good news is that
information will be everywhere and nowhere almost for free. The internet might be
in your contact lens. You'll simply blink,
blink and then the internet will appear
inside your contact lens and who were the first people
to buy internet contact lenses college students
taking final examinations. [CHEERING] College students will blink and
see all the answers to my exam right there in
their contact lens. This could be really helpful. Your contact lens will
recognize people's faces and tell you what
their background is and translate Chinese
into German into English. So let's say you're
at a cocktail party. And there's some very important
people at that cocktail party, but you don't know who they are. In the future, you will know
exactly who to suck up to at any cocktail party. On a blind date, if your blind
date says that he's rich, he's single, he's loaded. But your contact lens says that
no, he's three times divorced, pays child support
payments, and is a loser, it could be very useful. Now that's the good news. TAYLOR WILSON: Yeah. MICHIO KAKU: The bad
news, though, the future does have bad news. The bad news is that in the
future, we will have lawyers. TAYLOR WILSON: That's a given. MICHIO KAKU: That's because only
a human can argue to a jury. Only a human can
argue to a judge. Robots can't do that. Robots cannot understand
ethics or morals. And so yeah, to people
involved in person to person relationships, like
lawyers, professors, mentors, we will have jobs in the future. TAYLOR WILSON: Yeah. But the more monotonous tasks
will probably be going away. MICHIO KAKU: What? TAYLOR WILSON: The
more monotonous tasks will probably be going away. MICHIO KAKU: Well,
dull dirty, dangerous-- TAYLOR WILSON: Yes. MICHIO KAKU: --the three D's-- dull jobs dirty,
dangerous repetitive jobs, jobs that involve
danger, those jobs will be done by
robots in the future. TAYLOR WILSON: Well,
that's interesting. OK. We've talked a little
bit about the brain. We've talked a little bit
about artificial intelligence. I wanted to ask your
thoughts on something I think that is near and
dear to both of our hearts, which is space exploration and
where we're going beyond Earth. You've written a lot about
this subject about missions to Mars and the
planets and beyond. What are some of the
most exciting things you can imagine seeing
in our lifetimes and then maybe even beyond that? MICHIO KAKU: Well, the
fundamental problem with space travel has
been a four letter word-- cost, C-O-S-T. It cost $10,000
to put a pound of anything in orbit around the Earth. That's your weight in gold. Your weight in gold. That's how expensive space
travel is until recently. Prices are dropping
like a rock now. For example, how many
people here in this room have seen the movie "The
Martian" with Matt Damon. Raise your hand. Wow. That movie cost $100
million dollars. But the Indians sent a probe
to Mars for $70 million. going to Mars costs-- a Hollywood movie
about going to Mars costs more than
actually going to Mars. [LAUGHTER] That's how much space
travel has dropped. And when you drive a car
and you commute to work, do you junk your
car after one ride. No, cars would be expensive if
you junked it after one ride. But that's what
we do for rockets. TAYLOR WILSON: Yes. MICHIO KAKU: We junk
rockets after just one use. We junk them. All that's changing
with reusable rockets, with Silicon Valley
billionaires now fulfilling their
dream of creating fantastic devices in space. We're entering the second
golden era of space exploration. I wouldn't be surprised
if some of your grandkids honeymoon on the moon. I think the moon is
only three days away. TAYLOR WILSON: Yes. A short trip. MICHIO KAKU: As
costs go down, yeah, I think our grandkids may
honeymoon on the moon. It's a great weekend location. Not great scenery, but well,
if you like craters and dust. TAYLOR WILSON: That's great. And we were talking backstage,
one of the interesting things that come out of a grand
unified theory in string theory is the explanation of
what happens at these very extreme conditions
where you have incredible amounts of energy,
incredible amounts of heat in a limited space. And we were talking
about could this be a way to travel
vast distances that we can't travel today. Maybe you could speak
a little bit to that. MICHIO KAKU: Well, many
people want to know, like in "Star Trek", can
you break the light barrier? Can you go faster than
the speed of light? Well, it was Einstein
himself in 1935 that opened the door
to faster than light travel when he
introduced the wormhole. That was the first paper
written about wormholes. The first book about wormholes
was written in the 1800s by Charles Dodgson,
Oxford mathematician who wrote a children's book,
"Alice in Wonderland." Now this Oxford
mathematician could not write under his name,
Charles Dodgson. It was a children's book. So he wrote under a pen
name, Lewis Carroll. But the looking glass
is the wormhole. You put your hand through
the looking glass, and you wind up on a
different space and time. So we think that, yes, that
would be a way to go faster than the speed of light. Now, what's the catch? There's always a
catch some place. First of all, the energy
necessary to punch a hole in space and time
is that of a black hole. You're talking about
fantastic amounts of energy. Second, you have
to stabilize it. That means negative energy. Positive energy to open
the gateway, and then negative energy to prevent
it from collapsing, in other words, stability. And this has not
yet been worked out. It would take a very advanced
civilization to do this. Now I'm on radio and I
broadcast every week. And some people call
me on the telephone. And they say professor,
you're wrong. You're totally wrong. The aliens aren't there in
outer space with warp drive. The aliens are
here on the Earth. And then I ask them,
how do you know? And they say, well,
they've been kidnapped, kidnapped by flying saucers. They know that
they're out there. Well I have a word of advice. The next time you are kidnapped
by a flying saucer, for God's sake, steal something. [LAUGHTER] There's no law against stealing
from an extraterrestrial civilization-- TAYLOR WILSON:
That's true, yeah. MICHIO KAKU: --no
law whatsoever. An alien ship, an alien hammer,
an alien paperclip, anything so that you have bragging rights
about going into outer space. TAYLOR WILSON:
That's good advice. It's good advice. All right. I guess we can start
opening it up to questions. If you want to make your way
to the mic, start to line up. We'll try to do our best to
answer the questions that you have. So over here, you
were the first. AUDIENCE: Hi. Dr. Kaku, thank you so
much for coming out. I'm really inspired. I wanted to hear some of your
thoughts on ethical development and how we might be able to
help machines uphold ethics in our society. MICHIO KAKU: What
was that again? TAYLOR WILSON: Ethics and how we
help machines uphold the ethics that we as a society hold. Is that correct? MICHIO KAKU: Well,
several things-- first of all, we
have to make sure that this technology is used by
the largest numbers of people. But you see when technology
first becomes available, it's always for the rich. When the telephone first
came out over 100 years ago, who had personal telephones? It was rich people. But eventually, we have things
like Moore's law, computer power doubling every 18 months. And so with time, the cost
of telephone goes down. We once thought there was going
to be a digital divide when rich people would have laptops,
poor people would have nothing. But now we know
that most children are the first to be wired up. Because if a child is
not on the internet, they don't exist
on the internet. But there's also
another ethical problem for the next coming decades. Some people wonder, when robots
become smarter and smarter, are they going to have
a civil rights movement? Maybe-- because in
the future, robots may be programmed to feel pain. Today, we feel pain
because it's good for us. Otherwise, we lose our fingers,
our fingers get burned, cut up. Pain is good, because
it prevents us from destroying ourselves. Eventually, robots
may have to feel pain. Otherwise, we will tell
them to jump off a cliff, and they'll destroy themselves. They have to feel pain. At that point, it
has to be regulated. So we may have a robots
civil rights movement to limit the amount of
pain that a master can impose upon their robot. Now that of course is
many, many decades away. But eventually,
robots may also be part of our ethical
understanding of technology when they feel pain. TAYLOR WILSON: Interesting. All right over here. MICHIO KAKU: Dr. Kaku, one
of my earliest memories is of watching the
Discovery Channel and seeing you on there. Thank you for the
role that you played in shaping that part of my
early childhood experience. MICHIO KAKU: Thank you. AUDIENCE: And related
to that, I wanted to hear what you are
excited about when it comes to expanding the scale and
accessibility of science communication into the future. MICHIO KAKU: Well, it used to be
that mass media would stay away from science because, quote,
"Science doesn't sell." so back in those days we
only had three networks and science was invisible
for the most part. And most people, when they
learned about science, they learned about
science in school. But there's a problem there. First of all, we're
all born scientists. When we're born, we want
to know why the sun shines. We better know
where we came from. But then we hit
the greatest killer of scientists known to science. The greatest destroyer of
scientists known to science is junior high school. When we hit junior high
school, it's all over. We lose scientists by the
hundreds of thousands. Why? Because science is made boring. It's made repetitive. You have to learn to
name things rather than learning the great principles,
the great concepts of science. And that's why more recently
we have the internet, we have cable, which brings
science to an audience. Now it turns out that about
a million people subscribe to "Scientific American". That's the hard core. These people will
seek out science even when there's no science, about
a million people, the hardcore. But then there's another
5 to 10 million people who will tune in
sometimes to Discovery, Science Channel,
National Geographic, if there's something really
interesting happening. So we know that we can
reach 5 to 10 million people on a good program. And then with the discovery
of the black hole, we can reach 100 million
people when we reach resonance, we resonate with the
people of the world. So we need more people
to write books, more people to be on television,
to do radio shows. We need more people like
that, rather than less people, to become role models for a
new scientific revolution. [APPLAUSE] TAYLOR WILSON: Definitely,
that's great advice. All right. Up here? AUDIENCE: Thanks sir. Thanks for coming out today. I was wondering your thoughts on
NASA's recently announced plan to return to the moon in 2024. Do you think it's feasible? MICHIO KAKU: First
of all, I think we're going to have a traffic
jam around the moon very soon. First, NASA has the
SLS booster rocket. Next year, we'll
orbit around the moon. Then we have Elon Musk of
SpaceX who's selling tickets-- tickets to the general public. He's been sold out. A Japanese billionaire
bought out the entire tickets for the Falcon Heavy
rocket that is also fully capable of
going around the moon. And then we have Jeff Bezos of
Amazon, formerly the richest man in the world. He has a whole spaceport,
the Blue Origins rocket program to go to the moon with
the Neil Armstrong rocket. And then we have the Chinese. The Chinese have
announced that they're going to plant the
Chinese flag on the moon. So I think we're going to
have a traffic jam with three American rockets, one Chinese,
and perhaps one European rocket fully committed to
go back to the moon. And the question is, why? Because costs have
been dropping. Technology is catching up. You realize that
your cell phone-- your cell phone has more
computer power than all of NASA in 1969 when we put
two men on the moon. That's right. Your cell phone today
has more computer power than all of NASA. In fact, I think
it's criminal what they were doing in 1969,
criminal sending humans into space backed up
by one cell phone. Would you go into outer space
knowing that your rocket is backed up by one cell phone? That's what we did in 1969. I think it's criminal. So I think that we're
going to witness a second golden era
of space exploration as costs begin to drop,
not $10,000 a pound, not even $1,000 a
pound, but eventually, a few hundred dollars per pound. That's the goal. TAYLOR WILSON: Oh. That's great. [APPLAUSE] All right. Over here? AUDIENCE: It's an honor to
be here with you, Dr. Kaku. I have a question, a simple one. Do you believe humans will
reach a Type 1 civilization? MICHIO KAKU: OK. A type-- I'm a physicist. We rank civilizations by two
things, energy and information. That's how we rank anything,
energy, information. Energy of a planet
eventually reaches Type 1. So that Earth becomes
planetary, we, for example, can control the weather. We can mine the oceans. Type 2 is stellar,
where you then begin to consume the power
of a star, like "Star Trek." "Star Trek" would be
a Type 2 civilization where they've colonized
a few solar systems, but not much more. Type 3 is galactic, a galactic
civilization like "Star Wars", where you can roam the
galactic space lane. Now what are we? Are we Type 1 that can mine the
ocean, play with the weather? Are we Type 2 that
play with stars? Are we Type 3 that
play with black holes? No, we're Type 0. We don't even rate
on this scale. We get our energy from
dead plants, oil and coal. So we have all the savagery
of a Type 0 civilization-- sectarianism, religious
hatred, racism, all the garbage from the past. But by the year 2100,
in 100 years' time, we will become Type 1. And that gives us
room for hope that we will be a planetary
civilization by 2100. For example, what
language will they speak? Already the two
languages on the internet are English and
Mandarin Chinese. Look at the internet. What is the internet? The internet is the
first Type 1 technology to arrive in this century. That's what the internet
is-- the first Type 1 technology to arrive. That we have the European
Union, Type 1 economy. We have the beginning of a Type
I sports, Olympics, soccer. We have the beginning
of a Type 1 music, rock and roll, rap music, yuck. We have the beginning
of a Type 1 culture. But it's not
guaranteed that we will make the transition to Type 1. Because we still have all the
savagery, all the backwardness, of our ancient past. By the way, I once spoke in
London at the planetarium. And a little boy comes up to me. The little boy says,
Professor, you're wrong. You're wrong. There's Type 4. And so I told him, look, kid. Look, kid. There are planets,
stars, and galaxies. That's it, folks. Planets, stars, and galaxies. Therefore, we have
Type 1, Type 2, Type 3. And he said, Professor,
you're wrong. There's Type 4. I said what energy
is beyond galactic? And he said the continuum. Now who here is a Trekkie who
understands what I just said? What is the only
Type 4 civilization on network television? The Q-- if you
did not understand what just transpired,
get with the program. The Q is extragalactic. And what is that energy-- dark energy. Dark energy is beyond galactic. That is the energy of a Type 4. TAYLOR WILSON: Hm. Interesting. All right. We'll take one more
question over here. AUDIENCE: First off,
thank you for being here. Second, thank you
for being somebody else who had a question
about the Kardashev Scale. So I had to kind of think
of something new that's still in kind of the same vein. So my question
would be how long do you think it will be before
we actually really begin to register on the scale? And what can each
of us as individuals do to kind of do
our part in society to push it that way before
we destroy ourselves as a civilization? MICHIO KAKU: Well,
on this question I actually differ with
many other scientists. Most scientists would say that
technology has no direction, no moral direction. Science is a sword,
a double-edged sword. One side can cut against
disease, ignorance, poverty. The other side can
cut against people. I disagree. I think technology does
have a moral direction. Because the internet
spreads information. Information gives
you empowerment. Empowerment gives you democracy. And democracies do not war
with other democracies. Let's do a science experiment. Write down every single war
you had to memorize as a child since you were in grade
school, every single war. Every war has been fought
between kings, emperors, queens, dictators, but never
between two major democracies. And so I think we are entering
a new moral dimension where technology is changing
the way humans interact with other
humans so that we don't tolerate dictatorships so much. When I was young, in
our history class, we learned something
called dictator for life. You had Russia. You had the United States. If you were a pawn of
Russia or a pawn of America, you were there forever. The only way to take you out
of power is through a coffin. Dictator for life--
today, we laugh at that. I mean, dictators for life-- I mean, come on, right? We have the internet. We have empowerment. We have knowledge. And so dictators are
endangered species now. So I think that technology
does have a moral direction. I think it is liberating,
it is empowering, and it is changing
world history. A new chapter in
world history is being written as
individuals make their mark on human history. TAYLOR WILSON: All right. Well, thank you all. [APPLAUSE] That was great. Thank you all for joining us. It was a lot of fun to get
to talk to you about physics and the universe. And I think this is a
great audience for that because you're all
involved in technology. You're all involved in that
pursuit of taking us forward as a civilization. So I hope this inspired
some interesting questions and ideas. And hopefully,
you helped take us towards that Type 1 civilization
that we so desperately need. So thank you so much, Dr. Kaku. MICHIO KAKU: Thank you. [MUSIC PLAYING]
