Understanding Hyperspace
Michio Kaku explains 10 dimensions, hyperspace, worm holes and time
Mar 15, 2007
If you like reading science fiction, understanding the science behind the technology in those novels will add a layer of enjoyment. If you like spaceships, time travel, or extra dimensions, read Michio Kaku’s phenomenal books.
The best place to start reading about physics without the dry exercises of a text book is A Brief History of Time (or Briefer) by Stephen Hawking. Read more about that/those book(s) in this article.
After that, you should graduate to Michio Kaku, a physicist at the City College of New York. His homepage is subtitled “Explorations in Science,” and his weekly radio show called “Science Fantastic” airs on Saturday nights from 5pm to 8pm EST. His MySpace page is called “Because Science Matters.”
While Stephen Hawking has been called the rock star of physics, Michio Kaku is the equivalent of The Grateful Dead, working his way around the world in a never-ending tour.
His writing is lucid. He tells the stories of how the science originated in an entertaining way, characterizing the scientists so that we understand how their lives gave rise to their discoveries or cut them short. I didn’t get lost in the physics even once, even though my background is in and my forthcoming novel (RABID) is about neuroscience and virology rather than physics, which are subjects as different as golf is from basket-weaving.
Kaku has published four books for the lay audience: Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimension; Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century; Beyond Einstein: The Cosmic Quest for the Theory of the Universe; and his most recent, Parallel Worlds: A Journey Through Creation, Higher Dimensions, and the Future of the Cosmos.
Hyperspace
I found Michio Kaki a few years ago when I read Hyperspace. It’s a phenomenal book, not only because it very clearly explains the journey that physics has taken from Euclidian geometry to the 1990s. (It was published in 1994.) While the latest research in physics is expanding at an ever-increasing rate, this book is an excellent primer to begin to understand what the heck is going on nowadays.
It’s also a really interesting book about the sidestreets and dead-ends of the physics journey.
Hyperspace and Dead People
For example, Bernhard Riemann introduced the concept of hyperspace and extra dimensions on June 10, 1854, during the Victorian era, when he gave a lecture on his theories and proofs of non-Euclidian geometry. Charlatans and mediums immediately co-opted hyperspace theory to legitimatize their magic tricks, saying that they were in touch with higher dimensions, so that’s how they talked to dead people or sawed ladies in half. Indeed one mystic who was indicted for fraud in 1877, Henry Slade, was defended by eminent physicists (like Johann Zollner, and some others who would later win the big one, the Nobel Prize.) Zollner, et al, said that Slade’s feats were perfectly possible if he could manipulate objects in the fourth dimension. Zollner had observed Slade performing his magic stunts and believed what he saw. Other scientists and skeptics retorted that Zollner and other scientists are the worst possible people to evaluate a magician. Scientists are trained to observe and trust their senses. A magician is trained to distract observation. Only another magician, one who is trained in deceit, can accurately evaluate how magic is done (and it takes a thief to catch a thief.)
Conclusion
Anecdotes such as these and mini-biographies of many prominent scientists fill Hyperspace. It’s a fascinating read as well as a brain workout. Highly recommended.
For more ideas about other scientists you might enjoy reading, try this list of scientists.
Also, visit Suite101’s Science Department for free information: Science Overview Page, Astronomy and Space, and Physics.
