Physics of the Impossible : A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel by Michio Kaku  copyright 2008 by Michio Kaku published in the US by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

Overview of entire book

Basically, Kaku goes through main themes in SF, like force fields and time travel, and addresses the plausibility’s of them with respect to our current understanding of physics. He gives an estimate for how “impossible” the science ”fiction” is while maintaining the idea that years ago scientists would think things like lasers were impossible.

Ever since he was a child, Kaku has been obsessed with possibilities that present themselves in SF and Fantasy. From watching Flash Gordon reruns he knew that his future was going to be tied in with science. He states that many well known and well established scientists became inspired to do what they did because of SF. He mentions Edwin Hubble and Carl Sagan as examples.

Latter he says that “I came to realize that these tales were simply impossible in terms of the science involved, just flights of the imagination. Growing up meant putting away such fantasy. In real life, I was told, one had to abandon the impossible and embrace the practical.”

When he became a physicist he learned that “impossible” is only a relative term.  He uses examples of moving plate tectonics and the meteor that most likely killed the dinosaurs as being thought as “impossible” at one time, but now we know the science behind it. He goes on to ask if super advanced technology would seem like “magic” to those who do not have it. He goes on to say that the reason why many things like heavier than air flight, atomic power, and even fax machines where thought to be science fiction at one point is because of the “ gaps in the understanding of science at the time.”

Kaku quotes Sir William Osler in saying “The philosophies of one age have become the absurdities of the next, and the foolishness of yesterday has become the wisdom of tomorrow.”

Kaku divides impossibilities into three classes and then discusses the science and possibilities of each. For purposes of the length of the summary the discussions of the individual cases are not provided here.

Class I Impossibilities: Impossibilities are currently “impossible” but do not violate the laws of science and could be realized in this century.

• Force Fields
• Invisibility
• Phasers and Death Stars
• Teleportation
• Telepathy
• Psycho kinesis
• Robots
• Extraterrestrials and UFOs
• Starships
• Antimatter and Anti-universes

Class II Impossibilities: Impossibilities that if they can be made possibilities, they wont be realized for possibly millions of years.

• Faster Than Light
• Time Travel
• Parallel Universes

Class III Impossibilities: Impossibilities that violate the laws of physics and would require a new paradigm to be made reality.

• Perpetual Motion Machines
• Precognition