THE PHYSICS OF THE IMPOSSIBLE

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   mbuggiehposted 10 years ago

   What are today commonplace technologies were once the stuff of science fiction (and fantasy) and were---for even the most progressive of scientific minds, impossible; impossible because understanding of some of the fundamental laws of physics and science were either unknown or incomplete.
   
   As Michio Kaku suggests the word impossible is a "relative term".
   
   And Kaku asks us to ponder why it might be "plausible to think that we might someday build space ships that can travel distances of light years, or think that we might teleport ourselves from one place to the other?"
   
   Thoughts welcome.

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      A Troubled Manposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      While Kaku is indeed a very smart, knowledgeable, theoretical physicist, he is also a sensationalist, which helps him to sell his books.

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         mbuggiehposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         Ha! Maybe he should be on Hubpages...

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      wildernessposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      As far as I know, we already have an interstellar probe flying through space beyond Pluto, with no indication it won't reach the stars one day.
      
      Teleportation; you'll have to define the term.  We may indeed one day be able to tear apart a person down to the atomic level and "reassemble" a reasonable facsimile at a different location, ala "Star Trek", but I doubt that's what you mean.
      
      But there have always been "impossible" things done, things impossible according to physics knowledge of the time.  Flying, for instance, or sailing beyond the edge of the earth.  We've even traveled an "impossible" distance, "impossibly" leaving earth and "impossibly" traveling through the  vacuum of space to visit the moon (although some claim it was trick photography).

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   mbuggiehposted 10 years ago

   Thanks for your comment.
   
   I think "impossibility" is  state of mind...perhaps the opposite of visionary.

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