Michio Kaku on The God Equation | Closer To Truth Chats

why is a theory of everything the holy grail of physics what is everything i am robert lawrence kuhn host of closer to truth recently i had an in-depth conversation with michio kaku on his new book the god equation the quest for a theory of everything we explore some of the biggest questions in physics and cosmology what happened before the big bang what lies on the other side of black holes is time travel possible are there wormholes to other universes are there higher dimensions is there a multiverse of parallel universes why is there something rather than nothing as michio surprises in store closer to truth publishes videos on cosmos consciousness and meaning every day watch them by subscribing to this youtube channel and become a member of closer to truth.com [Music] michio it's great to see you congratulations on the book the god equation the quest for a theory of everything now as you and i like to do i'm going to go through each word and and and get your your sense of it first of all on equations i certainly know what what an equation is um and god i assume we'll talk about later quest you and i are both have both been on a quest our whole life theory we know but i want to focus you on what does it mean everything when you say a theory of everything what is everything well there are four forces that govern the entire universe we find no exceptions to gravity which holds us onto the floor keeps the sun from exploding we have the electromagnetic force that lights up our cities then we have the two nuclear forces the weak and the strong forces and we want a theory of all four forces remember that all of biology can be explained by chemistry all of chemistry can be explained by physics all of physics can be explained by two great theories relativity the theory of gravity and the quantum theory which summarizes the electromagnetic force and the two nuclear forces but to bring them together that would give us a theory of everything all known physical phenomenon can be summarized by an equation perhaps no more than one inch long that will allow us to quote read the mind of god and these are the words of albert einstein who spent the last 30 years of his life chasing after this theory of everything the god equation so what are the specific areas because there's there's been a criticism that when people hear the word everything and then go through the hierarchy of the sciences which you just did very nicely starting bio biology and then the chemistry other than the physics and then the laws of physics that sounds like a very reductive approach to reality that all reality can be reduced down without emotionally tinged word uh to the primary forces whether we know them now or or or more fundamental um but that that leaves the question of are there laws at higher levels that are emergent uh indeed a kind of strong emergence where they are in principle not predictable from a lower level laws well i like to think of this quest as a chess game think of a cosmic chess game that lasted for the last 2 000 years where initially we work out the theory of pawns we begin to reduce the motions of pawns down to certain discrete rules how the how the queen moves how the king moves but that doesn't make us a grand master that doesn't make us a master of these things and strategy where is strategy in the laws of chess strategy is a byproduct of the laws of chess so what i'm saying is what we're doing what we physicists are doing is trying to find the rules of the game that doesn't mean we're going to be grand masters of strategy strategy is not within the rules of chess it's a byproduct as you pointed out and that's why emerging phenomenon that means that we will still have a job people ask me the question professor if you find this equation are you going to be unemployed will you be out of a job because you reduced everything to one equation and that's it folks no because we still have to become grand masters of the rules of chess we have to understand emerging phenomenon intelligence the soul love these are probably emerging phenomenon all i'm saying is we physicists want to get the rules of the game to continue with the analogy and all analogies of course are are limited um in chess once you know the rules and you're looking to strategy that imposes a a human mind on the process of interaction between the laws and a human mind but when we're dealing with emergent properties of of the way the world works whether level of biology or even even lower level chemistry you don't necessarily need some conscious agent to make that emergence happen well even in the rules of chess we have chess playing machines with artificial intelligence that can beat human grandmasters so there's nothing necessarily unique about human consciousness and the theory of everything i like to think of it this way i like to think of it when i was a child learning about physics that on the other side of the galaxy there's an alien out there struggling with the same equation the same rules the same understanding of the physical forces but in the different notation and then i begin to realize these things are beyond human consciousness alien consciousness throughout the galaxy will eventually discover the same equations that i'm struggling with right now with a different notation and so then i begin to realize that these laws are universal throughout the universe now shakespeare could be great we have so many great products of the human mind but they are products of the human mind an alien on the other side of the galaxy wouldn't make heads or tails of what's being done uh here on the planet earth and that's why i think this theory is universal beyond human consciousness even beyond reductionism because we're now getting the entire bottle of wax explained by one theory you've talked about some of the big questions in physics and cosmology which could uh lend themselves to greater insight once the the one-inch equation as you put it is uh is realized uh what happened before the big bang is there something on the other side of black holes time travel you've talked about wormholes to other universes higher dimensions multi multiverse of multiple universes in the same space or even parallel universes in in different dimensions uh how would a the theory of everything impact on those big questions in physics and cosmology you know the strange thing is that einstein's equations of general relativity allow for time travel they allow for gateways to other universes like a looking glass in alice's looking glass it turns out that these are solutions of einstein's equations and einstein himself had to grapple with this possibility but the question is are these realistic it turns out that the energy necessary to build a time machine is that of a black hole and are they stable once you enter the wormhole the gateway to another universe will the machine explode stephen hawking thought so but you see that's not definitive because we're only using einstein's theory which we know break down and what is called the planck energy when people talk about the laws of physics they talk about the laws of physics only up to the big bang that is the planck energy it turns out that you need a theory of the block energy to calculate whether or not a time machine is stable or whether it blows up the minute you walk into it and this is where something called string theory comes in you see string theory is the only theory that can unify all four of the fundamental forces including gravitational corrections and you can calculate whether or not the time machine is stable or unstable and the same thing with wormholes the same thing with higher dimensions all these are consistent with einstein's theory but they may break down if quantum corrections make the thing explode so stephen hawking for example finally concluded that yes gateways to to a distant part of the galaxy wormholes may be possible without quantum corrections but time machines time machines may blow up once you enter them but this is where you see the quantum theory comes in because in the quantum theory if you go back into the past and change the past the timeline splits in half so that if you go backwards in time and save abraham lincoln from being assassinated at the ford's theater you've saved somebody else's abraham lincoln your abraham lincoln didn't necessarily die because in the quantum theory the river of time can split into two rivers one river is your river in which abraham lincoln did die nothing can change that but the other river is the river where abraham lincoln survived before its theater this is the many wars theory the application of the quantum theory to time travel but that makes you committed to the multi-world interpretation of quantum mechanics and that is uh controversial to say the least that's right very controversial because it means that our universe is a bubble of some sort we live on the skin of the bubble and the bubbles expanding that's called the big bang theory of einstein but theories like string theory inflation theory says that there could be other bubbles out there other bubble universes that when universes collide two bubbles merge to form a big bubble or one bubble can fission in half this is the big bang the big bang is either the collision of universes or the splitting apart of universes and so we have a multiverse a multiverse of universes that are being born even as we speak even as we're conducting this interview universes are being born in another dimension and then of course children ask the next question if you have all these bubbles then what is the universe expanding into if the universe is everything then how can everything expand into anything else well the answer is if our universe is a bubble a three-dimensional bubble it means it's expanding into hyperspace a higher dimension that's what the universe is expanding into and who knows maybe we'll bump into another bubble one of these days yeah that would not be good news if we didn't uh look but i i think we're um talking about a multiverse but there are different kinds of multiverses that were embedded within in your discussion one is the uh the branching out of uh other bubble universes from our universe which are uh which are directly related to the theory of inflation for our universe if you're gonna have inflation to explain the problems of the big bang in our universe then by natural extension you seem to have to have these infinite universes bubbling off but that's very different from the multi-world interpretation they both yield to different multiverses in reality but they're radically different you could have nesting one within the other but the multiverse uh the multi-world interpretation of quantum mechanics is a specific so-called realistic approach to the wave function that says we it doesn't collapse it branches off and it yields uh a if not infinite virtually an infinite number of of branches in an exponentially growing fashion beyond comprehension uh you know that strange that strains my sense of credulity about reality well you see reality exists independent of our wishes independent of our will it is what it is and the bottom line is experiment you see science is based on things that are testable reproducible and falsifiable that is what we call science and of all the theories that have been proposed one theory which is does stand out and it is compatible with experiment and that is the inflation theory the theory that we had a turbocharged explosion at the beginning of time but you see that inflation theory is a quantum theory which means that given enough time there's a probability that it will happen again and again and again so once you impose the quantum theory on the explosion that created the universe you necessarily have a many world's interpretation you have no choice embedded within the quantum principle is the idea that if things can happen then perhaps it does happen someplace else in the universe the next question you're going to ask me is is elvis presley still alive in a parallel universe and the answer is well yes the king could still be alive in a parallel universes because these universes span all possible all possible universes uh are you then equating the um the scientific uh confidence that we have which is not total in inflation theory because there are different views on that too but it that is generally considered sort of the standard model of cosmology has inflation embedded within it but i don't think the multi-world interpretation of quantum theory is at that same level of uh of confidence well put it this way there is no experiment that you can devise to contradict the mini world's theory in fact there are several different interpretations of quantum mechanics the other alternate interpretation is the vigner interpretation because every every experiment has to have an observer but who's watching the observer somebody has to watch the observer but who's watching the observer watching the observer well another observer and then you have the spiral the spiral of observers watching other people observe the observers of the other universes and the whole thing requires god or a supreme being and eugene vigner the founder of this alternate theory of quantum mechanics ultimately believed in hindu mysticism now i personally would prefer to have the multiverse theory than hindu mysticism but that's where the alternate theory of quantum behavior exists if you don't believe in the manual's theory the other major belief within quantum theory is vigner's friend this infinite sequence of observers until finally you come up with infinite consciousness i would prefer to have many worlds okay michio let's now get into uh the big part of your book the god equation the quest for theory of everything in terms of understanding what this theory is and could be so let's start simply what are some of the the the the kind of structural things that you need to to see in a final theory i mean you've worked use words like simplicity and symmetry and beauty and elegance how do you organize those words they're not quite synonyms well this journey goes back 2 000 years back to the greeks who asked the question what is the world made of we had two competing theories two thousand years ago one was the theory of atoms by democracies a means cannot tom means cut ato means that which cannot be cut but there was a rival point of view by pythagoras a pythagorean theorem he noticed music the fact that liar's strings when they vibrate they vibrate at a lower frequency if you have a longer string and he went by a blacksmith shop and he realized that metals metals that are being pounded by a blacksmith vibrate at a lower frequency if the if the piece of metal is longer and he said aha that is the paradigm rich enough to explain the diversity of everything in the universe and that metaphor was music music is the metaphor because there are so many mathematical ways in which you can write octaves and thirds and fifths and harmonies and g flat and e minor music represents the paradigm for the universe well neither theory went anywhere for 2 000 years the roman empire fell apart the the world was plunged into darkness and over the centuries we finally came up with chemistry and then a theory of atoms but when now we not want to know why we have so many particles when we when we split apart all these atoms where do we make sense of all these things and this is where symmetry comes into the picture you see we physicists believe in beauty but what is beauty beauty is so ephemeral so difficult to define beauty to a physicist means symmetry it means you take a sphere or an ice crystal and you rotate it and the object remains the same and this means that your fundamental equation of particles no matter how many particles you have the equations should remain the same if you reshuffle them and so our universe is symmetrical because you're going to rotate all the particles of the entire universe and the theory remains the same and so symmetry becomes a guiding principle and that's also the principle of music music has a symmetry when we talk about octaves and we talk about thirds and fifths so we now have a new paradigm emerging and the latest version of this is called string theory now string theory says that subatomic particles like electrons and neutrinos are nothing but musical notes on a tiny tiny vibrating string so what is physics physics is the harmonies that you can write on these strings as pythagoras believed 2 000 years ago what is chemistry chemistry is the melodies you can play on this well what is life in dna life and dna would be a string quartet atcg the four nucleic acids of dna four string quartets and then what is the universe the universe is a symphony of strings and then what is the mind of god that albert einstein spent so much puzzling over the mind of god would be cosmic music resonating through hyperspace why did albert einstein fail when he was seeking this unified theory for the last multiple decades of his life well i could read his works now and i can see all the dead ends that he went into and the fundamental reason why he failed because back then in the 1920s 30s and 40s we didn't understand the nuclear force the nuclear force was the one force that eluded einstein he couldn't grapple with it he had a good understanding of gravity he had a good understanding of of relativity and of the electron magnetic force but he was clueless when he came to the strong nuclear force okay over the strong nuclear force is strings strings are the binding force that bind the quarks together and we use the same language of springs to bind the entire universe together as well so in other words einstein was ahead of his time so far ahead of his time that he didn't understand what would come out of the nuclear force and what comes out of the nuclear force is things like strings okay let's look at the the flow of humanity's intellectual quest to get to this this final theory now you you gave me basically the book ends you gave me pythagoras and and the theory of resonance and and music and vibrations and then you jump to string theory which i know you are a supporter of an and a researcher in uh in your career um a that's string theory is controversial we know that but what i want to do is go through the steps that humanity has taken from the original thought and especially as science began uh just a few centuries ago in a more serious way and so um when electricity and magnetism the faraday and their discoveries then i want to start with maxwell's equations and then very briefly go through these critical steps from maxwell's equations to uh diroc and and the electron to quantum electrodynamics and then quantum chromodynamics which deals with of course nuclear forces and then as you would see at the string theory because it wasn't just jumping from pythagoras to string theory although i can see the connection well let's now fill in all the missing steps we started with newton's theory of gravity which was formulated in the 1600s in the 1800s light was then finally worked out as a consequence of a symmetry between electricity and magnetism it was michael faraday who first realized that a changing magnetic field can create an electric field and a changing electric field can create a magnetic field that's the basis of dynamos that's why we have vacuum cleaners that's why we have modern society because electricity and magnetism turn into each other because of a symmetry they are symmetrical twins of each other giving us what is called the electromagnetic force then in after the nuclear force was finally unleashed with the atomic bomb in the post-war era people began to seriously look at the nuclear forces and we begin to realize that the equations of maxwell the equations of electromagnetism have to be generalized light has a partner that was missing that einstein failed to see the partner was called gauge particles or yang mills particles these particles also exist in a symmetry with the electromagnetic field so the electromagnetic field has in some sense a partner a larger family of vibrations and these vibrations are called gauge vibrations and they in turn hold the electrons and the protons of the neutrons into atoms and into the nucleus as we know it today so today to fast forward we now have the theory of almost everything it's called the standard model 10 billion dollars have been spent building the biggest machine of pure science outside geneva switzerland the large hadron collider and what do we find by spending 10 billion dollars on this huge colossal machine we found a theory called the standard model it is the most successful quantum theory of all time we see no deviation in that model the problem is first of all it is one of the ugliest theories known to science it's a theory that quote only a mother can love unquote it's like taking an aardvark and a platypus and a giraffe scotch taping them together and declaring that to be nature's finest evolutionary creation the end product of billions of years of evolution of the planet earth nobody believes a standard model is the final theory it has 36 quarks and antiquarks 21 free parameters that you can adjust by hand three identical carbon copies and generations of each other it is a mess but it works so then the question is are we looking at the tail of a lion einstein said that even if i see a tail i know there's a lion connected to that tail the tail is the standard model the theory of almost everything which neglects all of gravity has this huge zoom of subatomic particles that seem to have no rhyme or reason but it works so far nobody has come up with a successor to the standard model except string theory now some people say that well maybe i don't like string theory give me an alternative well there is none it is the only game in town now that doesn't mean it's correct as carl sagan like to say remarkable claims require remarkable proof where's the beef you have to have the proof right now there's no proof one way or the other but i think that proof is coming in fact one of that's one of the reasons why i wrote the book new experiments with dark matter new particle accelerators being proposed in japan china and the european union new gravity wave detectors in outer space these are new devices which are going to open up the standard model era the standard model was too successful this ugly theory was simply too successful for its own right now we're going to go beyond the standard model and subject string theory to the acid test if it fails then it will be just another corpse on the trail to the unified field theory some supporters of string theory uh actually disagree i think with with your stark proposal and they say that even if all of these experiments don't work there is still some fundamental consistency within string theory it's predictability it's it's it's an internal consistency that that is at a deeper level that your experimentation can handle so hey i want to know do you agree with that you know even if these experiments as you articulate maybe you need to have a a a collider the size of the galaxy to reach plank level uh uh uh uh intensity and levels in order to prove string theory so is it possible to validate string theory on the theoretical basis alone and if so what are those bases let me say two things about that uh first of all we forget the fact that you don't need a atom smash in the size of the milky way galaxy to test string theory you see almost all physics is done indirectly how do we know that the sun burns hydrogen what do we know about the inside of a dna molecule we know a lot about the inside of an atom the inside of a cell the inside of the sun we've never been there why because we look at indirect clues indirect sunlight from the sun allows us to determine what the sun is made of light from the stars allows us to determine what the stars are made of we've never visited the stars we've never visited the earth you don't need a direct test of string theory to prove it's correct second if string theory can prove for example from first principles calculate the mass of the proton i think the game is over if we can calculate almost from nothing the mass of a proton the mass of the electron the mass of the familiar subatomic particles we know today i think it's game over that'll prove that this is the final theory you see the theory of everything is also a theory of everyday energies if we can calculate exactly the mass of a proton the charge and mass of an electron and so on and so forth from first principles i think that would be it you don't necessarily need to explain every single aspect of the theory you just have to explain everything about the world we live in today at the present time nobody can do that there's not a single human on the planet earth that can calculate the mass of a proton from first principles if string theory does it i think it's game over one of the claims of string theory is that in in its normal operations and equations suddenly you find gravity kind of popping out so whereas in uh traditional physics without string theory people are struggling with a quantum theory of gravity bringing together general relativity and quantum theory the claim is made in string theory it's a natural result of the the equations as gravity pops out in the vernacular well i would agree with the thrust of that argument the fact that in most theories gravity is artificial you have to put it in by hand and when you do that the theory blows up in your face in other words most theories hate gravity gravity is incompatible with most physical theories but in string theory as you pointed out it's the opposite string theory requires gravity let's say einstein was never born let's say einstein never created general relativity general relativity emerges all by itself as the lowest octave of the string think about it if einstein had never been born we still would have discovered the entirety of einstein's theory as a breitbart of strength theory because all of einstein's theory is nothing but the lowest octave of the string has higher octaves as well that we can hope one day hope to find how how does that literally work where the lowest octave of the string is general relativity and that that that sounds nice and i know it's mathematical but give me an intermediary explanation between the raw equations and the simple assertion it's very simple you simply take a vibrating string the same string that pythagoras played with 2 000 years ago work out the lowest harmonics of the string okay and then you put it into what is called the action the energy of the string and you calculate the uh the vibrations that you get and the vibrations turn out to be have spin to angular momentum and is exactly einstein's theory of gravity plus as an added bonus you get electrons coming out of it and many unified field theory proposals never have electrons at all these are theories of pure gravity without atoms and so how can you possibly consider rival theories to be theories of everything with string theory you get electrons and gravity for free as the lowest octave of the string plus as another bonus you get higher octaves and that's where we think dark matter comes into play invisible matter which makes up most of the universe in fact we are the oddballs dark matter makes up most of the universe it is also predicted by string theory i'm going to do something very unfair michio i'm going to put you as the uh prosecuting attorney for those who believe that string theory is uh doesn't work and is is a distraction for physics and if you are in that role as the prosecutor what are the arguments that you would bring uh to attack string theory and then after that i'll give you a chance to respond in your normal self but i want you to be the best prosecutor now that you can be well one criticism of strength theory is it drains resources away from other fields that's inspirational that's an operational one i mean i i i i want to look at the at the physics of it i mean what are the criticisms certainly if it doesn't work it's draining everybody you know i agree with that but i want to look at the physics yeah so could you rephrase that question i misinterpreted your question sure uh if you were the prosecuting attorney for those who think that string theory is uh um is is not right and is a um the wrong way to proceed to find the theory of everything what are the arguments that you would make to attack string theory and then afterwards i'll give you a chance to respond in your normal self but right now you're the prosecuting attorney against string theory convicting string theory that it is wrong okay in other words you want me to play devil's advocate is that what you're saying to yourself yes okay i think the strongest argument against string theory is it is the fact that it creates a multiverse of universes but it doesn't select out our universe the solutions of string theory many of them have unstable atoms unstable matter so that the universe exists as a mist a mist of floating electrons floating neutrinos and not much else stable matter does not exist in many of the solutions of string theory so why should our universe be so special that we have stable atoms stable atoms that create people that create consciousness that could then dream about these things it didn't have to be that way these other universes some of them are chaotic some of them are random some of them have no stable matter whatsoever and so the strongest argument would be that the theory of everything is a theory of anything that anything that can go is a solution of string theory so why should our universe be special so let's let's explore that and this is the so-called landscape problem uh where string theory looked like a a definitive theory but suddenly a couple decades ago the realization was that because of the the structural elements within string theory there might be you know 10 to the 500th power of structures that that one string theory would be so it became this enormous landscape um and so but if that were the case and the vast majority were were inert or lifeless or sterile um that's okay because the only place that you would be looking would be the place that you would be allowed to be to exist to look and so the fact that we're special is not really that special yeah well i'm not bothered by these arguments at all because first of all if i take a look at max's equations of light bulbs or the equations of a laser beam you ask yourself a simple question how many solutions of maxwell's equations are there how many light bulbs how many generators how many hydroelectric dams how many lasers can you build and the answer is infinite forget about 10 to the 500. we're talking about an infinite number of solutions for light is that the same exist in all these forms in other words is that the same thing it is the the infinite number of light bulbs as a result of maxwell's equations the equivalent of uh different universes that come out of the the structure of string theory mathematically yes they are identical people forget this how many solutions of maxwell's equations of light are there an infinite number of solutions depending upon how many light bulbs how many generators how many how many dams do you have an infinite number you see each solution of string theory is a universe that is the difference between string theory and maxwell's theory every solution of maxwell's theory is a light bulb of some sort every solution of string theory is a universe of some sort but mathematically it's the same thing so the fact that string theory has an infinite number of solutions which i believe in forget 10 to the 500 i think it's infinite is exactly the same reason why max's equations have an infinite number of light bulbs now are you afraid of that are you disturbed do you go to bed at night saying i can't believe in max's equations because a million light bulbs is a solution of max's equations no it's just the initial conditions in other words what you start with the difference with string theory is we're starting with the big bang that's the difference and then we don't know the initial conditions of the big bang if someone were to tell me right now the initial conditions of the big bang i would find for you a solution of string theory which gives you that universe so you see i'm not worried about that okay it's philosophically uh very difficult to grapple with an infinite number of equations solutions but we do that all the time how many solutions of newton's equations are there how many tuning forks are there how many rocket ships are there an infinite number of rocket ships are possible in the same way that an infinite number of solutions of news equations exist an infinite solution of strings also exists the only difference is every solution of newton's equation is a rocket ship of some sort every solution of string theory is a universe of some sort but mathematically it's the same thing that's why i go to bed contented at night well i don't i i never go to bed content in the night because i have these conversations and and and i'm always i'm always disturbed so well that's that that makes me happy though so don't feel sorry for me um it's still not uh satisfying to equate a universe as a solution with a light bulb as a solution uh but but i i promise i'll i'll think about it um what i'd like to do now is just kind of look at some of the implications or the meaning of of of the book the god equation the quest for for a theory of everything um and let me just get your personal kind of observations about things so first of all you seem sure in the book that we will find a theory of everything um do you affirm that are you fully confident that that will happen i think yes it will happen i think all the trends that we've learned about in physics always point to one thing unification through cemetery this is the fundamental theme of mother nature all the forces of the universe combine to create simpler structures unifying them through a simple cemetery whether it's einstein's four-dimensional symmetry or string theory super symmetry unification through cemetery is the theme of the universe and so why should the final chapter be any different from all the other chapters where we find these forces we unify them and we find that there's a cemetery when you unify these principles that is the governing paradigm of the entire universe and so i think that yes it will happen michio let me go with you let me say that i i believe with you that there will be a final theory but here's my question will that theory be contingent in that it could have been something else or is it of necessity in some sense meaning that it could never have been otherwise philosophers use the term multiple worlds possible worlds uh means that in no possible world could that theory have been different well einstein used to say that the fundamental problem he grappled with was quote did god have a choice in making the universe in other words if the universe unique was it did it have to be that way and i think the answer is yes i think the answer is yes because all the other universes that we play with are inconsistent mathematically you know in our universe we know that two plus two is four however in other universes that we can create on a sheet of paper two plus two equals five two plus two equals six and we throw them out because we know they're mathematically inconsistent and why are they mathematically consistent because they contain what are called anomalies and divergences these are the killers the killers of any unified fuel theory so many proposals have been made hundreds of proposals have been made most of them can be killed off immediately because they have divergences they blow up or they're anomalous and violate some basic principle and so in other words i think that the solution to the whole problem is unique there is only one universe only one equation which is mathematically self-consistent and 2 plus 2 always equals 4 in that universe all these other universes you can get 2 plus 2 is 5. in which case you can prove anything anything you want you can prove once you assume that 2 plus two is equal to five so i think that's why the universe in that sense is unique now the number of solutions could be infinite as in maxwell's equations as in newton's equations newton's equations have an infinite number of solutions that's why we have an infinite number of planets infinite number of stars infinite number of rocket ships but the equation of newton is unique in the same way i think that there's only one unique solution because all the other solutions are anomalous or diverse have divergences and string theory is probably the only one the example of a theory with no mathematical inconsistencies so in other words the universe had to be this way it had no choice so we're talking about universes and that had to be this way in in two senses let's in two senses so let's let's be very clear in one sense the one theory that you think of string theory um uh creates a uh um a total state of affairs let me use that term instead of universes a total state of affairs of all reality everything that exists in any sense whatsoever is expressed and must be expressed by this one theory but within that theory the uh the solutions or expressions can be an infinite number of universes so each of those universes has the same uh equation underlying it even though those universes will be radically different themselves and the vast vast majority will be sterile i see what you're saying maybe the english language is not precise enough maybe we're talking about a metaphysics that is not just an ordinary physics the physics of newton the physics of einstein the physics of maxwell maybe we're talking about a theory of different physics which is a metaphysics a physics beyond physics and that is the unifying principle so what we're saying here is the principle is unique the theme the paradigm is unique the solutions of this paradigm they're an infinite number of them because they're an infinite number of rocket ships you can write down as solutions to newton's equations they're an infinite number of universes that you can write down but the principle is unique and what guides that principle it has to be anomaly free and divergenceless free so that two plus two always equals four michael i want to explore some of your um kind of broader thinking as has emerged from the book the god equation uh the quest for theory of everything uh you make the comment that that i i uh uh i i liked but would like to hear you expound upon that a theory of everything could be our salvation you use the term salvation a religious term uh because physics in this traditional sense has a death warrant your term for the universe however you define it whether it could be the big the the the the big freeze as everything expands as the way it seems to be with accelerating expansion of the universe so that ultimately you have the the evaporation of all the black holes and 10 to the 100th or whatever years uh and so you just have subatomic particles just floating around that's it so it's the ultimate freeze or if you have a big crunch uh which doesn't look likely but if physics changes and we do then everything is squeezed together and and destroyed but you say a theory of everything could be our salvation from one of those two extremes and that sounds like a radical uh expectation right well you know the most depressing paragraph ever written in the english language was written by the british mathematician bertrand russell in the 1930s that physics says the sun will die and when the sun will die all the aspirations the hopes the dreams the tears shed by generations of humans it's all for nothing the new life brilliance of our civilization it was beautiful beautiful a beautiful paragraph and that paragraph was written before the coming of rocket ships and today of course we read that paragraph and laugh we'll just leave the earth there's no law of physics preventing us from blasting off to another solar system however now we're talking about the death of the universe that physics the second law of thermodynamics as within it a death warrant that all equations show that the universe must eventually wind down rust decay fall apart whatever and therefore the depth of the universe is inevitable that's the second law of thermodynamics but there's a loophole there a loophole there because the second law of thermodynamics only talks about closed systems if the system is open open in hyperspace there's an escape clause that billions of years from now will be so advanced that we'll have the planck energy at our disposal the planck energy is the energy of the big bang is the energy at which space and time become unstable if i have an oven and i could heat the microwave oven up to the plank energy what would happen bubbles would form not bubbles in water bubbles in space would form inside your microwave oven heated to 10 to the 19 billion electron volts each bubble is a gateway it's a passageway to another universe and so i think that when the our universe dies black holes dominate the universe stars blink out that we will create a bubble universe and go to another warmer universe and perhaps mess up that universe as well as messing up this universe um you talk about finding meaning in the universe and i know many physicists when they they deal with the uh implications of all cosmology you go to the big freezer the big crunch and it it looks pretty uh dire uh but then people come up with uh you know we can have meaning in our lives we we project meaning into the universe these rationalization um which uh i i kind of resist i i like to face the reality uh stephen weinberg's famous remark which uh when i spoke to him he did not uh he did not back away from that the more we understand the universe the more we see how pointless it is um and that's just reality and you know just face it um you you want to go beyond that to find meaning are you rationalizing yeah let me say two things about that first of all my parents were buddhists and in buddhism there is no beginning there is no end there's only timeless nirvana but i was raised as a presbyterian as a child and in the presbyterian religion of course there is the beginning of the universe with genesis so i've had two diametrically opposed ideas in my head but there is a way to reconcile two diabetically opposed ideas you see einstein says that our universe is a bubble the bubble's expanding that's called the big bang theory but you see our bubble had a genesis our bubble had a beginning just like the bible says there was a beginning but you see our bubble coexists with other bubbles in a much larger arena this larger arena is the hyperspace of nirvana nirvana timelessness a world beyond space and time and so this is how you can reconcile buddhism with christianity that our universe had a beginning but other universes are being created all the time because of the quantum principle because of inflation which means that our universe expands into a larger arena this large arena is timelessness of nirvana now what does this have to do with meaning for human beings now well first of all i think that if the universe is a chess game there is a destiny a destiny to people who are watching that chess game and their destiny is the first of all to figure out the moves figure out how the pawns move and how the bishops and kings move and then to become grand masters so i think as far as the human race is concerned i think there is a destiny there our destiny is to become grand masters of this cosmic chess game now however then people want to say well what about me what about me as an individual as a member of homo sapiens what does it mean for me well i don't think that this one equation the god equation is necessarily going to bring happiness or fulfillment to people because i think that meaning is something you earn the meaning of life is to struggle for meaning that gives you meaning and substance to your destiny it's too easy to have someone simply give you your destiny that defeats the whole purpose of meaning the meaning of life is the struggle the process of struggling to attain a comprehension of your role in the universe and so i think as a personal goal as a personal goal don't look for an equation which is going to give you meaning i don't think that's going to happen however i think that it's too easy for us to simply have a guru come from the mountaintop to give us the meaning of life on a platter okay let's go to your fundamental uh cosmology as you put it unifying the the core thoughts of christianity and buddhism in terms of the creation of our universe and then the uh uh the embedding of our universe in a hyper time hyperspace of multiple universes um uh how does that work i mean all of that is very complicated there's a lot of things going on in that fundamental reality um you have to have the laws of physics the the string theory the equations of string theory then you need a whole set of other kinds of things that create this hyperspace or hypertime this nirvana idea it's not simple how do you justify all of that as some fundamental reality where'd it come from well first of all it's a lot simpler than you realize first of all uh what is the net spin of the universe if you look at the spins of all the galaxies and average them out they all add up to zero what is the net charge of the universe if i add up all the plus charges to all the minus charges they cancel out exactly the net charge of the universe is zero and what is the net energy of the universe well matter has positive energy but gravity is attractive it has negative energy and the two cancel out to give you zero so our universe came out of nothing our universe has zero spin zero charge zero mass energy our universe came out as a quantum fluctuation uh stephen hawking called this the space-time foam if you could have a super microscope it can see down to subatomic distances you can see that space and time is foamy with bubbles popping out like a bubble bath this is the multiverse on a small scale you don't have to look in the heavens for the multiverse the multiverse is inside your body the multiverse is right here in matter itself we see universes being created and destroyed these are called virtual universes almost instantly and because of that fact we don't see them they're too tiny but these universes pop into existence all the time now our universe is special for reasons we don't understand it popped out of nothing and just kept on going and gave us the universe we have today but our universe is mathematically experimentally consistent with nothing michio the standard approach to why there is something rather than nothing by physicists is indeed this quantum foam and uh and the emergence of particles and anti-particles and they they uh annihilate the vast majority of the time but one time they may not for whatever reason you have universes uh developing and and that is certainly uh defensible uh but it leaves open of of the the cauldron of bubbling laws of physics to make that all happen whether in the one universe itself or as you would have it embedded within a hyperspace so how do you deal with the mechanisms that created that something from nothing you can't ignore that well the mechanism is very simple there's an equation no more than one inch long that makes the whole thing work take a look at e equals m c squared that unlock one of the greatest secrets in the universe the energy output of stars why does the sun shine well it shines because e is energy and m is matter and c squared is a very large number and that's why the sun shines so who would have thought that an equation one inch long can do that now string theory is more complicated however you can summarize all of string theory into an equation about two inches long in fact that's my equation string field theory an equation that i wrote down years ago which summarizes string theory and it's only two inches long it's not the final theory however because now we have membranes and the field theory of membranes is turning out to be devilishly difficult i'm working on it many people are working on it and we can't seem to get it quite right but we know it must be there so in other words we know there must be a quote god equation that drives all of strings and membranes and it's not so difficult it's only we think one inch long you know english literary criticism every year gets more complicated more books written about what did james joyce what did hemingway really mean by that physics gets simpler and simpler every year why because it becomes more symmetrical you can unify all these forces and so all the laws of physics can be summarized on a single sheet of paper that to me is stunning absolutely incredible the fact that all the equations that rule this universe of ours can be put on one sheet of paper of course that sheet of paper is messy we want to get it down to one inch and we're not there yet that would be the god equation but you see the universe didn't have to be that way the universe could have been ugly it could have been messy random chaotic unstable but here we are in this gorgeous universe and that's why i think that what drives it is an equation equally gorgeous equally beautiful equally elegant you've chosen the core title the god equation for your new your new book and all the best with it i enjoyed reading it very much um but let's now focus on that word god because many physicists when they use the word god they use it in some albert einstein sense of sort of the order of the universe uh whether it's a not pantheistic but just order itself is something that is remarkable and and is uh so um amazing that it it's worthy of worship in some sense so god is is not not a poor term in that sense but in your book you've actually gone further than that and have said that the elegant design of the one-inch equation which you expect and indeed the laws of physics on your one page you call it the strongest argument for the existence of god in some in some uh a normal uh religious sense although you very clear that you yourself are an agnostic on this but that's different than many physicists who would see the one-inch equation as doing away with god well as einstein said science without religion is lame but religion without science is blind and i think that's true because science has to realize that there is something called philosophy that there are philosophies in in existence that guide scientific principles now stephen weinberg a great physicist nobel laureate perhaps facetiously wrote a paragraph in his book called against philosophy and i read that chapter it was a great chapter where he denounced the fact that philosophers always pontificate about the great theories of the universe but never get anywhere all amount and nothing absolutely nothing but that chapter is one of the most philosophical chapters that i've ever read so here's a chapter called against philosophy which is one of the most philosophical chapters that you can possibly write so i think that scientists have gone too far we have to intersect with where people are at in terms of their understanding of the universe for example in the 1990s we had the large uh we had the super collider bigger than the large engine collider to be built outside dallas texas it was cancelled in the last day of hearings one congressman asked the physicist he's asked them quote will we find god with your supercollider if so i will vote for it well the poor physicist didn't know what to say so he said something like we'll find the higgs boson well the vote was taken a multi-billion dollar machine was cancelled the congress gave us a billion dollars to build a hole for the machine cancelled it and then gave us a second billion dollars to fill up that hole two billion dollars to dig a hole and to bury it up since then we physicists have batted our heads asking ourselves how should we have answered that question will we find god with your machine now i don't know about other physicists but i would have said this i would have said god about whatever signs or symbols you ascribe to the deity this machine the super collider will bring us as close as humanly possible to his greatest creation genesis this is a genesis machine which on a small scale will reproduce the most glorious event in the history of the universe its birth instead we said higgs boson and our machine was cancelled and american physics was set back two generations as a consequence maybe you should run for company you should run for congress well just realize that we physicists have to learn to sing for our supper then we have to realize that taxpayers are going to pay for the machines we build during the cold war you know we used to just say one word to get funds one word to congress we would say russia and then congress would come back with two words how much well those days are gone we can't do that anymore we have to engage the public to speak the language that people speak people want to know about meaning about their role in the universe well i think scientists should address some of these questions rather than hiding in the sand so ultimately i want to ask you this as a final question if if you were asked what exists what are the most fundamental elements of existence however many categories you need at that most fundamental level from which you can build the entire state of affairs that we find ourselves whether it's multiple universes hyper dimensions or what what what are those fundamental categories of of existence that cannot be reduced one into the other well that's a tough one um first you have to have an arena a stage in which things can happen and then you have to have the players to make things interesting but one of the things one of the criterion for this for the players is something that we forget totally and that is stability it is incredibly difficult to create stable universes take a look at newton's theory of gravity with planets going around stars that is extremely unstable most solar systems of the universe fall apart comets collide planets collide things go plunging into the stars unstable newtonian physics is fundamentally unstable you know many people say we don't need einstein we don't need the quantum theory newton is common sense let's just believe in that newtonian forces and forget about newton forget about ions forget about the quantum theory wrong newtonian physics is unstable orbits are unstable how do we stabilize them well in the quantum principle we stabilize them in a way that blows people's minds away we stabilize the atom by making electrons be two places at the same time now you may say to yourself that's crazy crazy well in chemistry class high school students call them orbitals remember we hit the struggle with orbitals what the hell is an orbital an orbital is not an electron cloud circulating around an atom giving rise to oxygen and carbon no an orbital is an electron being many places at the same time so in other words the solution to stability of duties equation is to create parallel universes think about that a simple philosophical argument why is matter stable if newtonian orbits are inherently unstable and the answer is the quantum principle but the quantum principle means that you could be two places at the same time now if you don't believe me or you don't understand what i just said get used to it that's the way the world is sorry about that we first started speaking uh some 14 years ago and if we asked each other if we were now 14 years from now if we were just to pick a date 2035 and we were having this conversation reflecting back on what we talked about today what do you think we'd be talking about then well it's my fondest wish that in our lifetime we would see the final theory however of course history and science have a time scale and a clock of their own we are humans we have human desires we like the things completed in our lifetime but you know it goes back to the middle ages during the middle ages architects would build cathedrals knowing that maybe their grandkids would complete them that they embarked upon this grand journey to glorify god it would not happen in their lifetime it's possible that it may not happen in my lifetime because the theory is smarter than we are i like to think of it as wandering in the deserts of egypt and one day stumbling upon a rock well you brush away the sand and you find that it's a top of a pyramid and over the years you brush away the sand and you find layers and layers of hieroglyphics layers and layers of arcane languages and equations and an alien intelligence and finally after so many years you finally are at the ground floor about to open the final door to the pyramid i think that's where we are now i think we're very close to opening the final and last door to this great pyramid which may be the theory of everything or maybe the theory of nothing well i look forward to checking back with each other every so often um and certainly 2035 you have an open invitation for another conversation but lots in the meantime as well i look forward to it want to ask your own questions of the world's leading thinkers closer truth members can join exclusive live conversations and submit questions to be answered in real time visit closer to truth.com to register for your free account

Channel: Closer To Truth

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Keywords: closer to truth, robert lawrence kuhn, michio kaku, ultimate reality of the universe, theoretical physics, theory of everything, the god equation, michio kaku god equation, michio kaku book, michio kaku new book, the god equation explained, The God Equation: The Quest for a Theory of Everything, michio kaku god, michio kaku interview

Id: B9N2S6Chz44

Length: 68min 31sec (4111 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 06 2021