Prof. Dr. Michio Kaku about the LHC in Cern.

Michio Kaku

Relax. The earth is not going to be eaten up by a black hole any time soon. Doomsday-watchers around the world breathed a sign of relief last Wednesday when the Large Hadron Collider was finally turned on and ... well ... nothing happened. After weeks of breathless hype, a beam of protons was successfully sent traveling 17 miles around the circular ring of the Large Hadron Collider. Physicists popped champagne bottles and yelled for joy. The goal of the LHC is to open up a whole new area of physics by eventually creating temperatures and energies not seen since the universe began 13.7 billion years ago. Some of the deepest secrets of the universe may be revealed by the machine. Physicists, of course, had a different reaction from the Doomsday-watchers. They patiently pointed out that the LHC, although colossal by human standards, is a tiny firecracker compared to the titanic energies contained in rays that constantly bathe the earth every day for billions of years, yet the earth still stands. Furthermore, the sub-atomic particles produced by the LHC decay almost immediately and their energy cannot even light up a light bulb. The fact that you are still alive to read this sentence proves that the machine is harmless. But American physicists, in particular, had a very different reaction--one of sadness, even bitterness, that the LHC is being built in Switzerland, rather than in the US. In fact, the shortsightedness of the U.S. Congress has guaranteed that leadership in the field of advanced physics has left the U.S. and has passed to the Europeans.

Our universe is doomed, says Professor Michio Kaku. Fortunately, he's working on several escape routes: time travel, wormholes, and another universe entirely. The physicist on a mission to 'read the mind of God'. Scaremongers have warned that the collisions at Cern could unleash incalculable danger and perhaps even destroy the Earth. Michio Kaku puts some fears to rest. Dr. Kaku is a theoretical physicist, specializing in string field theory. He thinks that invisibility and teleportation are future possibilities, with the help of science. Dr. Kaku also believes that parallel universes and psychokinesis do exist. The man is audibly captivating. And, much like Brian Greene, a great speaker for and popularizer of science and is one of my favourite scientists. Kaku is one of the founders of string field theory, a field of research within string theory. String theory seeks to provide a unified description for all matter and the fundamental forces of the universe; its key idea is that all particles in the universe are manifestations of the same type of minuscule, vibrating building block called a string. String field theory is an approach seeking to meld the new ideas of string theory with the powerful language used to describe elementary particles to yield a complete description of string dynamics.