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Parallel Worlds: The Science of Alternative Universes & Our Future in the Cosmos by Michio Kaku
lukre's review
2.0
Ok, this book really rubbed me the wrong way.
If you know me, you know I love science, astrophysics especially, but this... this is not it.
This is part news report or history report of the development of the space program (I liked that part), part theorizing on the possibilities of space program development in the near future (I liked that part too) and part just random babble on everything and anything.
And all of it wrapped up in one big ego trip.
I mean that in the worst way possible.
This is the book with the most "I" statements I've ever read. Even my students when they write assignments with the title of "What I did over the holidays" don't use I as much as Kaku did. I counted 14 instances of "I once..." and 18 instances of "I interviewed..." sentences (I didn't count the sentences that combine the two twice, I'm a scientist that way). I mean, we get it, you're famous, you travelled everywhere, you met people. I don't really care.
Other problems include and are not limited to
- aversion to exact numbers: "1% of Earth's pressure," "40% of Earth's gravity," "2.5 times the height of Mt. Everest," "the width of the base of the mountain is the distance from New York to Montreal." WHO THE FUCK KNOWS THE DISTANCE FROM NEW YORK TO MONTREAL OFF THE TOP OF THEIR HEAD? It's around 530km if you were wondering, I googled.
- stating that there are 8 probable tasks for AI on planets we would terraform, and then naming SIX!
- he gives partial explanations of physics behind some issues, full explanation of others, and some he just brushes over as if they are not there
- there is a subheading "Gas Giants" and he doesn't name them. He then goes into detail about Jupiter and then doesn't even mention the others.
- there is a subheading "Evolution of intelligence on Earth" and you guessed it - he doesn't talk about it. He gives a two-page diatribe on nothing and then moves on to other subheadings where he just gives us a mush of science and conjecture and bleh...
and finally, the straw that broke this camel's back
when talking about possible technological developments of alien species on their home worlds he constantly applies rules of human development to those alien environments. Electricity could not work under water. So? What he was in fact talking about was the impossibility of HUMAN timeline developing in such environments.
Bonus reason: he is really really bad at explaining ideas in physics. I am used to MIT lecturers, Sagan, Cox, and Tyson explaining things to me. Kaku is really not up to par.
I usually make notes while reading nonfiction. I love being able to go back to my notes when I need a piece of information or I just want to remind myself of some theories or ideas... Here I stopped taking notes at 70% and just marched through the book.
The reason I'm giving it 2 stars and not 1 is the first third or so of the book. But, unless someone pays me, I won't be reading any more of his books in the foreseeable future.
If you know me, you know I love science, astrophysics especially, but this... this is not it.
This is part news report or history report of the development of the space program (I liked that part), part theorizing on the possibilities of space program development in the near future (I liked that part too) and part just random babble on everything and anything.
And all of it wrapped up in one big ego trip.
I mean that in the worst way possible.
This is the book with the most "I" statements I've ever read. Even my students when they write assignments with the title of "What I did over the holidays" don't use I as much as Kaku did. I counted 14 instances of "I once..." and 18 instances of "I interviewed..." sentences (I didn't count the sentences that combine the two twice, I'm a scientist that way). I mean, we get it, you're famous, you travelled everywhere, you met people. I don't really care.
Other problems include and are not limited to
- aversion to exact numbers: "1% of Earth's pressure," "40% of Earth's gravity," "2.5 times the height of Mt. Everest," "the width of the base of the mountain is the distance from New York to Montreal." WHO THE FUCK KNOWS THE DISTANCE FROM NEW YORK TO MONTREAL OFF THE TOP OF THEIR HEAD? It's around 530km if you were wondering, I googled.
- stating that there are 8 probable tasks for AI on planets we would terraform, and then naming SIX!
- he gives partial explanations of physics behind some issues, full explanation of others, and some he just brushes over as if they are not there
- there is a subheading "Gas Giants" and he doesn't name them. He then goes into detail about Jupiter and then doesn't even mention the others.
- there is a subheading "Evolution of intelligence on Earth" and you guessed it - he doesn't talk about it. He gives a two-page diatribe on nothing and then moves on to other subheadings where he just gives us a mush of science and conjecture and bleh...
and finally, the straw that broke this camel's back
when talking about possible technological developments of alien species on their home worlds he constantly applies rules of human development to those alien environments. Electricity could not work under water. So? What he was in fact talking about was the impossibility of HUMAN timeline developing in such environments.
Bonus reason: he is really really bad at explaining ideas in physics. I am used to MIT lecturers, Sagan, Cox, and Tyson explaining things to me. Kaku is really not up to par.
I usually make notes while reading nonfiction. I love being able to go back to my notes when I need a piece of information or I just want to remind myself of some theories or ideas... Here I stopped taking notes at 70% and just marched through the book.
The reason I'm giving it 2 stars and not 1 is the first third or so of the book. But, unless someone pays me, I won't be reading any more of his books in the foreseeable future.
boorrito's review
4.0
I thought about the star rating for this book a lot. I decided to err towards 4 stars in the end because it kept me interested right till the final chapter which I skimmed. I think humanity is much more likely to wipe itself out a long time before the universe starts to end so it didn't hold my attention well.
I think I'm part of the target audience for this book. I did physics at school and was terrible at it, ended up hating the subject due to crappy teaching, not very good at maths but I am interested in science. I'm just not good at doing it (go go double C in GCSE Science). This meant that I had a vague knowledge of some of the stuff written about here but nothing solid. This book felt like a good jumping off point, though I'm sure half of it is out of date now as it was written in 2004 and even from my limited knowledge I know big things have happened in the field since then. I did get lost at points because there are big concepts explored in the book (also quantum mechanics - but nobody *really* understands them, even the people who study them) but never so much I felt like giving up on it.
I think part of that is that cosmology appeals to me as a historian in a way which Kaku points out himself in the book: "There are no experiments one can conduct on the big bang. Cosmology is more like a detective story, an observational science where you look for "relics" or evidence at the scene of the crime, rather than an experimental science where you can perform precise experiments." (54) It's not far off from how Ward describes history in his book [b:Stalin's Russia|4100684|Stalin's Russia|Chris Ward|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1266517246s/4100684.jpg|2320409]: "History is a different way of looking at things, a way of thinking about their vanished meanings. But it does not follow that we can ever know what it felt like to live in the past. The association of words, places and ideas...as they appeared to denizens of another world, are lost to us forever." (1)
The maths aspect wasn't so hard-going that it put me off (speaking as someone whose understanding of maths got about as far as Pythagorean theorem before trailing off) and I liked Kaku's usage of Sci-Fi examples - though I could see why other people might not like it. If you don't find Zizek's examples a constant push they should be fine.
As a popular science book I'm sure there's lots of inaccuracies and simplifications going on in here like there are in certain popular history books I've read. I would also like to read another cosmology book that wasn't written by someone who was so pivotal in the development of string theory - of course someone who's spent a good part of their lives on a theory isn't going to go "it's horseshit" in their book.
Overall an interesting first introduction, though not to be taken as absolute gospel, and a book that I'd really like to see an updated second edition of.
I think I'm part of the target audience for this book. I did physics at school and was terrible at it, ended up hating the subject due to crappy teaching, not very good at maths but I am interested in science. I'm just not good at doing it (go go double C in GCSE Science). This meant that I had a vague knowledge of some of the stuff written about here but nothing solid. This book felt like a good jumping off point, though I'm sure half of it is out of date now as it was written in 2004 and even from my limited knowledge I know big things have happened in the field since then. I did get lost at points because there are big concepts explored in the book (also quantum mechanics - but nobody *really* understands them, even the people who study them) but never so much I felt like giving up on it.
I think part of that is that cosmology appeals to me as a historian in a way which Kaku points out himself in the book: "There are no experiments one can conduct on the big bang. Cosmology is more like a detective story, an observational science where you look for "relics" or evidence at the scene of the crime, rather than an experimental science where you can perform precise experiments." (54) It's not far off from how Ward describes history in his book [b:Stalin's Russia|4100684|Stalin's Russia|Chris Ward|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1266517246s/4100684.jpg|2320409]: "History is a different way of looking at things, a way of thinking about their vanished meanings. But it does not follow that we can ever know what it felt like to live in the past. The association of words, places and ideas...as they appeared to denizens of another world, are lost to us forever." (1)
The maths aspect wasn't so hard-going that it put me off (speaking as someone whose understanding of maths got about as far as Pythagorean theorem before trailing off) and I liked Kaku's usage of Sci-Fi examples - though I could see why other people might not like it. If you don't find Zizek's examples a constant push they should be fine.
As a popular science book I'm sure there's lots of inaccuracies and simplifications going on in here like there are in certain popular history books I've read. I would also like to read another cosmology book that wasn't written by someone who was so pivotal in the development of string theory - of course someone who's spent a good part of their lives on a theory isn't going to go "it's horseshit" in their book.
Overall an interesting first introduction, though not to be taken as absolute gospel, and a book that I'd really like to see an updated second edition of.
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