The Future of Humanity: Terraforming Mars, Interstellar Travel, Immortality, and Our Destiny Beyond Earth

To appreciate the Future of Humanity you have to understand its genre. Throughout the book Michio Kaku describes how science fiction has inspired scientists and, along with its obvious plethora of errors, successfully predicted technology over a hundred years before it became feasible.What Kaku continually emphasizes is the role that science fiction and scientific prognostication can have in inspiring future generations of scientists. Since the inspiration typically takes place when young, there need to be books that, using simple language, capture the imagination and inspire young men and women toward the arduous career of science.This is what Kaku has set out to do in The Future of Humanity. Kaku recognizes that making predictions hundreds, thousand or even millions of years into the future using the scientific understanding current in 2018 is obviously going to be widely speculative. Yes, many of these predictions will be falsified in the next fifty years.But Kaku has not set out to write a book containing only the most reasonable predictions for the longest time span. He has instead tried to help reignite public interest in science—particle physics, astrophysics, space exploration—that Americans shared before descending into the cultural wars which have been ongoing since the 1970s.If you think of Kaku as in the line of Isaac Asimov and H.G. Wells, who he cites frequently in the text, then you won’t be bothered by speculations like how humankind could build an intergalactic civilization. Of course, Kaku is also an accomplished scientist but, in this plainly written though highly imaginative work, he is less trying to make the most realistic predictions possible and more trying to make science as interesting as possible.In this he succeeds quite well. If you are looking for a book that describes cutting edge science in very simple terms and could inspire the non-technical reader to a career in the sciences you will not be disappointed. However, if you want literal predictions about the future of humanity, you might choose another text.

About seventy-five thousand years ago, a volcanic eruption nearly ended the human race; almost everything died. About two thousand humans survived. As a result two chimpanzees have more genetic variation than all human beings combined; we differ by .01 of a percent. And this wasn't the only time the Earth was almost destroyed. Most everyone knows about how the dinosaurs disappeared.So . . . why are we here? According to Michio Kaku Jupiter is our guardian angel, deflecting most asteroids, comets and other space clutter that could kill us. Earth is a “Goldilocks Planet”, not too hot, not cold, with an atmosphere that's no too dense and a magnetic field and an ozone layer that deflects ultra-violet rays from frying us alive. How many “Goldilocks planets are there in our galaxy? Possibly hundreds of thousands, but a lot depends on plane old luck. We have been lucky. Just last year an asteroid came within a thirty-some thousand miles of the Earth.How do scientists know which planets are like us? They can't see them, but the Kepler and the Hubble telescopes look at the brightness of certain stars; when they dim in a certain way, it means something is blocking their light. Scientists are able to tell the size of the planet by how much it affects the light from its host star.Kaku discusses the effect of Obama's decision to shut down the shuttle program. He was hoping private business would get involved, and they have in a big way. Elon Musk has a billion dollar contract to provision the international space station, and he has delivered supplies several times. He is planning a Mars landing by 2024; he already has a rocket whose booster can land on an ocean platform. This rocket can take us to Mars. NASA isn't quite that optimistic. They plan to put a man on Mars by 2035, using the moon as a base.Stephen J. Hawking maintains that if we can make it through the next two hundred years and not destroy ourselves via terrorism and nuclear war or pollution we can evolve in respect to reaching the stars. A Russian scientist, Nikolai Kardashev has created a scale of civilizations: Type I uses all of the energy from the light provided by its star; Type II uses all the energy the sun produces (think fusion); Type III uses all the energy in the entire galaxy. Obviously we're not even a Type I civilization since we don't use all the sunlight the Sun provides. We're about a 0.7 civilization.If we survive it's pretty much a given we'll have a settlement on Mars by mid century and we'll start terraforming it. It's too cold up there with hardly any atmosphere. We can warm it up by injecting methane into its atmosphere.Scientists have also discovered several moons of Jupiter and Saturn that have water. We can use them as bases to move beyond the solar system.Eventually, Kaku gets around to his pet theory, string theory which mathematically combines Einstein's theory of relativity and quantum theory. It consists of ten dimensions, but we can't prove it until we become a Type III civilization. We can chip away at it, using the Super colliders, the CERN in Switzerland which has already discovered the Higgs Boson particle, an indicator of dark matter, and a new one being built by the Japanese in conjunction with other countries. String theory will help us discover what's inside a Worm Hole, whether or not we can pass through one without being crushed. Supposedly if we can pass through a Worm Hole, we can take a short cut to the opposite side of the galaxy. String Theory also allows for the possibility of multi universes. Kaku talks about universes “popping in and out of existence”. We're looking for the stable ones. Why? Because other galaxies are racing away from us at exponential speed. If this keeps up, we're in for a “Big Freeze” and everything will die. String theory allows for us to move not just to another star, but another universe. If you're the paranoid type, stop worrying. This won't happen for billions maybe trillions of years.

It feels like the science behind every core concept used by every sci-fi book/film is examined in-depth...Digitisation of the human mind (Altered Carbon)Time distortion of black, and white holes (Interstellar)Multigeneration ships (Children of Time)The Martian film expired in detailAlso lots of good trivia, such as the real origin of American space rocket designs. It somehow manages to cover every major point covered by the amazing Bryan Cox Planets series, which makes me think that series was maybe inspired by this book...There's plenty in here. It can get pretty technical but you certainly don't need a science degree to understand it; having watched plenty of sci-fi is probably plenty enough.

The first part contains no new information about real scientific advances.The rest is pure speculation with no indication that there is any fundamental hard science behind the frequent "It might be" and "It is possible".

Not being exactly new to these subjects, I am perhaps not the target reader. There is physics, but it's offered gently in words rather than graphs or equations. It's a good sweep of several potential futures, so brings us up to speed with current thinking. However, I thought this was too lightly treated, and perhaps a little uncritical. A couple of technical details here or there would have improved it for me. However, there are some technical references in the notes (along with many website links), so I can always knock myself out with those. This would be great for a general reader or young student, perhaps up to undergraduate.

Love this type of books which try to look into our future based on what we are today.Some countries of Earth are on the verge of interplanetary travel and even settling on other worlds. It is becoming a necessity. Climate change, resource depletion and future catastrophes will compel us to abandon Earth, one day we will make our homes among the stars.Physicist Michio Kaku discussed in detail how humanity might gradually develop a sustainable civilization in outer space and build habitable cities on Mars. Kaku also explores alternative paths to ensure the survival of humanity, including the possibility of genetic engineering and transferring human consciousness into non-biological machines and transcend our physical bodies entirely.Click on the 'Helpful' button if you liked this review. Uploading some pics for your benefit. Thanks for reading.

An extremely imaginative thought process throughout.It is obvious energy and matter , strings and particles, belong to the same family of life....the essence of being.If all strings were moebus strips of infinitely variable size, expanding and contracting and constantly changing in a universe of flux, then we might have a simple model that combines dark matter and dark energy co-existent in a universe without end. A model with only one surface, infinitely warping while expanding and contracting.A multiverse cannot exist! A universe is the only term that is inclusive for all things existing in explanatory terms!James Dey