After supper tonight, finished reading Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku. It was a light, yet interesting read.
I was given the book by a friend as a birthday present and have been nibbling away at it for a few weeks now. The book is laid out in small sections. This makes the book conducive to my preferred method of reading non-fiction, namely, I read something interesting and the spend the rest of the night surfing through wikipedia and web at large getting more and more background information. Yes, my brain runs on Web 2.0 tech. :)
The book addresses three categories of impossibilities:
The first are those that are currently technologically impossible, but are by no means against the known laws of physics. These include things like transportation, artificial intelligence and near light speed travel.
The second category are those that are possible with some reasonable modification of physics as we know it now, but are beyond the reach of our technology and likely will be for some time. Included in this category would be faster than light travel and travel to other dimensions or universes.
The last category are those impossibilities that will likely always be impossible. This section mostly deals with perpetual motion machines, though even here there are cracks in the absoluteness of the impossibility.
The book started out a bit slow and I never felt like any section held the depth that I wanted. However, this is a common problem for me and is what results in my previously described reading method. The book is certainly accessible to anyone that stayed moderately awake in their high school science classes.
One bright spot in the book was when Kaku talked about decoherence and the cosmological implications of quantum mechanics. This has always been a fuzzy area of science for me, and indeed for pretty much everyone. However, Kaku's descriptions of current theory led me on some wonderful web surfing and I feel like I have a bit more of a grasp on these concepts now.
All in all, I felt this was a worthwhile read. The book provides an interesting introduction to current theory in physics, chemistry, material science and information science. (In many ways it reminds me of a book I read a decade ago called The Physics of Star Trek) Readers with a higher level of scientific literacy will find it light on details, but still an enjoyable read.
