Kaku also addresses the geopolitical crisis, warning that war could destabilize Pakistan, where roughly twenty Hiroshima-sized nuclear weapons could fall into fundamentalist hands. He argues the real architecture of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East is oil and advocates for a solar hydrogen economy to reduce dependence on the most unstable region on Earth.
The conversation shifts to the nature of gravity, with Dr. Kaku explaining Einstein's view that space pushes rather than pulls. He discusses anti-gravity research, negative matter, the Casimir effect, time machine theory, and the search for a unified field theory. The pair also examine GPS-guided smart munitions, the biological warfare threat from former Soviet scientists, and what a cornered Saddam Hussein might unleash.
Key Moments
Wormholes as rings between space and time: Kaku describes how a ring of negative matter could function as a wormhole, displacing a traveler in both space and time simultaneously, like sheets of paper that intersect.
Time travel paradox resolved by forking universes: Kaku argues the grandfather paradox dissolves if the timeline forks into two rivers, with quantum theory bifurcating the universe so a traveler alters someone else's past, not their own.
Why string theory is the only game in town: Asked where physical law comes from, Kaku says 99.99 percent of equations fail to produce a stable universe and only string theory works, calling it the unique theory that yields our cosmos.
Playing God with new life forms: Kaku says he would hesitate to create new life forms in the lab because Mother Nature had millions of years to iron out problems while scientists have had only months.