Reddit Reddit reviews Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel

We found 14 Reddit comments about Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel
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14 Reddit comments about Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel:

u/emp733 · 10 pointsr/scifi

not so much.. sometimes, and perhaps even often so. One of the appeals, however, for star trek has always been the early attempts to strive for believability. The early writers were in constant contact w/ the cutting edge sciences, trying to line up their stories w/ where science looked like it could go one day.

I'm getting this from Michio Kaku's "The Physics of the Impossible". It was a fascinating and fun read.. In it, he made note many times concerning Star Trek's attempts to stay relevant to the sciences they portrayed. Thought you may like to know

This is the book. Check it out if you get a chance!

u/xenomouse · 5 pointsr/nanowrimo

If you haven't discovered it already, check out Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku. It explains things like force fields and interstellar travel (as well as weirder shit like time travel and antimatter engines) in terms of actual theoretical physics, but is written in a way that is easy for non-experts to understand. I've read that he kept getting letters from sci-fi writers wanting him to explain this stuff to them, and that's what led him to write this book.

u/SplatterSack · 2 pointsr/science

Physics of the Impossible -Dr. Michio Kaku is a fantastic read.

u/roontish12 · 1 pointr/askscience

You should pick up and read Physics of the Impossible:A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel

There is a chapter dedicated to how to create a plausible light saber, as well as things like force fields etc that we see in popular sci fi.

u/Supervisor194 · 1 pointr/WTF

I found it on Amazon. Can't imagine why Borders is shutting down. :I

u/tonusbonus · 1 pointr/science

I understand what you're saying, but I feel like you're intentionally trying to not understand what I'm saying.

To tell me that all cars look the same because "function dictates form" is very near sighted. Of course, function does dictate form, but that doesn't have anything to do with what we're talking about. If you were to show Ford a picture of a 2016 Ford Explorer and he said, "Nah, function dictates form, this is the way they should look because function dictates form." You'd laugh at him. Just like if someone from 200 years in the future came and said "Your car is nice, but why don't you think about doing it this way?" You wouldn't tell that person "Function dictates form." You'd say, "Holy shit, I didn't know you could do that!"

You should check out Michio Kaku's book: Physics of the Impossible.

It basically talks about how the laws of physics don't change, but our understanding of them does. What we're able to do now, if you would have shown someone 300 years ago, they would have told you it was magic. Because to them, and their current understanding of physics it would have been magic. We know now that it is simply reasonable that you could have moving pictures on a hunk of metal in your pocket, or whatever.

"Our technology is getting closer and closer to an organic merger." And it is. What I meant by that is not that we've used technology to be better at raising crops, but that the electronics and circuits will become merged with organic things. I wasn't as clear as I could have been there. I'm thinking about how close we are to hooking our nervous system up with a fully functioning prosthetic limb and have your brain signals control the limb. We're practically already there, but only in infancy. "Once we're able to grow our circuits and such" so then as we're able to grow circuitry and meld the biological with the technological soon we'll be able to record video with our eyes as the lens, or any number of "magical" things. To us now, it seems like magic, but in the future it will be standard issue. This is what I meant, not that biological things would be faster than, or smaller than, but the two can come together and create things we have yet to dream up.

""Manipulate matter on an atomic scale" is, again, technology is magic - even worse, really." I have to believe you've heard about nano-technology. Its only the biggest explosion in scientific research in the modern age. We already are building things at the atomic scale. This is really the future, and if it sounds like magic to you then you're holding yourself back. Once we get the control of building things at the atomic scale, all bets are off on how things will look.

And you know I didn't mean that everything will look different.
There are certain elements to anything that if changed would change the item itself, that is obvious. A knife needs to have a sharp edge. That's the only defining part of a knife. You can make it look a million different ways, but if you take away the sharp edge it obviously is no longer a knife. But if I have a micro-blade embedded in my thumb that I can extend or retract by just thinking about it because I grew circuits and had a motor built out of several atoms you'd probably call that magic. Doesn't look like a knife that you know of, but by gawd it's still a knife, and I'm a magician.

u/illusion58 · 1 pointr/IAmA

Loved your book Physics of the Impossible. I am currently in my second year as a Materials Engineering student. In your opinion what is the most interesting new material being developed right now?

u/zombiedad · 1 pointr/AskReddit
u/wildcard_bitches · 1 pointr/AskReddit

I've never studied Physics beyond high school but I have the same interest as you. A few of the books I've read that might interest you include:

You Are Here - Christopher Potter

Physics of the Impossible - Michio Kaku

A Briefer History of Time - Hawking, really easy to read version

There was another one along the same lines I read recently that was pretty good too. If I remember it I'll list it later.

u/FerralWombat · 1 pointr/TrueAtheism
u/digitalyss · 1 pointr/Random_Acts_Of_Amazon

I love shopping for people! I still don't know too many people around here, but /u/AlySedai is awesome because she can quote Homestarrunner. I would totally buy her Michio Kaku's Physics of the Impossible because I've been reading all sorts of ridiculous crap about dimensional physics today, and found this serendipitous. I also own this book and it is great and I am a fan of Michio Kaku's hair.

u/Sonmi-452 · 1 pointr/askscience

First of all, OP is definitely talking about terraforming - for what other reason would humanity attempt to create an artificial atmosphere?


> As far as the technology, it is just a matter of scale and materials engineering to build large enough generators.

Seriously? This simply isn't true.

>so there is no point in doing the math at this time.

Actually, the math dealing with volume of gases involved and amount of energy in the total system are hugely relevant in terms of human scale vs. planetary scale.

The thing is - your argument is arbitrary as hell no matter how much you write. There's nothing wrong with thought experiments. But there's a difference between those born in good theory and daydreams. The fact is that this technology may never be developed and may be impossible. It is certainly WELL beyond the range of human endeavors and will remain so for a very long time, more on the 10,000-100,0000 year scale, if ever. You speak of it as an inevitability, which it isn't.

Have a look at Dr. Kaku's book, Physics of the Impossible, for a good speculative overview of technological advancement in regards to energy manipulation and generation. I think you'll have a better appreciation of the scales involved after reading it (though he doesn't mention terraforming specifically, if I recall.)

u/toapat · 0 pointsr/whowouldwin

Both of These links are referencing the same book that Michio Kaku wrote talking about forcefields not as a replacement for armor but as a specific type of armor against Ionizing radiation, which would require as much power input IRL as some of the most power hungry world powers consume in a day to get the extreme end performance displayed in science fiction.

Im not invalidating Master Chief's Neural surgery which in reality would not enhance his reaction times even if you could replace someone's entire neurological system with a mechanical variant, or the fact that most of his skeleton was replaced while allowing him to still undergo military exercise rather than being crippled for life and mentally crippled by Anti-rejection drug dependency. Im denying Magic Energy shielding working on an entire class of weaponry because it does not create effects that would impede Kinetic weapons.