Science Book, Take A Look: "Real" Science Fiction!

Calling all lovers of sci-fi, physics, science, and bizarre facts!

Here are two (non-fiction) books worth reading:

Parallel Worlds by Michio Kaku

Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku

(For those who watch the science channel, Michio Kaku is the Asian-ish, probably Japanese, guy with the white hair that shows up a lot.)

I put these two books together because they have a bit of an overlap in what they talk about. Physics of the Impossible is primarily about "impossible" technologies. He classifies them into three groups: class one, or something possible in the next couple of centuries, class two, something that's possible but is so far away that it's basically science fiction to us (well, it all seems like sci-fi anyways) and class three, or the truly impossible (although only two things, telling the future and perpetual motion machines, fall into this category). Of course, being the co founder of string theory, he likes to talk quite a bit about the awe-inspiring "theory of everything," aka string theory or M-theory. However, this is primarily about the "impossible"- time travel, invisibility, force fields, and other things that seem magic to us. For those who like Star Trek (I never saw it), he also makes a lot of references to Star Trek as well. I highly recommend this to people who like science-fiction: it's just as weird, but true as well!

Parallel Worlds delves deeper into the "theory of everything" and all the strings (string theory, get it?) attached. He discusses parallel universes, quantum mechanics, baby universes, and of course, string, or rather, M-theory. (Just to clear things up, the "theory of everything" is like the holy grail of physics. M-theory, the m standing for membrane, is the latest version of string theory, which people hope is the new theory of everything.) This is just as bizarre and a little harder to grasp than Physics of the Impossible, so I recommend you read Physics of the Impossible first if you are interested in both of them. This book's bizarreness comes from all of those wacky theories. For instance, just as a little taste, quantum mechanics can imply that there is a slight probability that we could suddenly disappear and reappear on Mars from the uncertainty principle- thankfully, the probability of this is so small that you'd have to wait longer than the lifetime of the universe for this to happen, so saying that your homework disappeared due to the uncertainty principle is not a reasonable excuse for not having your homework.

Overall, these two books are very, very interesting- but two warnings: first, don't read them one after the other, but put a book in between. They have quite a bit of an overlap in material, so while the info will sink in better the next time, it will be repetitive. Also, don't read too much of this stuff: it gave me a weird dream about disappearing into a parallel universe, and I've been wondering about parallel universes and how we would tell the difference between a parallel universe where we originated from and one where the only difference is something like a butterfly not existing- good food for thought, but still really creepy.