Physics of the Impossible by Michio Kaku

I love this book because it helps me believe in one of my biggest passions – space travel. After I had taken a class in Astronomy in junior high school, I wanted to be an astronaut. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be because I suffer from motion sickness.

In the previous book review (On the Wings of Eagles), I’ve mentioned that Michio Kaku is one of those people I want to meet and talk to, just for a while, because I find them fascinating. Well, the reason I want to meet him is because he has the uncanny ability to transform incredibly esoteric and hard to understand information to something quite accessible and easy to digest. Such is the case with this book.

I am curious by nature. I want to know about everything, albeit salt or germs or black holes or dark matter. And this book answers my questions in spades. Whether it’s about force fields or invisibility or perpetual-motion machine or precognition, this book answers all. The best thing about it is that the answers are anchored in science, and he gives his best guess time frame for them to become a reality.

As for accessibility and easy to digest part, my ten-year-old son, who is an advanced, precocious reader, and has been very interested in science, read this book. Yes. He did have trouble understanding parts of it, and I tried to explain things to him more in detail (most of it, I had failed). However, the important point is that he did finish the book, and said he thought it was interesting. This is a feat for any writer, let alone a science book writer.

This book helps me believe the possibility in things that are deemed impossible. He does frame some of them in very, very long time (might as well be impossible), but he gives us a realistic time frame. That’s the point I appreciate.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in a long list of topics that seem to skirt the science fiction side of science (phasers and death stars, teleportation, telepathy, psychokinesis, robots, ETs and UFOs, starships, anti-matter and anti-universe, faster than light, time travel, and parallel universe, etc.). I’m not sure I’d recommend it to another ten-year-old, but you’d know if that child is ready for this or not, so I’ll leave that to you.

Enjoy and may the force be with you!