Scan barcode
A review by perilous1
The Future of Humanity: Terraforming Mars, Interstellar Travel, Immortality and Our Destiny Beyond Earth by Michio Kaku
4.0
3.5 Stars
Told in Kaku's ever amiable, conversational, and mildly optimistic voice, this book is yet another installment in the author's efforts to make physics more accessible to laymen. This being a broad overview of the near (and exceedingly distant) future speculations on how we will branch out from our little blue marble of a planet.
The first 30-40 pages were dedicated to a bit of science history rather than futuristic speculation... but I'd expect nothing less for the sake of context. (Past progression can be a fair-enough indicator of future patterns.)
Kaku has a persuasive way of explaining things concerning the exploration of our immediate solar system, reasoning it out to be not just possible, but inevitable--and even potentially lucrative (and really, therein lies the most realistic motivation.) There are also monetary mentionings of how logical corners can be cut and costs reduced via innovations over time. Some of which we can already see with entrepenurial efforts such as Space X and Blue Origin offering alternatives and cooperative hands to NASA.
The part on Terraforming Mars was easily my favorite. (Although, I would have liked to see more on possible terraforming methods in general.) By all accounts, Mars would need some extensive environmental renovations. And...you know...a passable magnetic field. >.> Kaku is an anchor of reality when it comes to supposing how many long decades, if not centuries, it would take us to work out erecting and stabilizing a habitable atmosphere on a world that long-dead.
I was rather disappointed that Kaku at one point tried to use the biblical Garden of Eden account as an analogy without actually knowing it... (Someone PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong on this--I badly want to be, and I listened to this in audiobook, so I wasn't able to go back and verify... But I was left with the impression that the author apparently thinks Adam and Eve were thrown out of the garden for seeking immortality... unaware that they actually started out with it, and lost it.)
I don't know that his attempts at mythos tie-ins were particularly relevant or useful. But aside from that, the information he offers--while a glancing and broad overview--is certainly fuel for the curious and the imaginative.
Told in Kaku's ever amiable, conversational, and mildly optimistic voice, this book is yet another installment in the author's efforts to make physics more accessible to laymen. This being a broad overview of the near (and exceedingly distant) future speculations on how we will branch out from our little blue marble of a planet.
The first 30-40 pages were dedicated to a bit of science history rather than futuristic speculation... but I'd expect nothing less for the sake of context. (Past progression can be a fair-enough indicator of future patterns.)
Kaku has a persuasive way of explaining things concerning the exploration of our immediate solar system, reasoning it out to be not just possible, but inevitable--and even potentially lucrative (and really, therein lies the most realistic motivation.) There are also monetary mentionings of how logical corners can be cut and costs reduced via innovations over time. Some of which we can already see with entrepenurial efforts such as Space X and Blue Origin offering alternatives and cooperative hands to NASA.
The part on Terraforming Mars was easily my favorite. (Although, I would have liked to see more on possible terraforming methods in general.) By all accounts, Mars would need some extensive environmental renovations. And...you know...a passable magnetic field. >.> Kaku is an anchor of reality when it comes to supposing how many long decades, if not centuries, it would take us to work out erecting and stabilizing a habitable atmosphere on a world that long-dead.
I was rather disappointed that Kaku at one point tried to use the biblical Garden of Eden account as an analogy without actually knowing it... (Someone PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong on this--I badly want to be, and I listened to this in audiobook, so I wasn't able to go back and verify... But I was left with the impression that the author apparently thinks Adam and Eve were thrown out of the garden for seeking immortality... unaware that they actually started out with it, and lost it.)
I don't know that his attempts at mythos tie-ins were particularly relevant or useful. But aside from that, the information he offers--while a glancing and broad overview--is certainly fuel for the curious and the imaginative.