Michio Kaku is a professor of theoretical physics at City College, New York, a proponent of iron ore, but also a well-known popularizer of science, with several TV appearances and several bestsellers behind him. His latest book, The Equation of God, is a clear and accessible investigation of the quest to combine Einstein’s general relativity with quantum theory to create a comprehensive ‘theory of everything’ about the nature of the universe.
How close do you believe science is to come up with a theory of everything?
Well, I think we have the theory actually but not in the final form. It has not been tested yet and Nobel Prize winners have opposing views on something called string theory. I am the co-founder of ironing field theory, which is one of the most important branches of ironing, and therefore I have a bit of ‘skin in the game’. I try to be fair and balanced. I think we are on the verge of a new era. New experiments are being done to detect deviations from the standard model. On top of that, we have the mystery of dark matter. Any of these unexplored areas can give an idea about the theory of everything.
String theory involves a great deal of theoretical physics, demonic mathematics and staggering abstraction. Do you think the general public can understand the details of this debate?
I think the public is curious about what the consequences of this theory might be. The universe is in a sense like a chess game and for 2000 years we have been trying to figure out how the pawns move. And now we’re starting to understand how the queen moves and how to get a chess mat. The purpose of science is to become like grandmasters, to solve this puzzle we call the universe. There are outstanding questions for which the public wants answers. For example time travel, other dimensions, wormholes. What happened before the big bang? What’s on the other side of a black hole? None of these questions can be answered within the framework of Einstein’s theory. You must go beyond Einstein in quantum theory.
How much, do you think, would Isaac Newton do you understand your book?
I think he would appreciate it. In 1666 we had the great plague. The University of Cambridge was closed and a 23-year-old boy was sent home, and he saw an apple fall on his estate. And then he realized that the laws that govern an apple are the same laws that govern the moon. The epidemic thus gave Isaac Newton the opportunity to sit down and follow the math of falling apples and falling moons. But of course there was no math yet. He could not solve the problem and thus created his own mathematics. This is what we are doing now. We too are hit by the plague. We are also limited to our desks. And also we create new math.
Some physicists consider the search for a comprehensive theory to be deceptively reductionist. How is your work received in these circles?
I will be very blunt, there is a rift, a rift we have not seen for many years. I remember the Solvay conference when Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein took an opposite view on quantum theory in one of the biggest debates in the history of science. Well, string theory has also generated a lot of interest, as well as a setback. People do say, where is the proof? Honestly, we do not have the proof, just as Newton in 1666 did not yet have the proof of his inverted square law. Sometimes the mathematics and the ideas lie before the concrete experimental data. This is where the Large Hadron Collider comes into play.
The LHC made headlines recently with his findings on how the beauty quark behaves. Will it have an impact on the theory of everything?
The standard model is the theory of almost everything. It works spectacularly well, but it’s one of the ugliest theories ever put forward. There are these deluge of experimental numbers that you have to enter by hand. But in string theory, the standard model only appears. With just a few assumptions, you get the whole standard model. The point here, then, is that we need experimental evidence, and that the LHC can give us hints of a deviation in the standard model and that is where this post-LHC physics comes into play.
You have been compared on Carl Sagan in your ability to convey complex science in an accessible form. How important is it to reach a large audience?
We had a big shock in the 1990s when our physicists proposed the super collision. It was much larger than the Large Hadron Collider. It would be outside Dallas, Texas, but it was canceled. What went wrong? On one of the last days of hearings, a congressman asked, “Will we find God with your machine? If so, I will vote for it. The poor physicist who had to answer the question did not know what to say. We should have said, this is a Genesis machine that will create the conditions for the greatest invention of all time – the universe. Unfortunately we said Higgs boson. And people said: $ 10 billion for another subatomic particle? And they cancel the machine.
Do colleagues contradict your popular approach?
Let’s be honest, Carl Sagan experienced a setback when he entered the public arena. There was a vote to initiate him in the National Academy of Sciences, and he was refused. The super collision was canceled because we were in the ivory tower and had no connection with the taxpayer. And then comes Stephen Hawking. He aroused so much interest and was a real physicist at the forefront of science, not a mere “popularizer” – the critique of Sagan. So I think it was humble. We have to sing for our dinner. During the 60’s we just had to go to Congress and say one word: Russia. Then Congress would say two words: How many? Those days are over.
You believe that within a century we will be in contact with an alien civilization. Are you worried about what this might involve?
Soon we will have the web telescope in orbit and we will have thousands of planets to look at, so I think the chances are high that we can make contact with an alien civilization. There are some colleagues of mine who believe we should reach out to them. I think this is a terrible idea. We all know what happened to Montezuma when he met Cortés in Mexico so many hundreds of years ago. Now personally I think strangers would be friendly there, but we can not gamble on that. So I think we will make contact, but we have to do it very carefully.
There are many brilliant scientists whose contributions you discuss in the book. Which one stands out to you above the rest?
Newton is in the first place, because out of almost nothing, out of an era of witchcraft and sorcery, he comes up with the mathematics of the universe, he comes up with a theory of almost everything. It’s amazing. Einstein used Newton using Newton’s calculus to work out the dynamics of curved space time and general relativity. They are like supernovae, dazzlingly brilliant and illuminate the entire landscape and change the human destiny. Newton’s motion laws laid the foundations for the Industrial Revolution. Such a person comes together every few centuries.
You describe yourself as an agnostic. Has your research led you closer or further away from the idea of a designer God?
Stephen Hawking said he did not believe in God because the big bang happened immediately and there was no time for God to create a universe, therefore God could not exist. I have a different point of view. My parents were Buddhists and in Buddhism there is Nirvana, timelessness, no beginning and no end. But my parents put me in a Presbyterian church, so I went to Sunday school every week and learned about Genesis and how the universe was created in seven days. Now, with the multiverse idea, we can merge these two paradigm-opposing paradigms. According to string theory, big bangs happen all the time. Even as we speak, Genesis takes place somewhere in the cosmos. And to what does the universe expand? Nirvana. Eleven-dimensional hyperspace is Nirvana. So you can have Buddhism and Judeo-Christian philosophy in one theory.