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Friday February 5, 2010

Fact or fiction?

By RIZAL JOHAN


Physicist Dr Michio Kaku blurs the line between science and science fiction.

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SCIENCE and science fiction used to be two very different things. The former, in a broad sense of the word, is an academic pursuit while the latter revolves around fantasy and imagination. But the gap between the two has become narrower as Dr Michio Kaku, one of the world’s top physicists, will be uncovering the science behind science fiction in Sci Fi Science on Discovery Channel.

So, if you’ve ever wondered about space travel, time travel, light sabres, invisibility cloaks, you’re in for a surprise because Kaku says that there is a scientific way to make these things happen. But first, let’s get to know Kaku and what he actually does for a living.

“I’m a research physicist. I work in something called string theory, which many people believe is the theory that eluded Einstein for the last 30 years of his life.

“We’re beginning to test string theory with the large Hadron collider outside Geneva, Switzerland, costing ten billion euros, the most expensive machine that science ever created. That’s what I do for a living,” said Kaku in a recent conference call interview from New York.

Kaku is, no doubt, a man of science but he is also a sci-fi fan, having watched “the old Flash Gordon TV series” while he was growing up and still continues to watch sci-fi films. And it is this interest in sci-fi, and discovering if there is a scientific possibility behind it, that spurred him to become a research physicist and take on the reins of Sci Fi Science.

“Nowhere do we find anyone talking about the science or the lack of science behind these things because only a research physicist can answer these questions.

“Therefore, with a film crew, I went to the leading universities. We went to MIT, Princeton. We went to Berkeley. We went to all the major research institutes. We went to NASA and interviewed the world’s top scientists.

Scientific proof: Leading physicist Dr Michio Kaku uncovers the science behind science fiction in Discovery Channel’s Sci Fi Science.

“These are the people who are building the future in their laboratories. They’re not fiction writers. They’re not science fiction novelists. These are scientists, working scientists who are designing teleportation machines, force fields and robots, and dreaming about time machines and warp drives,” he said.

And the scientists carrying out research on such things have a very good idea of how to achieve it. If getting on board a freighter that can take you to different star systems has been lingering on your mind, then read on to find out what Kaku discovered after talking to NASA scientists.

“We went to NASA and talked to leading visionaries who, first of all, talked about going near the speed of light, and then other NASA scientists who talked about going faster than the speed of light. We have two episodes on this (in Sci Fi Science).

“For the first episode, going up to the speed of light, we went to NASA Cleveland where we talked to scientists who talked about building the first starships that could go to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star, by the end of the century.

“The fuel necessary would be a combination of solar sail that would get light from laser beams from the moon, for example. The sail would sail on sunlight. And the second is anti-matter.

“Now anti-matter is very expensive. Solar sails are also very expensive. But the price should go down over the decades, so if you have only a few ounces of anti-matter, that might be enough to send the first starship to a nearby star.

“We have another episode where we go faster than the speed of light. Now, again, Einstein’s equations do not say that you cannot break the light barrier. Einstein himself wrote about the possibility of going faster than light. But you would have to have enormous amounts of energy to do so.

“So we flew in a physicist from Mexico City who actually has a design for a starship. We physicists have looked at his design and it’s a very serious proposal.

“Using Einstein’s equation, it’s possible to do something that is very much like what you see in Star Trek.

“In Star Wars and Star Trek, the stars come at you as you race towards the speed of light. And as you break the light barrier, you see the stars whiz by you. We think that may be possible if you can compress the space in front of you and expand the space behind you.

“Let’s say you want to walk across a carpet. The old-fashioned way is to slowly walk across the carpet. Another way is to compress the carpet. If you can compress the carpet and squeeze it, then you could simply hop across. That is a solution of Einstein’s equations.

“We were quite shocked when this young physicist found this solution, but we checked it and, yes, it’s a genuine solution of Einstein’s equations. You can compress the space in front of you, expand the space behind you.

“In other words, you don’t go to the stars. The stars come to you. So you never go to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star. Alpha Centauri comes to you.”

As exciting as all this sounds, Kaku said that space travel is not going to happen anytime soon. In fact, it may take several centuries before such trips are possible. But there are other things which may take less time and we will be able to see such advances of technology in our lifetime.

“In the series, we’re careful to say that some technologies will happen very soon. Other technology will take 100 years. We physicists have already made objects invisible under microwave radiation. This has already been done. In fact, the military has funded this research. It is now a technical problem to make visible light invisible. So this is happening very fast and we should have something like Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak within a few decades.

“So within a few decades, we’ll probably have force fields and light sabres. Maybe by the end of the century, perhaps we’ll have robots and starships, but it will take maybe hundreds of years after that before we have time machines and warp drive.”

While we have to wait (and in some cases, not even see) such technological wonders, Kaku and his documentary series is, in a sense, approaching that elusive final frontier.

Sci Fi Science premieres on Discovery Channel (Astro channel 551) today. It airs every Friday at 9pm.

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