The four fundamental forces of nature - Michio Kaku

if you were to summarize the theme of Leonardo da Vinci's life the theme of this great University the theme would be unification unification of the world of art with the world of science when I was a child I had two role models one was Albert Einstein if you were to summarize his life into one word it would be unification unifying matter energy unifying space and time and then he spent the last 30 years of his life chasing after the greatest unification of all time the theory of everything and he was so frustrated that he could not get an equation that would allow him to quote read the mind of God well today we think we have that theory well one of my favorite Einstein stories is when he was so frustrated walking around the streets of Princeton children children would flock to see this gray-haired Einstein walked down the streets of their hometown and one day you could hear him roar with laughter talking to a ten year old child well the mother of this child went up to her son and said son what did you say to Einstein that made him laugh so much today the mother was so proud and then the son said oh I asked him whether he went to the bathroom this morning well the mother was mortified and then she said well then what did Einstein say and then the little boy said Einstein said ah at last somebody asked me a question that I can answer well today we physicists believe that we are on the verge of being able to summarize the four great forces of nature into a single master theory the forces of gravity the forces of electricity and magnetism the two nuclear forces into a single comprehensive theory one-inch alarm first of all we have the theory of gravity gravity keeps you on this floor gravity attracts everything around its vicinity to create gravity around the earth or as we say in our astronomy courses when we teach our kids gravity sucks gravity sucks evenly it pulls everything to the center but then Einstein gave us a different picture gravity doesn't suck at all we tell our students we lied to you gravity does not pull you to the floor space pushes you down why are you sitting in your chair today does gravity pull you to the floor no there is no such thing as gravitational pull we lied to you the space around you is worked and space itself is pushing you down into your chair and that's what you're sitting in your chair today and then we have the electromagnetic force the force of light laser beams the force of computers the force that illuminates this university and it's absolutely amazing that we can summarize the electromagnetic force into an equation half an inch long think about this the world's wealth tied to the internet computers technology lasers satellites can be summarized by an equation half an inch long that equation says the four-dimensional divergence of an anti-symmetric second rank tensor equals zero and in fact at Berkeley where I got my PhD you can buy a t-shirt which says in the beginning God said the four-dimensional divergence of an anti-symmetric second rank tensor equals zero and there was light and it was good and on the seventh day he rested this amazing lecture magnetic force allows us to create computers the size of a pinhead think about this in the future we can take an aspirin pill put a computer inside put a camera inside you swallow this aspirin pill and it photographs you're inside by computers this eliminates the most dreaded word that every male hates colonoscopies and this gives new meaning for the expression Intel Inside think about it chips that cost a penny because of the electromagnetic force we're putting them everywhere into our toys for example this is creating a problem for the English language a new contradiction in terms called smart Barbie dolls another contradiction in terms is Microsoft works that is also a contradiction in terms this force this electromagnetic force will also be in your glasses in the future your glasses will not only be able to download from the internet you'll have a home office in your glasses teleconferencing to the office download any video download any website in your glasses including face recognition your glasses will be able to recognize people's faces and spit out an entire biography for you how many times have you been at a conference like this and you bump into somebody and you say to yourself who is this person Jim John Jake I know this person who is this person in the future your glasses will say it's Jim stupid remember you saw him last week you want to see its entire biography for you in your glasses or let's say afterwards you're mingling with people and you know there's some very heavy hitters in the audience and you don't know who they are in the future you will know exactly who to suck up to any cocktail party compliments of the electromagnetic horse then we have the nuclear force the forest that lights up the stars the secret of the heavens is locked in the nuclear force but every time we smash a proton and when I was in high school that's what I did smash atoms when I was in high school when you smash atoms would you get more particles more particles how many particles are there hundreds thousands of goddamn subatomic particles in the 1950s we were drowning in all these subatomic particles so J robert Oppenheimer the father of the atomic bomb once made a declaration the Nobel Prize in Physics shall go to the physicist who does not discover a new particle this year well I had to memorize the names of all these goddamn subatomic particles to get my PhD Thomas on neutrinos leptons muons yang-mills particle Higgs bosons thousands of them I would hope that in the future would you get your PhD at Berkeley all you would have to do is say string theory and you would get your PhD yes we do believe that there is a master theory that eluded Einstein in the last years of his life and we do think that at the basis of all this instead of having dots called electrons instead of having dots called protons dots called neutrinos we have little rubber bands little rubber bands so if you look at an electron with a super microscope you don't see a dot you see a vibrating rubber band and if you twang it it turns into a neutrino you hit it it turns into a cork you hit it again turns into Higgs boson you keep playing that rubber band and you get the thousands of subatomic particles that I had to memorize to get my PhD this is incredible the enormous diversity that we see around us can be summarized by music the Greeks believed in something called the Pythagorean way that music the music of lyre strings the music of lyre strings could explain the diversity of the universe well the Pythagorean jury never went anywhere but now we're coming back to the dream of the pythagorean's so what are these particles nothing but musical notes musical notes on a vibrating string what is physics physics is nothing but the harmonies of these strings what is chemistry that you struggle with in high school melody melodies we can play on these strings what is the universe the universe is a symphony of strings and what is the mind of God ladies and gentlemen for the first time in history we now have a candidate for Einstein's mind of God the mind of God is cosmic music resonating through 11 dimensional hyperspace hyperspace when I was a child growing up outside San Francisco I used to go to the Japanese tea garden and I used to watch the carp swimming just beneath the lily pads and then I asked myself a question only a child would ask what would it be like to be a fish swimming in a shallow pond and then I realized that fish have eyes to the side of their face they can't see above the pond they would say the pond is everything the universe is two-dimensional you can swim forward backward left right but any fish that talked about the world of up any fish that dared talk about the third dimension any fish that dare to talk about unseen universes beyond Bath's was considered a crackpot and then I imagined a carp scientist a scientist living in the pond and the scientists would say bah humbug there is no world of up there is no third dimension there is no hyperspace the pond is all there is what you see is what there is and then I imagine as a child reaching down and grabbing the fish scientist lifting him into the world of up what would the fish scientists see the fish scientists would see beings moving without fins a new law of physics beings breathing without water a new law of biology and then I put the fish back into the pond and I wondered what stories would he tell his fellow fish well ladies and gentlemen today we physicists believe and we hope to prove maybe starting next month that we are the fish we spend all our life in three-dimensions going forward backward left right up down but anyone who dares talk about unseen universes anyone who dares talk about a world beyond three dimensions anyone who talks about hyperspace is considered a crackpot until now now we believe that perhaps there are these unseen worlds and next month we hope to prove some of these things with the opening of the biggest machine of science ever created the Large Hadron Collider the biggest machine of science 17 miles in circumference and contrary to popular belief it's not going to destroy the world rest assured that it's not going to destroy the universe our machine is a machine of science you know people ask the question how come we don't come Chane how come the Europeans in Geneva how come the European Union got this machine well we had our chance our machine was called the supercollider and it was rebuilt outside Dallas Texas Ronald Reagan was pushing that machine but you know on the last day of hearings when congressman said to a physicist quote will we find God with your machine if so I will vote for it well the poor physicist had to answer that question so what did the physicists say he said we will discover with this 11 billion dollar machine the Higgs boson another subatomic particle well you could hear you could hear all the jaws hit the floor eleven billion dollars further goddamn subatomic particle the vote was taken the next day our machine was cancelled Congress gave us a billion dollars to dig the hole then Congress cancelled our machine in 1993 and gave us a second billion dollars to fill up that hole two billion dollars to dig a hole and fill it up that's the wisdom of our leaders well we physicists have wondered how should we have answered that question we replay that scene over and over in our mind how should we really answer that question well I would have said something different I would have said God by whatever signs or symbols you ascribe to the deity this machine will take us as close as humanly possible to his greatest creation Genesis this is a Genesis machine this machine will help to recreate the glory of the most stupendous events in history the creation of the universe itself well instead we said Higgs boson and our machine was cancelled sorry about that and then people asked the question well mr. professor if you're so smart what's in it for numero uno what's in it for me I mean am I going to get better colored television with your machine am I going to get better internet reception with your machine well in some sense yes the technology of the unification all forces includes the electromagnetic force but we will also answer some of the deepest questions of space and time is time travel possible is it possible to bend space into a pretzel what happened before the Big Bang what happened before Genesis chapter 1 verse 1 what is it all mean these are the questions that we hope to answer with the Large Hadron Collider for example I recently wrote a book physics of the impossible and I'm proud to announce today that I just found out just a few days ago that the book physics of the impossible has now been on the New York Times bestseller list for four weeks running who would have thought a book with the word physics in it number 12 in the United States right now it's also the number one science book in the country so in that book I do address the question of time travel is it possible to relive the past is it possible to change the past well let me tell you a short story if you think you're so smart figure this one out we physicists actually study this story listen carefully the year is 1945 it is a dark and stormy night a drifter comes into the darkness carrying a baby girl inside a basket that he leaves at an orphanage well the nuns pick up this baby girl the next day they don't know what else to call her so they call her Jane and Jane grows up wondering who is my mother my father my sister my brother I was left as a foundling on a doorstep and then when Jane is 19 years of age she falls in love a handsome drifter comes into her life but it was not meant to be they quarrel and the boyfriend stomps off into the darkness never to be seen again but it's a very sad story JE finds out she's pregnant she's rushed to the hospital nine months later delivers a beautiful baby girl but that very same night somebody breaks open the window of the hospital and kidnaps Jane's precious baby girl and it's even worse than this the doctors find out she's bleeding she's dying to save Jane's life the doctors perform an emergency operation and change Jane into Jim well Jim wakes up the next day saying oh my god I was left as a foundling raised by nuns fell in love got pregnant somebody steals my baby and now I'm not even Jane anymore well Jim gets into barroom fistfights anytime someone says hey Jim where did you come from anyway who is your mother your father your brother your sister well one day Jim is now stoned drunk on the bottom of a bar again but this time the bartender comes up to gen'l'men says wake up Jim wake up you know I'm really a time traveler I'm not really a bartender come into my machine and let us find out who is Jane's last Jim so they go back into the past way back into the past and so poor Jim doesn't know where he is but then he meets this beautiful 19-year old girl and it's love at first sight but you know it was not meant to be they quarrel and Jim stomps off into the darkness but then Jim later finds out his girlfriend's pregnant and Jim says oh my god I don't want history repeat itself I want to make sure that my baby gets the best education possible so Jim goes to the hospital breaks open the window steals its own precious baby girl and goes back into the time machine back back way back until it is 1945 it is a dark and stormy night Jim comes in from the darkness carrying its precious baby girl that he drops off at an orphanage in a basket well the nuns pick up the baby girl the next day they don't know what else to call her so they call her and Jane grows up wondering who is my mother my father my brother my sister well Jim meanwhile finally gets it together and he says I'm gonna make something of my life I don't want to be a drunk all my life so he joins the Time Traveler's Corps and has many heroic feats in the annals of time now Jim is an old man he's an old man now and he's about to retire but he asked for permission for one last mission in time and that is to put on a moustache put on some wig and impersonate a bartender to meet a certain barroom drunk who gets into fistfights any time someone asks them who are you Jim where'd you come from who is your mother your father now for 10 points who can tell me who is Jane's mother father brother sister aunt uncle grandfather granddaughter great-great grand for the big rig her granddaughter Jane she's a family tree under herself could imagine a family get together one day and they get into a food fight and someone says you did this to me no you did that to yourself well think about it because we do we physicists are now grappling with the ultimate question of space and time itself and now let me end on one story I spoke at the Einstein centennial and my favorite Einstein story is this when Einstein was an old man he was tired of giving the same talk over and over again so one day his chauffeur came up to him and said professor Einstein I may look like a chauffeur but I'm a part-time actor and I've heard your thought your talk so many times I've memorized it I can give your talk so why don't we switch places and I will be the great Einstein and you can take a break and be my chauffeur well Einstein loved a good joke so they switched places to show for apirana mustache put on some wigs and then he became the great Einstein giving talks well this went very well until one day somebody in the back a mathematician asked a difficult question and Einstein thought oh the joke is up but then but then the chauffeur said that question it's so Elementary that even my chauffeur here can answer it for you thank you very much

Channel: Cosmology Today™

Views: 183,281

Keywords: four fundamental forces, grand unified theory, theoretical physics, four fundamental forces of physics, michio kaku video, quantum physics, gravity waves, michio kaku, universe, strong nuclear, weak nuclear, electromagnetism, theory of everything

Id: uf-dunmIvg8

Length: 22min 8sec (1328 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 17 2016