The Unexplained - Howard Hughes - Edition 304 - Professor Michio Kaku

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July 14, 2017 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes

01:07:32

Edition 304 - Professor Michio Kaku

A Special Edition with world famous scientist Professor Michio Kaku returning to theshow...

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	Across the UK, across continental North America and around the world on the internet, by webcast and by podcast, my name is Howard Hughes and this is The Return of the Unexplained.
	Thank you very much indeed from the bottom of my heart for all of your emails recently, the nice things you've said about the show and the many, many guest suggestions that you've made.
	I'm working on all of those and thank you again for them.
	If you want to get in touch with me, please tell me who you are, where you're listening and how you use the show.
	The place to leave an email is to go to the website theunexplained.tv, designed and created by Adam Cornwell from Creative Hotspot in Liverpool and follow the link and you can send me an email from there and I will get to see it.
	Very special guest on this edition of the show, a man who has done so much to popularize science over the decades.
	A man who's helped to make it accessible and approachable and explain it in ways that ordinary people who are not science graduates, and that includes me, can understand.
	He's also a man who's not afraid to answer most questions of a scientific nature, even the ones that some scientists would consider to be quite out there.
	His name, Dr. Michio Kaku, and it'll be a great pleasure to catch up with him again.
	The last time I spoke to him on the Unexplained was on the old radio show back in about 2005.
	An awful lot has changed in all of our lives, and in the world of science, a massive amount has happened.
	So we'll be getting across all of that and speaking with Dr. Michio Kaku from New York any moment now here.
	Like I say, if you want to get in touch with me, if you want to give me a donation for the show, Gratefully Received, remember these shows come to you on the internet.
	There are more than 300 hours of material on my website at the moment.
	And any donation that you could possibly make would be gratefully received for the show.
	Go to the website theunexplained.tv, designed and created by Adam Cornwell from Creative Hotspot in Liverpool.
	And there you can leave a donation for the show, or you can send me a message, a guest suggestion, or anything you would like.
	Like I say, your feedback, always gratefully received.
	Okay, let's get to New York City now.
	No shout-outs on this edition.
	We're going to get straight to the guest, Dr. Michio Kaku.
	Michio, thank you very much for coming back on my show.
	It's been a few years.
	Yes, too long, in fact.
	Yes.
	I remember we did a conversation, I think, about 11 years ago, maybe 12 years ago, on the original radio show.
	And as ever, when you come on shows like this, there's always a lot of feedback and you get many questions from people.
	Sometimes you don't have time to fit them all in.
	I want to skate across a lot of topics this time, if it's okay with you.
	Fine.
	Fire away.
	All right, Michio.
	First of all, just before I do that, can I ask you how you define yourself?
	Because when I recorded the intro to this show, I called you a popularizer of science, but I didn't think that was a great term.
	How would you describe yourself?
	Well, twofold.
	First, I'm a professor of theoretical physics.
	My goal in life is to help complete Einstein's dream of a theory of everything.
	But I'm also a futurist.
	And using physics, I like to predict what science and society will look like 10, 20, 100 years into the future.
	Right.
	And as you know, and as I know, and as everybody knows, so much of that appearance of society and so much of the way that we conduct our lives in future is being shaped now, and it's being shaped by science.
	That's correct.
	Okay, one of the big topics we talked about last time, because it was the biggest thing in scientific news back in the first decade of the 2000s, was quantum physics.
	We had a long talk about quantum physics, and we were both very energized and excited by it.
	It was said to be the next big thing with discoveries around it coming all the time.
	Where are we at with quantum physics?
	Well, last time we talked, we talked about the dream, the dream of being able to find new particles like the Higgs boson, which would give us insight into the Big Bang.
	We hoped that one day we'd be able to detect gravity waves predicted in 1916 by Albert Einstein.
	We thought we would be able to use our technology to explore new worlds in outer space.
	And all of the above have happened.
	The supercollider in Geneva, Switzerland found the Higgs boson, which is one of the missing links to understanding the theory of everything.
	We found gravity waves from colliding black holes in outer space.
	Think about that.
	And also, we have found evidence of about 4,000, 4,000 planets circling other star systems.
	These are incredible discoveries that were predicted 10 years ago when we last talked about it.
	Okay, in the news in the last week or so on the BBC and other outlets was a new particle detected at the Large Hadron Collider.
	What does that mean?
	Where does that take us?
	Yes, first of all, we have a theory of almost everything.
	It's called the standard model.
	It's kind of ugly, but it does describe the motions of electrons and protons and pi mesons, and it predicts particles that we haven't even seen yet.
	It predicted the Higgs boson, and we snagged it a few years ago, and that won a Nobel Prize for two physicists.
	But there are other particles called charm particles that are being discovered predicted by the standard model.
	However, here's the embarrassing thing.
	The embarrassing thing is the standard model makes no reference to gravity.
	Now, of course we have gravity.
	If you don't believe me, just go outside and fall down.
	Of course it's gravity.
	But it's one of the biggest embarrassments of quantum physics that with all the particles that we've been able to find, all the particles that fit the zoo of particles predicted by the standard model, gravity is missing.
	And that's what I do for a living.
	What I do for a living is work on something called string theory, which unites gravity with the standard model.
	Now, we do not yet have a test of string theory yet.
	That would require a machine even bigger than the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland.
	But we're hoping that the ILC will one day be created, perhaps in Japan, which would give us evidence that there really is a theory of everything, which is something that was predicted by Einstein.
	Stephen Hawking has talked About it, and there's even a movie about it called The Theory of Everything.
	Why is it important, Michio, that we have a theory of everything?
	Well, you know, ever since we looked up in the sky and wondered where did it all come from, all religions, all philosophers have questioned the idea that where did it all come from?
	Well, we think it came from a big bang, but why did it bang?
	What banged?
	What set off the bang?
	We don't know.
	We just know that there was a bang.
	And if you assume that, it fits the data precisely.
	The big bang theory gives us a coherent theory of what happened after the incident of creation.
	But why was there creation at all?
	That's a mystery.
	And that's where string theory comes in.
	Because string theory says that our universe is a bubble of some sort.
	It's expanding like in the Big Bang theory.
	But there are other bubble universes out there.
	Bubble universes floating in 11-dimensional hyperspace.
	Now, this sounds like science fiction, but yes, the leading physicists in the world today think that there are other universes in a multiverse of universes.
	And our universe is just one bubble in a bubble bath of universes called the multiverse.
	It boggles the mind, but that's where physics is going right now.
	And one of the people pushing this idea is Stephen Hawking.
	The difficulty with that is, and you're going to know a lot about this in the United States, aren't you, Michio, is that the more we get into this and the more that we learn and the more that we are able to hypothesize, the greater the distance appears between you and religion, because religion doesn't see it that way.
	And I guess what you have just said will be anathema to them.
	I don't think so.
	You see, Galileo once said that the purpose of science, the purpose of science is to determine how the heavens go.
	The purpose of religion is to determine how to go to heaven.
	So in other words, religion is concerned with ethics, how to be a good person, how to go to heaven, how to be kind to other people and obey the dictates of your religious books.
	But science is about natural law.
	As long as we keep these two distinctions separate, I think there's no problem at all.
	The problem occurs when scientists involved within scientific law, natural law, pontificate about ethics, or when ethicists and religious people pontificate about natural law.
	That's when we get into trouble.
	But when you come up with a theory of everything that tells us how we got here, that comes very much into conflict, doesn't it?
	No, it doesn't.
	You see, Einstein himself was asked this question.
	Is there a conflict?
	And he said, no.
	First of all, he said there really are two kinds of gods.
	One God is the personal God that smites the Philistines, that walks on water.
	He didn't believe there was a personal God that gave you bicycles over Christmas and fulfilled all your wishes and destroyed all your enemies.
	He didn't believe in that personal God, but he did believe in God.
	He believed in the God of order, harmony, beauty, simplicity, elegance, that the universe is so gorgeous, it could not have been an accident.
	And so Einstein was very clear that, yes, he didn't believe in a personal God that grants you your wishes for Christmas, but he did believe in the God of beauty.
	And string theory is the most beautiful theory we have ever proposed in the history of science.
	In hyperspace, in a higher dimension, all the laws of nature come tumbling down into a single coherent theory.
	That is gorgeous.
	And Einstein didn't think it was an accident.
	So how did we get here, do you think?
	Well, we think that there are bubble universes out there, and they sometimes collide, or they sometimes bud into two smaller universes.
	And that's the Big Bang.
	So the next time you take a bubble bath, take two bubbles and join them together, and sometimes they form a bigger bubble.
	Or tweak a bubble, and it fissions into two smaller bubbles.
	And that's what we think happened before creation itself.
	You know, some people say that if you want to make a physicist blush, ask him to discuss God and what happened before the Big Bang.
	Well, now we actually have a theory of what happened before creation itself, and that universes are being created all the time.
	This is called inflationary theory, which is, of course, complementary to string theory.
	And inflationary theory says that there are big bangs happening all the time.
	Somewhere in this universe of ours, another bang has just started.
	Another universe has been created.
	And Genesis is starting in that universe.
	This fits all the cosmological data points.
	It's a lovely thought.
	But if you wind it all the way back to the beginning, where did the first bubble come from?
	Well, what is embarrassing is when people ask the question, well, this is all very nice and good, but where did the theory come from?
	Where did this hyperspatial theory come from?
	And we don't know.
	However, let me say this, that there are two theories of the creation of the universe.
	One is that there was an explosion.
	God said, let there be light.
	The other theory is Buddhism, which says that there is no beginning at all.
	It's timeless nirvana.
	There is no God in this universe.
	So how do you combine these two together?
	The multiverse theory combines these two diametrically opposed theories into a single theory.
	First of all, there was a Big Bang.
	There was a Genesis.
	There was an instant of time when the universe was created.
	That is correct.
	But you see, there are other universes out there, other universes, other bubbles being created in an ocean of nirvana.
	That is 11-dimensional hyperspace.
	Our bubble is a three-dimensional bubble floating in a much higher arena, the arena called hyperspace, which is the title of one of my earlier books, in fact.
	And so it melds together Buddhism and Genesis.
	There was a Genesis.
	There was a Big Bang.
	There was a creation.
	But creations happen all the time someplace in this great multiverse of ours.
	And what is the arena in which it all happens?
	11-dimensional hyperspace, which is the Buddhism's nirvana.
	Now, How fascinating, Michio, because what I take away from that, and I'm not a scientist, I'm somebody who's written and spoken about science, but I'm not a scientist, I'm an arts guy.
	But what I understand from that is that the whole idea of beginnings and endings is our human hang-up.
	That's our concept.
	That's right.
	In fact, Saint Augustine used to wonder, does God have to obey the problem of time?
	Can God be late?
	Can God have to rush across the universe because he's late for an appointment?
	Or is God outside time?
	You see, this theory says that in some sense, God could be outside time.
	Because if you're watching all these bubbles, if you're taking the bubble bath, each bubble has a clock.
	Each bubble has its own time.
	Where are you sitting?
	If you're in the bubble bath looking at bubbles, each of which has a clock, then you are outside time.
	So in some sense, this fulfills the original picture of St. Augustine.
	So is this an explanation, something we've always been looking for?
	Or is this just the best paradigm that we have?
	This is the best paradigm that we have so far.
	Stephen Hawking has said that we're very close to a theory of everything, and the leading candidate for that theory of everything is string theory.
	But we don't know where string theory came from.
	It simply fits the data that we know.
	And it's the best shot that we have to fulfill Einstein's dream of a theory of everything that would allow us to, quote, read the mind of God.
	But the bottom line is you have to prove it.
	And that's why we want to build machines like the Large Hedgehog Collider and even a replacement, a bigger machine called the ILC, the International Linear Collider, which may be built in Japan.
	We're not sure.
	The Japanese government has pledged to fund half of the ILC and asking other nations like the United States to fund the other half.
	But we'll wait and see.
	But the goal of all of this is to find the original beauty, the simplicity, the elegance that Einstein dreamed would dictate the instant of creation itself.
	So in other words, the universe is more gorgeous than we ever thought.
	And the data confirms this picture.
	And I've always been fascinated by the whole idea that scientists shows us that in order to understand the big picture, and the big picture is who are we, how do we get here, and all the rest of it, you have to zero in on the very small picture.
	And the smaller you go, the more you understand.
	That's right.
	We're beginning to realize that the very big and the very small are complementary.
	Quantum theory takes us to the very, very small, smaller than an electron.
	And what came out of quantum theory?
	String theory.
	But string theory, in turn, allows you to wrap up the universe into a bubble.
	And that's where Einstein's theory of relativity comes in, because that's a theory of the very big, that is black holes, big bangs, quasars, and things like that.
	So we have a melding now of the very big and the very small.
	So I find it very pleasing, because otherwise the universe would be split in half, the theory of the big, that is relativity, and the theory of the small, the quantum theory, not talking to each other.
	And I find it hard to believe that the universe could exist with two different minds, two different approaches, two different mathematics.
	I find that very difficult to believe.
	I believe in a single theory, a single coherent theory of everything.
	In the last year, I've spoken to people like Avi Loeb from Harvard University, a very famous space scientist, a couple of times about gravitational waves.
	It seems we have now discovered two bursts of gravitational waves.
	Why are we so excited about this?
	Well, Einstein predicted gravity waves back in 1916, but he gave up ever trying to test it because you could calculate it's very tiny.
	And of course, it takes gigantic detectors miles across, some of the biggest scientific machines ever created on the planet Earth to detect these very faint waves.
	But the next step beyond looking at colliding black holes, which emit gravity waves, is to look at the Big Bang itself.
	We think that the Big Bang, in some sense, is a supercollider like the one we have outside Geneva, Switzerland, except much bigger than Geneva.
	It is the universe itself.
	And so the radiation of the Big Bang, believe it or not, is still circulating around the universe.
	And we hope to put these detectors in outer space in order to detect emissions from the instant of creation itself.
	In other words, we want baby pictures.
	Baby pictures of the infant universes when it emerges from the womb.
	We want to see evidence of the umbilical cord of the baby universe.
	And perhaps the umbilical cord is connected to a parent universe, a multiverse of universes.
	And so we want to have direct evidence of these things rather than simply philosophizing these things at dinner.
	A lot of my listeners have asked me, Michio, to ask you questions about UFOs and aliens, assuming the two of those things are connected.
	Now, if we have a multiverse, then I guess we must have what we would call aliens.
	Well, we have discovered 4,000 planets orbiting other star systems, and we can now take a census of the Milky Way galaxy.
	We now know that on average, every star has some kind of planet going around it, every star.
	And that on average, one out of five or one out of ten of these stars have Earth-like planets going around them.
	So tonight, when you go outside, you'll have to ask the question, is anyone out there?
	And for that matter, is anyone out there wondering, is there life on the planet Earth?
	And so we believe that, yes, there are aliens out there.
	And then the question is, well, why don't they visit us?
	Why don't they land on the White House lawn?
	Why don't they land in downtown London and simply announce their existence?
	Well, of course, there are many, many people who believe that they do regularly visit us, and they've been abducting people and crashing saucers at Roswell and all sorts of things for years.
	Yeah, my attitude is if you get abducted by a flying saucer, for God's sake, steal something.
	I don't care what it is, a paperweight, a paperclip, a book, steal something, because then you'll have scientific, hard proof that you've been abducted by an alien from outer space.
	If you don't steal something, then of course it's just your word Against all the cynics.
	And at that point, nothing can go further.
	So that's why I say that: hey, next time you're abducted by a flying saucer, steal something.
	Now, being in the position that you're in, and you are connected, you do know important people, Michio.
	Have any of those important people tipped you the wink, as we say here in the UK, given you an intimation that perhaps we are indeed not alone?
	Well, everyone I've talked to who are Nobel Prize winners, directors of major laboratories, they all say in their heart of hearts, yes, they're out there, but they don't know whether they have actually visited us.
	But I think they're making a mistake.
	They're assuming that the aliens would be only perhaps 100 years ahead of us.
	A civilization 100 years ahead of us cannot go between stars.
	They would have to be thousands of years ahead of us.
	And that's why I think that these aliens from outer space might be thousands, millions of years ahead of us with the ability to go between stars.
	Right, but still they don't come and show themselves as I feel and as you feel.
	They don't come and show themselves on the White House lawn, which if I was wanting to discover other civilizations and I come from somewhere else, I would do.
	Well, you see, if I'm in a forest, do I want to talk to the squirrels and the deers?
	Maybe initially I want to start a conversation with a chipmunk, but eventually I get bored because they don't talk back to me.
	And so in the same way, if they're out there, we're quite primitive compared to their technology, which is thousands, maybe millions of years ahead of us.
	And perhaps they say to themselves that we're simply too primitive, like a squirrel, like a deer in the forest, in order to establish communications.
	So I think we're going to have to wait a while until we have interstellar travel and we make contact with them.
	Because at the present time, if they're that advanced, that they could travel thousands of light years to reach the Earth, we may have nothing to offer them, which is, of course, very humbling if you think about it.
	What about the UFO movement, though?
	It's very active in America.
	It's extremely active in the UK.
	And there are moves towards so-called disclosure.
	There are people demanding that the authorities come forward and say what they know, if indeed they know anything.
	A lot of people believe in flying sources, don't they?
	Yes, I think the government's biggest enemy is itself.
	For many decades, they would either deny these reports or they would print false reports by themselves in order to deflect away from Area 51.
	Area 51, we now know, was a test site for advanced weapons like the stealth bomber.
	Stealth Bomber had to be tested someplace, but it had to be tested in secrecy.
	And that's where Area 51 comes in.
	The flying wing, the stealth bomber, many experimental designs were experimented there.
	However, the military tried to hide it.
	And that only inflamed the UFO movement because, of course, people love to unveil conspiracies.
	And so I think that in some sense, the government was its own worst enemy, either denying everything where it was obvious there was an Area 51.
	You could see it on Google Maps, for God's sake, or planting false stories of UFOs in order to deflect attention away from Area 51.
	So I think that the military there was, in some sense, its own worst enemy.
	What about traveling to Mars?
	Now, very recently, I had a long conversation with a man you may have met called Bass Landsdorp in Holland, who is the boss of Mars One.
	This is the company that is planning to raise $6 billion to put people on the surface of Mars and colonize the place.
	What do you make of that?
	Well, I think we have to look at the people who are really seriously putting money on the table.
	We cannot go to Mars by selling television rights and movie rights and autographs in order to go to Mars.
	We need to have hard dollars and pounds from people and governments that are willing to do it.
	And we now know there's a game changer.
	Because of NASA's declaration that Mars is the next target, Elon Musk of SpaceX has said that they too want to be part of it.
	And we may eventually have a traffic jam over Mars.
	Not just NASA's SLS booster rocket, but Elon Musk's heavy booster rocket rivals the SLS.
	And believe it or not, Amazon.com has now jumped into the game.
	Mr. Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com has started his own launch pad in Texas, and he wants to go to Mars too.
	So we eventually could have a traffic jam over Mars.
	So it really is a space race.
	It's a space race.
	But there are two ways of looking at it, though.
	And I wonder which one you think is correct.
	One is to send people there like Mars One want to for a no-return mission.
	You basically go there and that's the rest of your life on Mars.
	And NASA is looking at it the other way.
	We're going to have returnable missions.
	I think we should have returnable missions because I think it's going to give bad publicity if we have to have funeral rites on Mars and have to dig graves.
	And it doesn't set a good pattern for future exploration on Mars.
	And so I think we have to do it the way that is being talked about it in aviation magazines by the people who are the real movers and shakers, the people who are putting down the money on the table.
	These are the serious people.
	And that means NASA, SpaceX of Elon Musk, and also Blue Origins of Jeff Bezos.
	These are three very serious players.
	And yeah, they want to go to Mars.
	And the Chinese are not too far behind.
	In 2025, the Chinese want to plant a Chinese flag on the moon.
	And they too have stated that maybe sometime in the 2030s, who knows exactly when, they may send Chinese astronauts to Mars.
	So these are serious players now.
	It's now created, I think, a new golden age.
	A golden age not of hype and public relations and ad campaigns, but a real golden age in terms of booster rockets, in terms of real capsules that are being funded and tested in the laboratories.
	That's the game changer.
	So again, NASA, SpaceX, and Blue Origins, three organizations are now setting their sights onto Mars and they're putting real money, Real money on the table, not simply ad campaigns.
	Is it healthy?
	Is it good?
	Is it right that so many nations then and companies are vying to get to Mars?
	You know, if you create a space race like that, sometimes corners get cut, and that's not a good idea.
	That's true.
	That's why we have to do it safely and with lots of testing.
	And of course, Mars is not a friendly place to go to.
	There's something called the Mars Jinx.
	And the Mars Jinx is that about two-thirds of all the robotic probes that we send to Mars never make it.
	The Russians have had an awful record of sending probes to Mars.
	JPL and NASA has had a better record, but there's still that Mars Jinx.
	And Elon Musk himself has stated that one day he wants to be buried on Mars, but not because he was killed during re-entry.
	And so we want to make sure that we have redundant safety systems to protect our astronauts against radiation, against micrometeorites, against the problems of weightlessness.
	We have to make sure that we test our facilities so we make it safe as possible.
	Because if we have astronauts who die on Mars, that's really bad publicity.
	And that would be a setback, I think, for the space program.
	To begin the colonization of Mars, you have to make Mars inviting.
	You have to make Mars a place where eventually tourists will eventually go to.
	And that's why we have to start off on a good foot.
	We have to make sure that our astronauts come back safely.
	Stephen Hawking has suggested that we need to be looking for other places to exist because we're making such a mess of this one.
	And I guess Mars might be one of those places.
	Do you agree with him?
	I agree with him in the long term, in the sense that on the planet Earth, 99.9% of all life forms eventually go extinct.
	Extinction is the norm.
	If you dig right under your feet and look at all the fossils, you don't recognize any of those fossils.
	All of them, almost 100%, have gone extinct.
	So that is the rule of mother nature, extinction.
	That's the norm.
	Now, the dinosaurs never had a space program.
	That's why they're not here today.
	They're not here today precisely because the dinosaurs never became intelligent, never had a space program, but we do.
	And if we don't want to go the way of the dinosaurs, then we too have to have a real vibrant space program to give us an insurance policy.
	We need Earth 2.0, an insurance policy, because life on the Earth will eventually go extinct.
	In fact, physics, the laws of physics are a death warrant for life on the planet Earth.
	5 billion years from now, the sun will eat up the Earth.
	On a scale of millions of years, we'll have gigantic volcanic eruptions and meteor impacts.
	On a scale of thousands of years, we'll have another ice age.
	And so in other words, the laws of physics mandate a death of life on the Earth unless we leave the Earth itself.
	So there's no ifs, ands, or buts.
	The laws of physics are clear.
	Leave or die.
	Mitrio, why do you think that we went to the moon and then ignored it for so long?
	Well, it costs money to go into space, and the Cold War paid a lot of that.
	And at the height of the Cold War, 5% of the gross domestic product of the United States went into the Apollo program.
	Now, that's astounding.
	Think about that.
	5% of the entire economic activity of a superpower went into the Apollo space program.
	That's unsustainable.
	And so without the winds of the Cold War in the sales of the space program, of course, it's going to evaporate because it costs $10,000 to put a pound of anything into near-Earth orbit.
	That's your weight in gold.
	Think of your body made out of solid gold.
	That's what it costs just to put you in a little orbit around the planet Earth.
	To put you on the moon would cost about $100,000 per pound of payload.
	To put you on Mars costs about $1 million a pound.
	And that means your weight in diamonds.
	So think of your body made out of solid diamonds.
	That's what it costs to put you on Mars.
	So the lesson here is we have to reduce the cost of space travel.
	That's why we went to the moon and never went back after 45 years.
	It simply costs too much.
	Now with Elon Musk and reusable rockets, with new materials, new technology, the price of space travel is going down.
	That's why I think we're entering a new golden age for space exploration after 45 years of spinning wheels around the planet Earth called the space shuttle.
	What do you say to those people?
	And I get emails from them all the time, who some of them claim that we never went to the moon, but a lot of them say we could never actually go into space.
	We can't travel in space beyond the immediate environs of this planet because, for example, of the radiation out there.
	They say that space travel is a lie.
	Well, it is radioactive in outer space.
	Let's be very clear about this.
	And our astronauts have usually just orbited the Earth and never went beyond the protective coating of our atmosphere except during the Apollo space program.
	Radiation levels could be up to 200 times the daily radiation levels here on the planet Earth.
	That means we need shielding.
	And that means that our astronauts may have to live in lava tubes once they go to Mars.
	Lava tubes can be very large, up to 1,000 feet across, and they're leftovers from ancient lava flows of ancient volcanoes.
	They would be excellent Mars bases because they're ready-made and they would protect you against cosmic rays.
	Also on the voyage to Mars, it would take about seven to nine months going to Mars.
	We have to have more shielding.
	Water, for example, is an excellent shield.
	And so already now we're beginning to think of putting our astronauts in a tank of some sort or in a spacesuit with lots of water to protect them from cosmic rays.
	But yes, it is a problem.
	However, these astronauts have signed the release forms.
	They know, they know there are dangers going to Mars and They are voluntarily taking those risks.
	And those people who say that we never went to the moon, it was all done in a movie studio in Pasadena or somewhere, are they simply deluded?
	Well, you know, I get a lot of emails from people that cannot understand the march of science.
	They think aliens must have given us transistors and the internet because all of a sudden, boom, we had the internet almost like magic.
	And of course, it must have been aliens who gave it to us.
	And going to the moon, I mean, come on, give me a break, right?
	They don't understand.
	I'm a scientist.
	They don't understand that if you are a scientist, you know how painful it's been decade after decade struggling to try to perfect a transistor, to try to get the internet off the ground.
	Unfortunately, we scientists are partly to blame because we don't have PR agents.
	We don't have television shows and reality shows telling people how difficult, how painful the march of science is.
	If they could see the painful, slow progress of real science, they would begin to realize, hey, I didn't realize that.
	That of course it's difficult to make the internet.
	Of course, it's difficult to make robots.
	Aliens didn't give us these technologies.
	We did.
	And you have to also realize that even North Korea, a country which is starving to death, they can actually put objects in orbit now.
	And so it's not that hard to go into space.
	It's not that hard to go to the moon.
	The problem is coming back.
	That's the problem.
	That's why it took a superpower, the United States, to go to the moon and come back.
	But going to the moon, I mean, you realize that India, India has now sent a probe that orbits Mars?
	It's simply not that big a deal anymore.
	So for the people who say that we've never been to the moon, I say read up on science.
	Realize that North Korea, India, they can send probes to celestial bodies now.
	It's not that difficult.
	Just very briefly, you mentioned North Korea.
	It's been in the news, of course, in the last week with another missile test.
	Do you believe that they have the technology or they will soon have the technology that might be able to take nuclear missiles further than we currently believe they can?
	And do you think ultimately, and this is pure speculation, they might actually be inclined to do that?
	Well, let's be very clear.
	North Korea launched an ICBM that could, in principle, reach Alaska.
	We don't think they can reach Los Angeles yet, but we think it's only a matter of time.
	But there are other weak links in the chain as well.
	We're not sure that they have mastered the re-entry.
	That is, you need a heat shield and you need gyroscopes to successfully deliver a warhead over thousands of miles on a city that's only a few miles across.
	We don't think they have that technology yet.
	Second of all, miniaturization.
	We're not convinced that they can miniaturize their payloads to fit in the nose cone of these missiles.
	However, these are engineering problems.
	You throw money at them and eventually you'll solve them.
	The wheel has been invented.
	And unfortunately, many people will sell these technologies for money.
	In fact, that's probably how they got the know-how to create the bomb to begin with, because there was a person who sold, sold the blueprints of the atomic bomb by stealing them from the European Union.
	And so I take no doubt that by the end of this decade, they will have many of the pieces of this jigsaw puzzle put together.
	The miniaturization of the warhead, an ICBM that could reach Los Angeles and hit a city, but because it has gyroscopes that can survive the reentry problem.
	So I think we have to get real about this.
	We can't simply ignore what the North Koreans are doing anymore.
	Right.
	So any technical questions, the answers are probably yes.
	And the rest of it is all down to politics and diplomacy.
	Right.
	And I think to understand the North Koreans mentally, you have to think of a cornered animal.
	A cornered animal will act irrationally.
	But of course, it's quite rational what a cornered animal tries to do.
	A cornered animal tries to act mad, tries to act irrational, and tries to convince you that it will do all sorts of crazy things just if you will go away.
	That's the very sane position of irrationality exhibited by a cornered animal.
	And so the North Koreans do not have the cards.
	The West has all the cards, but the North Koreans are playing their hand quite well.
	And that's why it's a poker game, but a poker game played by people who are not stupid.
	They're not crazy.
	They're mad.
	They're just a cornered animal.
	And that's why it's potentially unstable and dangerous, precisely because they're paranoid.
	Right.
	Well, that's a situation to watch.
	And I know it's not science, but it's definitely humanity.
	Let's talk about the future.
	You say that you are a futurist, and certainly in our last conversation, we talked about the future.
	Let's talk about the huge advances there have been in robotics and artificial intelligence.
	Do you believe that now we are very close to the age where robots will take over many of the functions that we now have?
	Well, I think robots will immediately start to take over the three D's, dirty, dull, dangerous jobs.
	Jobs that are repetitive, jobs that involve working with the sewer system, diffusing explosives, jobs that are mind-numbingly repetitive.
	So dirty, dull, dangerous jobs.
	That's where robots come into the picture.
	And eventually, I think the robotics industry will be bigger than the automobile industry.
	We'll have an entire industry that services them, repairs them, designs them, monitors them, and creates new generations of robots.
	But I don't think they're going to take over anytime soon.
	Our most advanced robot is called Azimo, built in Japan.
	And Azimo can run, walk, climb upstairs, give you coffee.
	But Azimo has the intelligence of a cockroach.
	Even an insect has more intelligence than Azimo the robot.
	However, let's be real.
	I think that in the coming decades, robots will become as smart as a mouse, then as smart as a rat, then as smart as a rabbit, and perhaps later in the century, as Smart as a dog, a cat, and eventually as smart as a monkey.
	At that point, let's face it, they could become dangerous.
	They'll become self-aware.
	They'll realize that we are not monkeys, and we should put a chip in their brain to shut them off if they have murderous thoughts.
	We need a fail-safe system, not today, not tomorrow, but at some point in the future, when our robots become self-aware, then we should put a chip in their brain, a fail-safe system to shut them off.
	But in the meantime, we're delegating all sorts of tasks to robotics.
	And those tasks and the things that robots do have a real human impact on people and their jobs.
	And it seems to me, and maybe I'm wrong, that politicians both sides of the Atlantic are not being totally honest with us about the impact that is going to have sooner than we think.
	Right.
	Let's take a look at the jobs that are going to be obliterated and the jobs that are going to be going to flourish.
	First of all, the jobs that are doomed are repetitive jobs.
	Jobs that simply involve the same mechanical motion all over again, time after time, like seamstress work, for example, while putting together automobiles.
	And also in the middle class, middle level jobs, like stockbrokers, for example, no longer can sell stock because in the future you'll buy stock on your wristwatch or the internet will be in your contact lens.
	You'll simply blink and buy whatever stock you want because the internet will be inside your contact lens.
	So stockbrokers are going to have to offer something that robots cannot offer.
	And that is savvy, experience, knowledge, innovation, creativity.
	Robots can't do any of the above.
	And that's why you go to a stockbroker today.
	You don't go to a stockbroker to buy stock anymore because you can do that on your wristwatch.
	You go to the stockbroker because you want his experience, his savvy, his imagination, his ability to see the future of the market.
	That's why you go to see people like stockbrokers.
	Now, take a look at a gardener.
	A gardener is semi-skilled.
	Every garden is different.
	Robots can't do that because robots can only do repetitive work.
	And that's why gardeners, garbage men, policemen, construction workers, they'll have jobs because they're semi-skilled.
	And robots cannot solve a crime.
	Robots cannot pick up garbage.
	Robots cannot design a landscape garden.
	These are things way beyond the capability of robots.
	Remember, robots are adding machines.
	They add millions of times faster than us, giving us the illusion they are thinking and that they're creative and they're self-aware.
	Wrong.
	They are not self-aware.
	They're simply doing repetitive work millions of times faster than your brain.
	But your brain can be creative, innovative.
	It has experience, knowledge, know-how, savvy.
	Robots don't have any of that.
	But how do we plan for an economy where a lot of jobs are done by robots?
	What do we do?
	Well, first of all, many people wonder, how do you explain the rise of Donald Trump?
	It's actually technology, because technology is globalizing and automating certain kinds of jobs.
	And therefore, we have to educate.
	We have to educate workers so that they can be trained for the jobs of the future.
	Unfortunately, our educational system graduates young students to work very well in the year 1950.
	The only trouble is we don't live in 1950, but our college system prepares you to live in the world of 1950.
	Our school system does not prepare you to do social media, to do the internet, to work with MRI machines.
	All the wonders of technology are not taught at our universities.
	So education has to be upgraded.
	And second, we have to create industries of the future.
	For example, biotech.
	The population of the world is aging very rapidly, especially in Japan and Europe.
	And we have to create new biotech industries and robots that can handle, for example, nursing jobs.
	We have to create new industries in biotechnology, for example, and nanotechnology.
	And so that's what we should do, because otherwise globalization and automation will create large numbers of unemployed workers, and these unemployed workers vote.
	But it's already beginning to happen.
	And how do we look after those people?
	Do you buy into the idea, as some people do?
	I know it's very big in Scandinavia as a notion of paying everybody a single living wage so that nobody starves in this new high-tech world?
	Well, I think we have to be careful there because if we get too dependent, then we may have a permanent underclass of people who are simply used to living on other people's dime.
	For example, in Japan, there's something called the otaku.
	The otaku are people who are unemployed because they don't have the skills to be part of the new economy.
	They stay at home and they shut the door and they play video games.
	There are thousands of these people.
	The mothers leave them food in the morning and pick up the dishes at night and they just spend their whole life just playing video games.
	Now, I don't think we want that.
	I don't think we want an international otaku class of shut-ins and people who shut the door and close the lights and play video games all the time.
	So how do we prevent that?
	Pardon?
	How do we prevent that?
	By A, educating them, by getting them scholarships or whatever, to put them back in college so they can be retrained to use the internet.
	They'll be fluent in biotechnology and nanotechnology, the jobs of the future rather than jobs of the past.
	And then governments, governments should subsidize entrepreneurs, lower their tax rate, for example, so they can create jobs involving nanotechnology and robotics and biotechnology.
	You have to jumpstart the high-tech sector so that they can accommodate many of these kinds of jobs.
	And like I said, semi-skilled jobs will not be replaced.
	Robots cannot fix your toilet.
	Robots cannot pick up garbage.
	There are many things that robots cannot do for a long time.
	However, certain jobs, as I mentioned, will be obliterated.
	If you work for a law firm, lawyers will have jobs because you have to argue before a jury, argue before a judge.
	Robots cannot do that.
	Robots cannot interact with humans very well.
	But on the other hand, paralegals, people who simply look up previous cases in a law book, those jobs could be eliminated because robots are very good at search engines.
	And so there's certain kinds of jobs that will be obliterated.
	Jobs that are repetitive, jobs that involve things like inventory, bean counting, and taking care, and search engines, those jobs will be eliminated.
	But jobs that involve common sense, pattern recognition, human interactions, those three category of jobs will flourish in the future.
	Fine.
	In this new world, Michio, and I'm excited by the prospect of the new world, don't get me wrong, but will there be a place for artists?
	Will there be a place for composers, thinkers in this new world?
	Definitely.
	As Tony Blair likes to say, England derives more revenue from rock and roll than the coal mining industry.
	Coal mining involves commodities.
	Commodities prices fluctuate, but in general, they fall.
	However, creativity, imagination, artwork cannot be done by robots.
	Robots can copy, of course, but they cannot create new imaginative works of art.
	And therefore, we will have a flourishing of the arts because robots cannot become your matinee idol.
	They cannot make the next Hollywood blockbuster film because robots can do repetitive things very well.
	And so I think the arts is what is called intellectual capital.
	So we're witnessing a transition from commodity capital away from commodity capital like agriculture and putting a premium on intellectual capital, like things that are creative, things that involve experience, things that require human interactions.
	That's called intellectual capital.
	And intellectual capital will be the currency of the future.
	For example, this morning you had breakfast that the king of England could not have had 100 years ago.
	Think of what you had for breakfast.
	Almost for nothing delicacies from around the world.
	The king of England couldn't do that.
	Queen Isabella sent Columbus on a dangerous mission just to find paprika and spices from China and India.
	You get them almost for free at your local store now.
	That's how cheap commodities have become.
	Mind you, I'm not sure that the King of England would have wanted Cheerios, but that's a whole other story.
	Yes.
	But that's why products of the mind will be the currency of the future.
	So, Michio, you're very optimistic about the future.
	I talk to a lot of people who are very gloomy about the future and giving us dire warnings that we're going to destroy the planet.
	And if we don't destroy the planet, we'll have our jobs and livelihoods taken from us first.
	You don't think that way at all?
	No, I think we're witnessing a period of transition.
	For example, when the automobile first came, many people were afraid of the automobile.
	It made lots of noise.
	It was involved in car accidents.
	They exploded with gasoline.
	And they thought horses, horses were so stable and kind and horses we would have forever.
	Wrong.
	We now have automobiles everywhere.
	But we don't cry about it either because we know how convenient automobiles are.
	Well, robots are coming too.
	We shouldn't fear them.
	We should understand them.
	We should understand that robots cannot pick up garbage.
	Robots cannot engage you in a conversation.
	Robots cannot be a construction worker because every construction site is different.
	Robots can do dirty, dull, dangerous jobs, the 3Ds.
	But jobs that involve imagination, human interaction, artistic abilities like gardening or creating a song, robots can't do any of those things.
	So we shouldn't fear these technologies.
	We should embrace them and realize they're going to open up new jobs.
	I think that the robotics industry will be bigger than the automobile industry today.
	And think of how many people are employed by the automobile industry.
	People who are going to have to maintain robots, repair them, design them, create new robots.
	There are going to be thousands of new jobs opening up to service the robotics industry.
	But Michio, when you or I were kids, I'm sure you got annuals over there like I got annuals, you know, those books you would get given for Christmas.
	And some of the annuals that I got would tell wonderful tales of how not only would we be going to all the planets and we'd be traveling through space by the time we got to 2017, but also we'd live in a world where we wouldn't have to work too much, where there would be a great deal of leisure, where, you know, we would have time to enjoy ourselves on a scale that we couldn't have imagined decades ago.
	A lot of that stuff simply hasn't happened.
	Well, yes and no.
	If you were to talk to our grandparents in the year, let's say 1900, and you were to say to them that their grandkids would have airplanes that can take them right across continents, internet could send images around the world in fraction of a second, that we would have bombs that could destroy entire cities, our grandparents would say that that's nonsense, that that's the work of sorcery.
	Wizards, only wizards can create something that can create magic mirrors that would give us instantaneous knowledge for free.
	Well, we are that generation of wizards now, but if you take a look at our descendants, our grandkids in the year 2100, how will we view our descendants of the year 2100?
	We would think of them as Greek gods.
	Venus, for example, was immortal and had a perfect body.
	Apollo was a sun god, infinite energy from the sun.
	Zeus could mentally make wishes come true.
	We will have that when we access the human brain and connect the brain to computers.
	Pegasus was a horse with wings that we can in the future design genetically and create zoos of imaginary animals.
	And so we would think that our descendants would have the power of Greek gods.
	However, at any given time, you have the chaos of transition.
	And that means that, yes, certain jobs will be obliterated.
	We don't have blacksmiths anymore.
	We don't have wagon makers anymore.
	But we don't cry about that either because new jobs were opened up.
	So I think instead of complaining about the gradual loss of jobs, we should be focused On the jobs of the future, the jobs of things that robots cannot perform, the jobs that involve intellectual capital rather than commodity capital.
	We should be talking about those things rather than crying for jobs that are never going to come back.
	You and I love technology.
	I am immersed in it.
	I love the idea that at this stage in the game of my life, when I was a kid, I used to try and listen to American radio stations by staying up very late at night.
	And you could just about hear New York through the static at about two o'clock in the morning in Liverpool.
	Very exciting to me.
	Now I can listen to New York any damn time I want.
	It is an amazing world that we're in now, but the problem is so many people are so enmeshed and immersed in technology that they can't see the wood for the trees, Michio, that they are so connected that they don't know what it is to relax.
	They don't know what it is to walk in the forest.
	They're not interested in looking at the scenery.
	They're more interested in looking at the screen.
	Is that a problem and should we be addressing it if it is?
	Well, yes, mothers and parents come up to me and they say that their kids are addicted to the internet and their iPhones and what should we do about it?
	First of all, we have to realize that a new social etiquette is being created.
	When the telephone was introduced in the last century, many people denounced the telephone.
	They called it a work of Satan, in fact, because instead of talking to people, you'll talk to this disembodied voice in the ether.
	And we're not going to have person-to-person discussions so much.
	Well, the critics were right.
	We do spend too much time on the telephone.
	We do talk to this disembodied voice in the ether, and we love it.
	And so I tell parents, first of all, relax.
	Second, a new social etiquette is being created.
	If you're a teenager and you're not on the internet, you don't exist.
	You're not even on the radar screen.
	You have to be there because a new social etiquette is being created, just like for the telephone.
	We have a new social etiquette.
	How many days before you call back somebody?
	How do you end phone calls?
	How do you initiate phone calls?
	A new etiquette was created 100 years ago and a new etiquette is being created now.
	However, the bottom line is kids have to be socially integrated.
	They have to learn social skills.
	And the computer will be part of their arsenal of social skills that teenagers will have to master.
	But that means direct peer-to-peer contact because peers have to understand how to deal with people of their own age.
	But that's an issue, isn't it?
	If your mother is watching the Kardashians and constantly on her email, where are you getting taught those things?
	Well, I think that the iPhone has an off button and we don't use it often enough.
	And at some point, we should exercise our index finger to hit the off button and put the iPhone aside and engage in social skills.
	Because of course, in the future, you're going to have to have internet skills.
	We're going to have to be fluent in all the lingo of the internet.
	But second of all, we're also going to have to know how to talk to people, how to make a conversation, how to flatter people, how to ingratiate yourself, how to draw lines of demarcation.
	All the social etiquette of interaction face to face will have to be learned.
	So I tell parents, A, relax.
	B, yes, you can allow your kids certain number of hours to be on the internet and have social skills on the internet.
	But C, most important, they have to know social skills, basic social skills of being a teenager.
	Right.
	Boy, well, that's a big task for somebody.
	How are we going to do that?
	We're going to do that through governments.
	Are we going to legislate about that?
	How do we make that happen?
	Well, unfortunately, a lot of parents are confused because we're the first generation, we're the internet generation, in fact, to have to deal with all these new forms of social etiquette and things like that.
	So we're the pioneers.
	We're the guinea pigs.
	But I think at this point, a little common sense is required because, of course, one of the ways to get ahead is not just IQ, but EQ, emotional maturity.
	And of course, emotional maturity means being able to interact socially with people of your own age group and your own background.
	And so I think we're just going to have to play by ear.
	There are no manuals about how to use the internet.
	Kids are going to have to learn by themselves, but parents are going to have to take an interest in it.
	And they're going to have to make sure that their kids are fluent online and offline.
	In some sense, teenagers have to be bilingual.
	They have to know the lingo of the internet, and they'll have to know the lingo of how to get a date, how to talk to people, how to talk to your teacher.
	The kinds of things that you're going to have to pick up on your own.
	So I think you're saying that because we are pioneers, the bloom is going to go off this rose a bit.
	We won't be quite so transfixed by it all in the future, and everything will balance out in the next generation.
	That's right.
	Our children will say, what?
	You didn't know how to use the internet?
	What's wrong with you?
	Just like we would tell our parents, what?
	You didn't understand the television.
	You didn't understand typewriters.
	So every generation is going to be fluent in the technology of that era.
	So we're the guinea pigs.
	We're the internet generation getting used to iPhones, getting used to social media, getting used to a whole new language.
	But our kids, our kids are going to say, what?
	You're a dinosaur.
	You don't know how to navigate the internet.
	You don't know how to use social media.
	What's wrong with you?
	How could you grow up not knowing these things?
	And so I think that every generation will absorb these technologies and they'll be considered ordinary in the future.
	They'll be considered the norm.
	That's very heartening.
	And I'm sure that's in my heart.
	I feel that's the way things will go because that is the way of history.
	Just a question about the Internet, Riccio, to end this.
	And thank you very much for giving me this time.
	You are a fascinating man to talk with.
	The Internet is a great empowere.
	My first computer, I got it 20 years ago.
	It cost me more than a month's salary.
	I spent a year paying for it.
	It had a clunky 28 dial-up connection that went whenever I wanted to dial up and connect.
	But it brought the world to me.
	Now, of course, I have super fast broadband, but the internet has problems.
	There are bad guys out there who want to try and steal from us, who want to try and attack corporations and governments, use it as a tool of warfare.
	And there are people now who are speculating that the internet itself may ultimately become unviable for those reasons.
	What do you think?
	Well, I think the internet itself exaggerates and amplifies human behavior.
	So we cannot blame the internet for accelerating and amplifying human behavior.
	And let's face it, a certain fraction of Homo sapiens are criminals.
	As a consequence, the internet did not create criminals.
	It simply amplifies and enhances what is existing in human nature.
	By the way, since we're winding up, let me also say that the future of the internet, I think, is something that I call brain net.
	We can now record memories for the first time in history in mice and also apes.
	We're going to do it with Alzheimer's patients so that they can upload simple memories rather than wandering around the streets not knowing who they are, where they live.
	And in the future, the internet will be able to upload memories as well.
	And so the internet, I think, will become BrainNet.
	We'll be able to have emotions, feelings, memories uploaded on the internet.
	And that's going to change everything.
	For example, the movies.
	Entertainment is nothing but a flat screen with sound.
	That's it.
	That hasn't changed for almost 100 years.
	A flat screen and sound.
	However, in the future, in the future, you'll have emotions, feelings.
	And that's going to replace the movies.
	We'll really have feelees instead of movies.
	And teenagers, of course, will love it.
	Teenagers have to put those funny, squiggly signs at the end of every sentence to convey their emotion.
	But in the future, teenagers will upload memories of their senior prom, their first kiss, their first date on the internet.
	So teenagers will go crazy once they can start to put memories and feelings on the internet.
	Doesn't that mean that the dividing line, Mimichi?
	Sorry to interrupt, the dividing line between what is real and what is not is going to get blurred.
	That's right.
	And remember, we can do this now in animals, in mice, and also in apes.
	We've been successful in recording a memory and uploading it.
	This was done in North Carolina and also in Los Angeles.
	But in the future, we'll have perhaps the memory of your vacation that you never had uploaded.
	Of course, that is science fiction, but it's not out of the question that we'll be able to upload mathematics on the internet so that you can learn calculus without having to struggle with the final exam.
	Now, that, of course, is still science fiction.
	But it does mean that once we have brain net, perhaps barriers between peoples can also be overcome because you'll feel the pain, the real pain of people that have been really injured.
	Right now, we can barely empathize with people from other countries if they have grievances, but you'll be able to feel what they feel.
	And so I think that it could reduce barriers between peoples once we have a brain net which takes feelings and emotions and puts them on the internet, not just for entertainment, but also for understanding between nations.
	And instead of throwing people in prison for crime, I guess you could upload to the perpetrator of a crime the consequences of that crime.
	Yeah, and parents, instead of lecturing their kids about drunk driving and taking drugs, could be able to upload the memory of a traffic accident and what happens when people get killed and died because people drank so much.
	And so I think that lessons of life can be imparted once we have a brain net and kids can learn much faster rather than being lectured to by their parents.
	I read, and very finely, Michio, I read recently, and you may have read this article too, there is some research being done, I think it might be somewhere in Scandinavia, I'm not sure, but wherever it's being done, that suggests that some people who die, and it's not all of them, it's about a tenth, I think, but there is brain activity that's been monitored 10 minutes after what we would have called death.
	Did that surprise you, or do you think that we have a lot to learn about the process of dying and what happens after it?
	No, it doesn't surprise me at all because of the fact that the concept of death is what humans, humans impose upon reality and Mother Nature.
	And Mother Nature tells us that usually nothing is ever clean.
	So death takes place in stages.
	And so we're beginning to understand that, for example, brain death is something that our ancestors would have considered nonsense.
	But now we have EKG scans, EEG scans that allow us to see neural activity.
	And now we have MRI that could even detect finer details of brain activity, even if a person is so-called dead.
	However, let me say something about afterlife experiences and seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.
	I don't believe that these people have really experienced near-death experiences.
	The United States Air Force puts pilots in a centrifuge and drains blood out of their brain in order to simulate coming out of a nosedive.
	And the pilots uniformly said that as they lose consciousness going into a nosedive, they would see a light at the end of the tunnel.
	So the Air Force was intrigued.
	They studied it, and they found that the blood drains from the brain as you go through a dive on a jet airplane.
	And the peripheral vision, the outside of your retina, starts to lose blood so that all the light is concentrated toward the center.
	That's the light at the end of the tunnel.
	So the light at the end of the tunnel is not heaven.
	It's simply an illusion created by blood flow being lost in the brain as you enter a nosedive or as you encounter death.
	And that accounts for all these bestsellers claiming that they have seen heaven.
	It's not heaven that they've seen at all.
	It's nothing but blood flow in the brain as blood leaves the brain.
	Do you believe that there is a life after this one?
	I would hope so, but I'm a scientist.
	I believe in things that are reproducible, testable, and falsifiable.
	And unfortunately, so far, we've seen no one that can give us an accurate account of heaven.
	Now, that's not to say it's not possible.
	It's just that we haven't seen a testable, falsifiable, reproducible accounting of what happens when after you die.
	I've really enjoyed our conversation, Michio.
	I hope we can repeat this at some point.
	What are you working on at the moment?
	I'm working on a new book coming out early next year.
	It'll be published in the UK as well.
	It's called The Future of Humanity.
	And I personally believe that our future is to go into outer space, begin the colonization of other worlds, to become immortal, in fact, and to begin the process of exploring worlds that we can only dream of today.
	So the first half of it talks about Mars, talks about Titan, talks about Europa, talks about exploring the solar system.
	But the second half goes even beyond that and talks about aliens from outer space, talks about what happens when we go to the stars.
	I can't wait to see it, and I hope you will speak to me when the book is out, Michio.
	And thank you for giving me this time.
	I've thoroughly enjoyed it.
	If people want to know more about you, you know, there may be some people in the UK who, you know, this is the first time perhaps they've heard you.
	Is there a place where they can go?
	Do you have a website?
	Yes, it's mkaku, mkaku.org.
	Also, I have a Facebook site.
	We have 3 million fans on Facebook.
	Wow.
	We have half a million fans on Twitter.
	Boy.
	Well, that's going, Sam.
	So you're definitely got both feet in that world of technology, this modern world of the internet and all the rest of it, Michio.
	Thank you so much.
	We will talk again and have a great day.
	Let's do it again.
	Thank you, Michio.
	Remarkable popularizer of all things scientific.
	And always a pleasure to catch up with Dr. Michio Kaku.
	Hopefully it won't be 11 or 12 years next time, though.
	Thank you very much to him for making time in his schedule to talk with us here.
	Your feedback on this show and all of my shows, always gratefully received.
	If you want to go to the website, theunexplained.tv, you can follow the link and send me an email from there.
	Let me know what you think about the shows, how we should be handling them in future, anything you would like to say, always gratefully received here.
	More big guests coming up.
	We've got a special with David Paul Leidas very soon.
	My fingers are crossed for that.
	And some other great topics here at the Home of the Unexplained.
	So until next we meet, my name is Howard Hughes.
	I am in London.
	This has been The Unexplained and please stay safe.
	Please stay calm.
	And above all, please stay in touch.
	Thank you.
	Take care.

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