Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku

Summary: This book divides technologies and concepts into three types of impossibilities, type 1 (force fields, ray guns, telekinesis), type 2 (UFOs, telepathy) and type 3 (wormholes, time travel) based on their resonance with scientific knowledge today and energy capabilities (this separates civilization types like ours a type 0 civilization uses fuels from dead animals and such, whereas a type 1 utilizes all the sunlight that reaches Earth. Type three milks the energy of the universe (like from black holes and such).

Review: Oh boy, Oh boy! Technology is sweet. Just like traveling to the moon, impossible, right? I love this book because it sneaked science in me when I just wanted to know if telepathy was something I could master in my lifetime. Unfortunately that is a particularly unproven thing. But, Michio Kaku’s spring of hope is eternal. I sadly as the week went by, didn’t retain all the interesting physics that have yet to be completed, yet to be born. If someone is going to solve the puzzles of the universe, I doubt it will be me all alone in my small nanobot-less brain.

Rating: 7 pockets of dark matter that we can someday harness for energy

Favorite part: “We are haunted by the awareness that infinitely many slightly variant copies of ourselves are living out their parallel lives and that every moment more duplicates spring into existence and take up our many alternative futures.” –Frank Wilczek p. 244

Wine-pairing: The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil. I think you need to hope of the impossible, the sense of a distant ersatz horizon, for the conclusions that Kurzweil reaches about humanity, technology, and our exceedingly advanced future.