Facebooking Michio Kaku

December 6, 2009 at 12:41 am · Filed under Science and tagged: michio kaku, superstrings, theoretical physics

Another in what will be a long-running commentary on the great and good who can be followed/friended/subscribed to…

In my mid-twenties, I became a serious lover of science. Having been told all throughout my education that I was a science moron, my ‘knowledge’ (if it can be called such) is negligible. But the stigma has thoroughly worn off, and I am reading books well beyond my comprehension…simply because they are so beautiful.

Two such that I make tentative dips into when the brain is full with coffee are Hyperspace and Beyond Einstein by theoretical physicist Michio Kaku. He has an incredible mind, as well as a rather canny ability to reach the layperson; hence why someone like me can enjoy the following snippet posted on his Facebook:

The curious feature of superstrings, however, is that they can only vibrate in 10 dimensions. This is, in fact, one of the reasons why it can unify the known forces of the universe: in 10 dimensions there is “more room” to accommodate both Einstein’s theory of gravity as well as sub-atomic physics. In some sense, previous attempts at unifying the forces of nature failed because a standard four-dimensional theory is “too small” to jam all the forces into one mathematical framework.

Okay, so maybe I can’t contextualize that as well as, say, a really smart person but it still feels important to me as a human being. The great Unified Theory in the sky ought to be a concern for me, as it’s pursuit is always driving humanity further.

Alright, I’m going to curb the proselytising and just reccomend anyone else who was conditioned by education to give physics a wide intellectual berth to check out his site.

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