Cosmic Queries – Quantum Computing with Michio Kaku

How will quantum computing change the world? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Chuck Nice learn about the development of quantum computing and what it means for humanity with theoretical physicist Michio Kaku.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist, and today is a cosmic queries edition on a subject I know we've all been thinking about. Maybe not all the time, but sometime because we've heard it in the news, we've heard people talk about it. It's quantum computing. Got with me my coach Chuck Nice. Chuck.

• 0:38Chuck Nice?

  Hey, hey, hey. What's happening, Neil?

• 0:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you're gonna help me get through this, right?

• 0:42Chuck Nice?

  Um, yeah. I don't know if help is the the right word.

• 0:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we had to, we had to dig for some expertise here.

• 0:52Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 0:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we, we, we found an old, old friend of StarTalk, Professor Michio Kaku. Michio, welcome back to StarTalk.

• 1:02Michio Kaku?

  Yes, glad to be on the show. It's been too long.

• 1:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Michio, you've got a new book out this year, 2023. Let me get the right title. Quantum Supremacy. Ooh.

• 1:13Chuck Nice?

  Ooh. Oh, dear.

• 1:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Blood spilled. Okay. How the Quantum Computer Revolution Will Change Everything. So, Michio, this is a, it's a, it's a cosmic queries where we solicit, have already solicited questions from our, our patrons through our Patreon portal. And, but I want to just warm up a little bit. So tell us what we should know, what quantum computing will do differently from regular old computing?

• 1:43Michio Kaku?

  Well, computers have gone through three stages. The first stage was analog computers will be computed on sticks, levers, gears. We return the crank to do a calculation.

• 1:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, the abacus was one of those too, right? The abacus.

• 1:58Michio Kaku?

  The abacus, that's right.

• 2:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 2:00Michio Kaku?

  Slide rules, right?

• 2:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:02Michio Kaku?

  Then comes electricity, so, and the transistor. So all of a sudden, everything becomes a matter of zeros and ones, zeros and ones, and digital. And that's the computer revolution of today. Now, we are beginning to enter the third stage in the evolution of the computer. No longer computing on transistors, computing on atoms. This is the ultimate computer. You can't do better than that. Computing on atoms, and that's what the quantum computers are all about. They exist already. They are millions of times more powerful than our most powerful digital computer on certain tasks. So there's a race. A race between China, between IBM, Google, Microsoft.

• 2:47Michio Kaku?

  A race to see who can get the first all-purpose quantum computer to put on the marketplace, which will change everything. The CIA is interested in this. All the big, uh, commercial, uh, banks are interested in this. Aerospace, uh, energy, you name it, um, everyone is interested in who is gonna be first to, to bring out a commercialized quantum computer that could outrace any normal computer by a factor of a million.

• 3:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So by the way, this race, uh, you know, scientists among them, but certainly the military, were early out of the box in regular computing, right? So, and then that regular computing that, uh, finally sort of spilled out of the military and science and engineering communities and made it to people's desktop and then their laptop and then their pockets, and that clearly changed everything. So, so should we fear this change relative to any other? I think that other change was quite welcomed by people. Was it because it was slow and we got used to it? Or because we saw what it could do and understood what it can do?

• 3:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How would you, how would you characterize this shift compared to the one we've all entered?

• 4:04Chuck Nice?

  And does, and is the military, uh, looking for this for the same reason they did the first computers that, that, that we talked about in the second stage?

• 4:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, what do you think? What, what do you think, wanna grow, grow flowers with it? Well, I mean. We're talking about the US Pentagon, dude. I guess so. God, that's frightening. So, Michio, where are you there?

• 4:26Michio Kaku?

  Well, first of all, everyone's interested in the CIA is very much concerned about it because they are so powerful. These quantum computers can crack any known digital code.

• 4:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh.

• 4:37Michio Kaku?

  So this means the crown jewels, the crown jewels of any nation with all their top secrets about the military and defense posture, all of that can be broken into by an advanced quantum computer. But of course, everybody else, the sciences, and the sciences are interested because this means better cars, rockets, food, energy. We're talking about unveiling the secrets of the Big Bang, the understanding of black holes, neutron stars. In other words, everything is going to be affected when we can multiply the power of digital computer by a factor of millions to billions. So we're talking about a new era in computation that'll change everything.

• 5:21Michio Kaku?

  You know it, it'll change it.

• 5:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so, and one last question before we go to our, and you got the questions lined up, Chuck? They're sitting right, they're sitting right here. I'm scared to ask them now. I know. I don't even want to ask them at this point. So, so one last question. We've all heard of quantum bits, zeros and ones, all right? This is the binary nature of classical computing, let's call it that. So could you tell us, I've heard the term qubit. Could you tell us how a qubit differs from a bit?

• 5:55Michio Kaku?

  Well, think of a spinning top like an electron. It can spin up or spin down. This is one, this is zero, and that's how electricity can be used to calculate zeros and ones, zeros and ones. Now, let that spinning top spin in all directions simultaneously.

• 6:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So not just up or down?

• 6:16Michio Kaku?

  Not just up or down, but in between simultaneously with all positions. How much more powerful is that than an ordinary digital computer? An infinitely more powerful paradigm shift. And these electrons compute in parallel universes because these electrons are simultaneously rotating in all possible directions. Now you cannot be two places at the same time. Electrons can do that. And this is what makes

• 6:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They live that way. Right.

• 6:46Michio Kaku?

  That's right. Electrons can be two places at the same time. And a quantum computer, they are in all orientations at the same time. That's why they are infinitely more powerful than a traditional digital computer. And who uses this? Mother Nature.

• 7:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because that's the nature of atoms.

• 7:04Michio Kaku?

  That's the nature of atoms and flowers and enzymes of the body and cancer and Alzheimer's. All that stuff is at the quantum mechanical level, which is beyond the reach of digital computers. That's one reason why we don't have a cure for cancer, for example. Digital computers cannot model cancer. Quantum computers, we think, can.

• 7:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Chuck, just to be clear. Michio kept sticking his right thumb in the air. Did you see that?

• 7:30Michio Kaku?

  Yes.

• 7:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So there's something called the right-hand rule in physics, which was completely implicit in what Michio's gestures were. Okay? So I just gotta untangle that, Michio, before we... So if you put your thumb up,

• 7:42Michio Kaku?

  Right.

• 7:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Hold your... and curl your fingers.

• 7:44Michio Kaku?

  Okay.

• 7:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right? So if you... if your fingers are curling in the direction an object is spinning,

• 7:50Michio Kaku?

  Right.

• 7:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then your thumb is pointing up.

• 7:53Michio Kaku?

  Right.

• 7:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For... I mean, in the... in like the North Pole for that object. But if you stick your thumb down,

• 7:58Michio Kaku?

  Up.

• 7:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Then your fingers are curling in the opposite direction.

• 8:01Michio Kaku?

  Right.

• 8:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right. That's right. So that's how we in the... decide which way things are rotating for everything in the universe. Is it rotating with its... if it had a thumb? Is its thumb pointing up?

• 8:12Michio Kaku?

  I was gonna say, uh... It's a good thing pigeons didn't discover this.

• 8:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, who knows? What that rule... They call it the different rule.

• 8:20Michio Kaku?

  It could be a completely different rule.

• 8:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, thumbless creatures.

• 8:25Michio Kaku?

  Right.

• 8:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What... what kind of physics today, then, Michio?

• 8:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so Chuck, so let's start off with some questions here.

• 8:32Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. Plenty of curious people here on the Patreon portal sending us their questions, and we will start with our old friend, Violetta.

• 8:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Violetta, cool.

• 8:44Chuck Nice?

  Hello, Uncle Neil, Uncle Chuck, Dr. Kaku.

• 8:49Chuck Nice?

  She says, this is Violetta here, Violetta Rohr, fourteen and a half year old astrophysics kid writing from Washington DC. I'm keeping it simple this week. Quantum computers are said to harness the laws of quantum mechanics to perform certain calculations exponentially faster than today's supercomputers. What are those calculations? And what could their technical applications be to, and here's the rub, specifically astrophysics?

• 9:21Michio Kaku?

  Ooh.

• 9:24Michio Kaku?

  Okay, well, I got into this quantum computing game because I work in something called string theory, which we think is the theory of everything, including the Big Bang. But string theory is so complicated and so complex, no human has been able to use their mind to solve it. Now, when we look at a proton, how do we solve the mechanics of a proton? By hand? No, by computers. Lattice gauge theory allows us to solve the properties of a proton. We use computers at the fundamental level. So I think that for the Big Bang, to calculate what happens at the center of the Big Bang, the center of a wormhole, whether or not time travel is possible, whether or not

• 10:08Michio Kaku?

  parallel universes can be visited, all these questions can be solved using a quantum computer rather than a digital computer, which computes on zeros and ones and zeros and ones. And that's how I got into it, because I think in astrophysics, there's so many problems that cannot be solved with a digital computer. For example, we know that the sun explodes sometimes, it releases a corona mass discharge. In 1859, it just wiped out telegraph wires throughout North America, the Carrington Event. Quantum computers may be able to model that event. So we can predict the next Carrington event when the sun goes berserk and shoots a tremendous Corona mass discharge at the planet Earth

• 10:52Michio Kaku?

  and wipes out all communications, causing at least $2 trillion in property damage.

• 10:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because we have so much, we have so much orbital assets that would be susceptible to such a pulse of solar.

• 11:07Chuck Nice?

  Everything that's floating above us, satellites and all that crap will just get wiped out.

• 11:12Michio Kaku?

  Including power plants on the surface of the Earth. We're talking about a blackout, a planetary blackout. We've never had that before. A planetary blackout where every single nation on the planet Earth has its power wiped out simultaneously. Therefore, there's no rescue crews, no ambulances, because they're out too, right? The entire Earth is the infrastructure, electrical infrastructure is wiped out by another Carrington event.

• 11:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And that's our show, people.

• 11:42Michio Kaku?

  I know.

• 11:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Good night.

• 11:45Chuck Nice?

  Enjoy your evening.

• 11:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Kiss your ass goodbye. Right, so, so, Michio, I, I'm reminded that you're like the king of disaster scenarios. I just, I'd forgotten, thanks for reminding me about that. So, so, a couple of things. Let me just sort of put some further punctuation on what you just said. The sun is a roiling mass of plasma with free electrons roaming among mostly hydrogen and some helium and some other trace elements. And there's a magnetic field coursing through it that's getting dragged around the surface because the sun is not rotating as a solid object. So the magnetic field is embedded in the plasma.

• 12:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That magnetic field is getting stretched in all directions. And then there's a point where it snaps. It flings material with it and all we could do is watch. And, Michio, if we could calculate all the stuff that's happening there, what a boon that would be to solar physics.

• 12:51Chuck Nice?

  So now, is that, is that the, is that different than a solar flare? Or just bigger than a solar flare?

• 12:57Michio Kaku?

  This is much bigger than a solar flare. This is the mother, the mother of all solar flares, capable of wiping out all power supplies in on the surface and in outer space surrounding the planet Earth. We're talking about shutting down civilization as we know it.

• 13:14Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 13:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's a matter of scale of energy.

• 13:16Chuck Nice?

  Scale of energy.

• 13:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, yeah, it's energy.

• 13:18Chuck Nice?

  It's just, you know.

• 13:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah. And so, and we have evidence in relatively recent past. Right, 160 years ago, where this actual Carrington event, right? That's what it was called, Michio?

• 13:29Michio Kaku?

  That's right. And even before that, 700 AD, 800 AD, this has happened before. Again, thousands of years ago. But we can now track these Carrington events even into the past.

• 13:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, their, their computing didn't collapse in 700 AD?

• 13:45Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What evidence?

• 13:47Chuck Nice?

  Well, that, how do you, how do you think we got, got back to this point? This is, all this time, we've just been working back to this point.

• 13:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Back, back, back to AD 700? Well, how did, how you know it happened in AD 700?

• 14:01Michio Kaku?

  Uh, because several things. The radiation affected tree, uh, uh, tree rings and also affected the Arctic, uh, Arctic ice cores. So by looking at ice cores and tree rings, you can see there was a disturbance in 700 and 800 AD. And of course, there was no electricity back then. So there was no blackouts. But if they were to happen again, it would paralyze the Earth. We would be thrown back 200 years into the past. Think about it for a moment. No electricity, no power plants, food riots, no refrigeration, people rioting in the streets, uh, scrouching for any scrap of food they can find. Uh, it'd be, it'd be a horrible mess.

• 14:45Michio Kaku?

  And we're powerless, but we do know it happened in the past. And that's where quantum computers can calculate, we hope, calculate some of these disasters.

• 14:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So what we need, we need a backup plan to, to have civilization, uh, restart itself such as what we, how we lived before there was electricity. Right?

• 15:06Michio Kaku?

  That's right.

• 15:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We are with my good friend and colleague, Michio Kaku, professor of physics at the City University of New York. And we're talking about quantum computing as described in his current book. What'd you call it, Michio?

• 15:18Michio Kaku?

  Quantum Supremacy.

• 15:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, quantum supremacy.

• 15:22Michio Kaku?

  Yeah, that was coined by a physicist at Caltech. It's his, it's his word.

• 15:26Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right. We'll get back to that when we return on StarTalk.

• 15:38Speaker 03

  Hey, I'm Roy Hill Percival, and I support StarTalk on Patreon. Bringing the universe down to earth, this is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 15:56Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. StarTalk, a query. Quantum computing is the subject. And we've got a man who wrote the book, a book on quantum computing. Michio, you call it quantum supremacy. And just before the break, you said that you're quoting someone who called it that. Who was that?

• 16:16Michio Kaku?

  Yeah, Joel Preskill at Caltech. You see, people used to think that quantum computers could never, never rival a digital computer. So quantum supremacy is the point at which a quantum computer can beat a digital computer on certain tasks. Two years ago, the Chinese and also Google built quantum computers that were millions of times more powerful than a standard computer for a specific task. The next step is to make an all-purpose quantum computer that can outrace a general computer on all possible tasks. That's the race. It's a horse race. And right now, the Chinese and IBM are some of the leaders in the horse race.

• 17:01Michio Kaku?

  But IBM is in it. I mean, also, Google is in the race. Microsoft, Honeywell, everybody realizes that whoever wins this race will dominate the world economy.

• 17:14Chuck Nice?

  Oh, man. I'm sorry, but this sounds, this sounds very Third Reich. I'm just saying. I'm just saying, it's like, we got this race, this supremacy, you know, leading to a master race. It's crazy. It's a little mess.

• 17:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, it's a computing race.

• 17:37Chuck Nice?

  It is a computer, okay, okay.

• 17:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Not a race of the thing.

• 17:39Chuck Nice?

  All right. As long as, it's, it's, that's right. It's computing supremacy.

• 17:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's right.

• 17:45Chuck Nice?

  That's what it is.

• 17:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Michio, I actually overlapped with Preskill at the University of Texas before they snapped him up over at Caltech.

• 17:52Michio Kaku?

  Yeah, well, he was the one who coined the concept. And we, we actually made it two years ago. And now we're going for the next step, which is to create an all-purpose quantum computer that can handle ordinary problems, problems of medicine, problems of global warming, problems of food production, all the problems that cannot be, cannot be solved today using digital computers.

• 18:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or they could be solved, but they would take a thousand years to run the program.

• 18:18Michio Kaku?

  Or infinite amount of time, right?

• 18:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or infinite, okay.

• 18:21Michio Kaku?

  It would take an infinite amount of time for a regular digital computer to model the electron wave function of a molecule. But that's what quantum computers can do. They can model molecules.

• 18:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Michio, I forgot about that. We, I think we perfectly modeled the hydrogen atom. But after that, we just have to approximate because the atoms are too complicated.

• 18:41Michio Kaku?

  Exactly.

• 18:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With all the protons and the electrons and what orbitals they occupy and where, what the shape is. I'd forgotten that, Michio. Because in the universe, we're mostly hydrogen. So, I, I naively said, we got hydrogen. So, surely you physicists have the rest of these atoms completely calculated. But you don't. Because Chuck, hydrogen has only one proton and one electron.

• 19:05Michio Kaku?

  Right.

• 19:05Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And it's, it's 90% of the atoms in the universe.

• 19:08Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 19:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, we're, we're good. I'd never, I'd never pause to appreciate what you have to go through, Michio, as a physicist.

• 19:17Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so this is Andre Cibru, who says, I'm sorry, Serbu, who says, hello, my dear brain smoothie makers. He says, as a vampire, non-eternal friend, Andre from Romania, I've been trying to understand and put quantum computers to good use in the following hypothesis.

• 19:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, did you say non-eternal or non-nocturnal?

• 19:39Chuck Nice?

  Non-eternal, he says.

• 19:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How do you be, oh, oh, so he's a vampire that does die?

• 19:43Chuck Nice?

  Yes.

• 19:44Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Because Romania is the original vampire, is that?

• 19:46Chuck Nice?

  I believe it is.

• 19:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm just catching, I'm slow, I'm slow catching up on him.

• 19:50Chuck Nice?

  No, you hit it, you hit it.

• 19:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Got it, got it, okay, go ahead.

• 19:52Chuck Nice?

  Will quantum, will quantum computers be able to map out and transport our existential information as entities? So that we can live eternally inside them and travel at the speed of light between them? So.

• 20:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like that transporter, transporter.

• 20:10Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 20:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Beam your brain, so, so Michio, we all know the complexities of the brain and how many neurosynaptic combinations there are, and that's always been kind of an intractable, intractable problem. This question suggests, via a question, that the power of quantum computing can simply map our brain with perfect precision. Is that in the future?

• 20:33Michio Kaku?

  Uh, well, there is a program to digitize the brain, and there is a program to map all the neurons of the brain.

• 20:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Uh-oh.

• 20:40Michio Kaku?

  Uh, right now, we're at the level of a mosquito. We now know that the mosquito brain has a hundred thousand neurons. Every single one has been mapped. And you can Google it and see what an insect's brain looks like at the level of neurons, a hundred thousand neurons in the brain of a mosquito. And then, of course, we're gonna go up the scale. It's gonna take time. We have a hundred billion neurons in our brain.

• 21:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, just to be clear, wait, wait, so it's, that number is not what's impressive. What, what's impressive is the number of connections those neurons can make.

• 21:16Michio Kaku?

  Ten thousand.

• 21:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what you ultimately have. Wait, wait, no, you said there's how many?

• 21:19Michio Kaku?

  A hundred billion neurons, each neuron connected to ten thousand.

• 21:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, in a mosquito, how many neurons are there?

• 21:27Michio Kaku?

  Approximately a hundred thousand.

• 21:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And so now the total combinations, total ways those hundred thousand neurons can connect, that's a huge number, correct?

• 21:37Michio Kaku?

  Right, right.

• 21:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so that's where the computing challenges, not simply that there's a hundred thousand neurons, right?

• 21:43Michio Kaku?

  Right, right. The connection is everything. Because it's the connections that separate us from other animals. Uh, other animals have brains bigger than ours, for example, okay? But we have more connections and more ability to do tasks that certain animals do not have.

• 21:59Chuck Nice?

  Take that, you brick-bained dummies.

• 22:03Chuck Nice?

  You're big, idiot dolphins, with big brains and your stupid self.

• 22:07Michio Kaku?

  But you see, a quantum computer has enough computer power to begin to model these things. A digital computer would go berserk, counting how many connections you can have within the human brain. But that's exactly where quantum computers excel. Because we're talking about the states of an atom. How many states of an atom are there? Infinite number of states of an atom.

• 22:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  For every atom, mhm.

• 22:30Michio Kaku?

  Not the zeros and ones, zeros and ones of binary, which is finite. That's the difference between quantum computers and regular digital computers. Digital computers compute on a finite number of objects, zeros and ones. While the quantum computer computes on simultaneously, an infinite number of positions of electrons. In other words, computing on parallel universes.

• 22:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Alright, so, uh, so when, so give us a timeframe. When do you think we can map the human brain and know every neuro-synaptic connection? And the day we do, can you just beam that map to another place, thereby beaming your consciousness, or at least everything stored in your mind in that moment it was mapped?

• 23:17Michio Kaku?

  Well, I think it would probably take a few more decades before we can map every single neuron of the human brain. Because there's a hundred billion, a hundred billion neurons, each neuron connected to ten thousand other neurons in the human brain. It would take a while. But, once it's done, then the quantum computer can easily, easily begin to manipulate it and fire away and create certain thoughts. Okay, so the problem is not the quantum computer. The quantum computer has more than enough power to model the human brain. The problem is to slice up the human brain, slice and dice the human brain, so that we get all the connections of the human brain mapped. That's what takes time. That's labor intensive.

• 23:58Chuck Nice?

  What we're lacking are volunteers.

• 24:02Chuck Nice?

  That's really the problem here.

• 24:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Brain volunteers.

• 24:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, so it's still a little while before that happens. But the day it does happen, do you foresee being able to beam an entire person's... Is that the same as beaming their consciousness? Just knowing how they're...

• 24:21Chuck Nice?

  At that point, the quantum computer would have to locate consciousness within the brain. But once you do that, why wouldn't you be able to recreate it, download it, or manipulate it?

• 24:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And maybe consciousness is not a thing in the brain.

• 24:33Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 24:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe it's an emergent feature brought forth because of all of those connections.

• 24:39Chuck Nice?

  Yeah.

• 24:39Michio Kaku?

  Right. I mean, that's my personal opinion that it is emergent. There's no one quantity that you can put into a computer. It emerges naturally as a consequence of all the neural connections. Consciousness emerges just as a byproduct of hooking up everything. You plug it in and it becomes conscious, basically.

• 24:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, next one. Chuck, keep it going.

• 25:00Chuck Nice?

  Okay, here we go. Let's keep going. This is Chris Trent, and Chris says, "Hi, I have heard Michio Kaku say that his day job is actually string theory. I have always wondered, when he shows up at the office, gets his coffee, and gets to work, what exactly does he do?

• 25:24Chuck Nice?

  How does one work on string theory?"

• 25:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, Michio, is there anything on your desk at all? Is there a pad and paper? See, Chuck, I've always joked that string theorists, they're really cheap, right? Give them a laptop, maybe, you know, a pad and a pencil, and just give them a room and they're good to go.

• 25:46Chuck Nice?

  They're good to go.

• 25:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, Michio, have we completely characterized you as a professional?

• 25:52Michio Kaku?

  Well, when I was in the army back in 1968 as a GI, I used to, I read the first articles on string theory, and I began to play with it when I was doing basic training. So dodging machine gun fire, I would imagine twisting strings in my mind. And so in other words, it's very visual. These are real strings, like violin strings. You can turn them around, twist them, make knots out of them or whatever. And that's what I would do when I was in the military. After I got out of the military, I would write up the papers, okay? And I would create something called string field theory, the field theory of strings. Just like Maxwell's equations, there's a field theory of electricity and magnetism.

• 26:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Aren't you the father of that whole branch of physics? Is that correct?

• 26:38Michio Kaku?

  That's right.

• 26:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  If I remember correctly.

• 26:39Michio Kaku?

  That's right.

• 26:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. Wow. So Chuck, you see, he must have known something in the mar- Did you hear what he said? He said, "As I was dodging machine gun bullets."

• 26:48Chuck Nice?

  Machine gun, right.

• 26:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So he's got some extra access to higher dimensions there. Because the bullets were not hitting him.

• 26:58Chuck Nice?

  You were phasing in and out of this dimension.

• 27:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly. So Misha, you're at your desk, and now what? You sharpen your pencil.

• 27:05Michio Kaku?

  Right. And I go through hundreds of pages of calculations. This is tensor calculus, supersymmetric tensor calculus. On my desk is a pile of paper. Each paper basically filled of chicken scratches. Because it takes a lot of brain power to be able to write down all the equations. Because these are resonances. Resonances of strings vibrating in 11 dimensional hyperspace. And so it takes a lot of paper to do that.

• 27:32Chuck Nice?

  Dad, go on. Dad, I mean, can you just say that again? I want to get a T-shirt that says that.

• 27:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So now combine that with when Misha was in the army. He just slipped it out that he was dodging machine gun bullets.

• 27:48Chuck Nice?

  Machine gun bullets, right.

• 27:48Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So last I saw that was in The Matrix. Where Morpheus is teaching Neo how to be badass. And Neo's saying, "You mean one day I'm going to be able to dodge bullets?" And Morpheus says, "Neo..."

• 28:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When that day arrives, you won't have to.

• 28:09Chuck Nice?

  Ah, yes.

• 28:11Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then he's like, what does that mean? You don't have to dodge them. And my boy just stopped the bullets in midair.

• 28:15Chuck Nice?

  And that's what happens.

• 28:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There it is. I'm not even gonna duck. I'm just gonna stop. So I think Michio has those powers and he just leaked it on this show just now.

• 28:24Chuck Nice?

  Nice.

• 28:25Michio Kaku?

  I just won't demonstrate it.

• 28:29Michio Kaku?

  No free demonstrations.

• 28:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No free demonstrations, that's right.

• 28:33Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 28:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, keep going Chuck.

• 28:35Chuck Nice?

  Okay, here we go. Uh, this is Chris Henderson and Chris says.

• 28:40Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Do we know where they're from? Don't they say where they're from or are you skipping that?

• 28:44Chuck Nice?

  Uh, no, they don't.

• 28:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 28:45Chuck Nice?

  If they, if they say where they're from, I'll let you know.

• 28:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like knowing where they're from. Okay, go on.

• 28:48Chuck Nice?

  And or sometimes they'll put it in the body of their question. Um, hello, Dr. Tyson, hello, Dr. Kaku. This is, uh, or is it theoretically possible to make communications that uses quantum entanglement?

• 29:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh.

• 29:03Chuck Nice?

  If it is, would this give us the ability for instantaneous communication with distant spacecraft? So he's talking about subspace communications.

• 29:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  A subspace network, yeah. And, and Michio adding to that. I, I read, cause I only know from what I read, right? About quantum computing, that there's, there, isn't the circuitry of quantum computing exploiting quantum entanglement between adjacent particles in the circuit board? I, I heard something about that. So where, where, how does, how does quantum entanglement fit into quantum computing?

• 29:38Michio Kaku?

  Well, yeah, quantum entanglement is one way in which, uh, these qubits can communicate with each other. Now you know that in a digital computer, the bits do not talk to each other. Zeros do not talk to one, one does not talk to zero. They are independent when you do a calculation. Not so the atom. If I have two atoms close together and I jiggle one atom, the other atom responds to it. This is called entanglement. And the question is, well, that's one reason why quantum computers are so powerful. All the different kinds of qubits talk to each other simultaneously. Then the other question is, do they talk to each other faster than the speed of light?

• 30:18Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's take a break there and leave everyone dangling on a cliff edge.

• 30:24Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  About whether we are communicating on a circuit board faster than the speed of light. Cosmic Queries with my good friend and colleague Michio Kaku. We'll be right back.

• 30:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're back. Third and final segment. Cosmic Queries StarTalk with my friend and colleague, Michio Kaku. Michio, tell us about your social media footprint. How can we find you?

• 30:56Michio Kaku?

  Go to mkaku.org. M-K-A-K-U dot O-R-G. I have about 5 million fans on Facebook and the internet. And yeah, so I'm definitely on the internet.

• 31:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, and you're totally on Twitter, right? You're active on Twitter. I follow you on Twitter. I know where you're coming and where you're going. So, okay, that's what we can do. Chuck, you left us off with a question about a quantum entanglement and whether we can use it as a byproduct of quantum computing for instantaneous communication. So, Michio, what can you tell us there?

• 31:34Michio Kaku?

  Well, it turns out that Einstein was wrong on this question. Einstein said that you cannot break the light barrier. It turns out that these qubits will actually communicate with each other instantly faster than the speed of light. Now, it turns out that even though Einstein was...

• 31:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Einstein was such an idiot. He was such an idiot.

• 31:54Chuck Nice?

  I'll tell you, what a dumbass. Bad Einstein.

• 31:57Michio Kaku?

  Even though Einstein was wrong on that, that some things can go faster than the speed of light, he has the last laugh. Because it turns out that what goes faster than the speed of light is nonsense. Random information. Morse code cannot be sent faster than the speed of light using the EPR effect. E for Einstein. And it turns out that we can test this in the laboratory. We can now prove that you cannot break the light barrier for usable information like Morse code. But for non usable.

• 32:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Einstein Podolsky Rosen.

• 32:32Michio Kaku?

  That's right.

• 32:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Effect. That was some experiment that they proposed to test something about quantum physics?

• 32:38Michio Kaku?

  That's right. Let's say I have two electrons that are together, one spins up, one spins down.

• 32:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  He's got his thumb there.

• 32:47Michio Kaku?

  So they are in opposite directions, okay? Then I separate them. I separate them by a light year, okay? If one of these is measured to spin up, then the question is, what is the other one spinning? The other one is spinning down because the sum of the two has to be zero. It has to be either like this.

• 33:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  They have to cancel out.

• 33:10Michio Kaku?

  But before you open up one of these photon electrons, you don't know what the other one is. But as soon as you know that one is up, the other one is down. Now, how fast did you know that? Instantly, instantly faster than the speed of light. On one side of the Milky Way galaxy, you know the electron is spinning up. Therefore, you know that on the other side of the Milky Way galaxy, faster than the speed of light, the other electron spins down. That is the EPR experiment. And Einstein thought, ha, that proves that it's all nonsense. It proves that all quantum theory is wrong. Well, we do these experiments now. Einstein was wrong.

• 33:50Michio Kaku?

  Information travels faster than the speed of light, but it's not usable information. You can't send Morse code this way. Morse code cannot be sent this way. Let's say, for example, that you have one sock, which is green, and one sock, which is red, okay? You put the red sock on and the other sock is green. Now, let's say you open the sock one day and it is red. What is the color of the other sock? Green. How fast did you know that? Instantly, faster than the speed of light. You knew that the other sock.

• 34:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It sounds like you're sending information faster than light.

• 34:29Michio Kaku?

  Yeah, but you see, it's not usable information. You can't send Morse code this way. Morse code cannot be sent using socks.

• 34:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Why not?

• 34:38Michio Kaku?

  I mean, think about it for a moment, because as soon as, you know, the one sock is red, the other sock is green. But where did, where did the message go? There's no message there. You're not sending that, that, this, this.

• 34:49Chuck Nice?

  So you're saying, you're saying, you're saying that the message is fixed, therefore it's not usable.

• 34:56Michio Kaku?

  Oh, no, it's random. It's random and therefore not usable.

• 35:00Chuck Nice?

  Okay, so, but it, but it's random even though you know the outcome?

• 35:05Michio Kaku?

  Oh, well, you don't know the outcome until you reveal that one is green, the other one, the other sock is gonna be red. But that knowledge, the knowledge of the fact that they are opposite sides, is instantly transmitted faster than the speed of light. But try, try sending Morse code that way.

• 35:23Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, wait, so what you're saying is, but, but then maybe you misspoke, because you said, you put on the green sock.

• 35:28Michio Kaku?

  Right.

• 35:28Chuck Nice?

  Right.

• 35:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then.

• 35:29Michio Kaku?

  You know.

• 35:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Send out the red sock. No, no, but you, you don't know that you put on a green sock. You just know you put on a sock.

• 35:35Michio Kaku?

  Oh, yeah, okay, well then reveal, reveal that what.

• 35:38Chuck Nice?

  It's the reveal that we're really talking about.

• 35:40Michio Kaku?

  Yeah, the reveal, that's right.

• 35:41Chuck Nice?

  We're, we're talking about the reveal. The, the position of the sock existed before the reveal.

• 35:46Michio Kaku?

  Yeah.

• 35:46Chuck Nice?

  But we don't know what it is. But once we know what it is, then we know the information.

• 35:51Michio Kaku?

  My George, he's got it. He's got it.

• 35:53Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 35:54Michio Kaku?

  A physicist in the making, right here.

• 35:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We're gonna give him an honorary StarTalk degree at the end of this.

• 36:01Chuck Nice?

  Okay, all right, wow.

• 36:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So it's not useful, all right.

• 36:04Chuck Nice?

  It's not useful. God, that's so disappointing.

• 36:07Michio Kaku?

  Now, the way you go faster than the speed of light, constant, consistent with Einstein's theory is wormholes. Wormholes will take you faster than the speed of light, and it is consistent with the known laws of relativity. Stephen Hawking even wrote papers on it. Now, to create a usable wormhole is quite difficult. You'd have to have negative matter and positive matter. But in principle, if you could have negative matter and positive matter, you could go faster than the speed of light in a wormhole. And Stephen Hawking even wrote papers.

• 36:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, Chuck, he just said, when pigs fly, just doesn't translate.

• 36:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All we need is negative matter. Yeah, okay. All right. So, Michio, when pigs fly, continue. Yes.

• 36:49Michio Kaku?

  No, negative matter is very rare. Instead of falling down, negative matter falls up. Now, when was the last time you saw a rock fall up? Okay?

• 36:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  When was the last time you saw a pig fly? Okay.

• 37:00Michio Kaku?

  But if you could, if you could create negative matter, you could go faster than the speed of light through a wormhole.

• 37:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 37:08Chuck Nice?

  Got you.

• 37:09Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And just to be clear, you're not actually, you're still not moving through space faster than light. You're kind of cheating in an authentic way by curving space. And the wormhole then cuts through a passageway. And so you're effectively going faster than light, but you're not actually moving through the fabric of spacetime faster than light. Is that, that's a fair way to say it.

• 37:33Michio Kaku?

  Yeah, that's right. You simply hop across.

• 37:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, you're hopping.

• 37:36Michio Kaku?

  There's a hole there, you just hop across. How fast do you go? Zero, zero velocity. You just hop across.

• 37:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, okay.

• 37:44Michio Kaku?

  There you go.

• 37:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And Rick and Morty knew all about this.

• 37:47Chuck Nice?

  Exactly. That's portal guns. That's all we need. All we need are portal guns.

• 37:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Maybe Violetta will invent one of those, a portal gun.

• 37:58Chuck Nice?

  Probably.

• 37:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And we're good friends with her. I think she'll tell us about it first. And then we can, like, take over the world from there. Right.

• 38:05Chuck Nice?

  I love every second of that.

• 38:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Violetta will be the world's overlord.

• 38:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right.

• 38:14Chuck Nice?

  Okay, this is a, a zeigmund vasic, I believe. I believe that's it. The zeigmund vasic. He says, uh, "In singularity, I have been told that mass could have infinite density. Can the algorithm of a quantum computer resolve mathematically infinity?"

• 38:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like that.

• 38:41Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 38:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I like that. So, and let me even add to that, Michio. So, we know if you take general relativity to its extreme, you know, you're basically dividing by zero or doing something that doesn't work out on paper. Is there a stopping point that you can say, general relativity?

• 39:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Stops here and now I've got the rest. I think string theorists worry about this, right? And now I can compute what's happening where general relativity ends, basically.

• 39:10Michio Kaku?

  Right, there is a stopping point and that's called the Planck length. Planck length is 10 to the minus 33 centimeters. That's a very small number.

• 39:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 39:22Michio Kaku?

  And how would you then manipulate something like this? If you have empty space and you could heat it up. Heat up empty space to the Planck temperature. Then bubbles will begin to form, just like you boil water. You heat water, water boils. You heat space, space will boil at the Planck length or the Planck temperature. And at that point, each bubble is a wormhole. And each bubble in principle can become a universe. In fact, that's probably where our universe came from. Our universe probably came from a bubble in nothing that expanded, giving you the Big Bang of today.

• 39:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, Mitya, you keep talking like that, Chuck is gonna run out and smoke a joint, okay?

• 40:02Chuck Nice?

  I'm smoking one, are you kidding me? I hate an edible while y'all were talking.

• 40:11Chuck Nice?

  I couldn't wait to smoke, I was like, forget it.

• 40:13Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You wanna boil the universe, Mitya?

• 40:15Michio Kaku?

  That's right.

• 40:15Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is amazing.

• 40:16Michio Kaku?

  That's right.

• 40:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This sounds like out of control.

• 40:18Michio Kaku?

  We've done the calculation. People who do what is called inflation theory have calculated what it would be like to be a god. To create your own universe. Of course, you wanna do it safely. You don't wanna like blow yourself up in the process.

• 40:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah, of course.

• 40:32Michio Kaku?

  But basically, you boil space to the point where space becomes unstable. You have quantum transition, what are called Feynman diagrams. That allow for universes to pop out of nothing. Usually, these things pop in and out of nothing all the time. Stephen Hawking called the spacetime foam. Cause it looks foamy with bubbles percolating all the time. Each bubble being a wormhole. But one of those wormholes just kept on going and here we are. That's how the universe started, we think. As a fluctuation of the Planck energy, or the Planck length. Uh, the energy is 10 to the 19 billion electron volts. As a distance is 10 to the minus 33 centimeters. But that's my world.

• 41:15Michio Kaku?

  I live in the Planck length and the Planck energy.

• 41:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Me too, that ain't right. To call us a, to call us a, you know. What'd you say, what'd you say we were? A fluctuation?

• 41:26Michio Kaku?

  That's right, we are a fluctuation.

• 41:28Chuck Nice?

  That's one of those times.

• 41:29Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The cherished universe is a fluctuation, alright.

• 41:33Chuck Nice?

  There you go. You guys are a, you're a blip. That's what you are.

• 41:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ego-busting.

• 41:37Chuck Nice?

  A fluctuating blip, that's what you are.

• 41:40Michio Kaku?

  Yeah?

• 41:41Chuck Nice?

  Don't you feel good about this?

• 41:43Michio Kaku?

  Yeah? No, that's what we call them. When you write papers, you write papers on quantum fluctuations of nothing. Even nothing's unstable. Nothing would violate the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Pure nothing is not possible.

• 41:57Chuck Nice?

  It's an unbelievable show, man. I'm telling you right now, this is crazy. Alright, this is, uh, this is Alan Rayer. And Alan says, "Hello, Dr. Kaku. I used to watch your YouTube channel, and I've been watching since 2012. I'm a huge fan. Uh, I live in Lithuania, and could you please explain, on string theory, what force makes a quantum string vibrate its string?"

• 42:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh. And are there strings in the circuit boards of quantum computers? Or you're just gonna say there's strings everywhere? You know, there's strings all the way down, as they say. So how does, how, how, how does everything you know about strings inform the people trying to perfect a quantum computer?

• 42:41Michio Kaku?

  Okay, first of all, strings have to fluctuate because of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Pure nothing, pure motionless, pure anything like that violates the uncertainty principle. Therefore, strings have to vibrate. The lowest string, the lowest vibration of the string, gives us our universe. Our universe is the lowest vibrating octave of the string. There are higher octaves of the string, and these higher octaves, we think, correspond to dark matter. So that's why we have dark matter, because it's nothing but the next higher excitation of a vibrating string. But again, strings have to vibrate because of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. This is a quantum theory.

• 43:24Michio Kaku?

  And when the strings vibrate, they create subatomic particles, mainly us. We are the lowest vibration of the string. So people sometimes say, well, can the string predict our universe? Yes, our universe is the lowest vibration.

• 43:39Chuck Nice?

  We're fluctuating blips.

• 43:40Michio Kaku?

  We're the lowest vibration.

• 43:42Chuck Nice?

  We're the lowest of the low.

• 43:43Michio Kaku?

  And the next, the next set of vibrations would be dark matter. And one day, we're gonna find dark matter, and that could clinch it. People want experimental proof of the correctness of string theory. That could prove it. If we find dark matter in a laboratory, analyze its properties, and show that it's predicted to be part of the next vibration, the next octave of the string.

• 44:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So back to the question. The string in its natural state vibrates because it can't not vibrate.

• 44:14Michio Kaku?

  That's it, because of the quantum mechanics.

• 44:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  The quantum mechanics, guy. So now, is this exploitable in a computer circuit? In quantum computing?

• 44:22Michio Kaku?

  Uh, well, the, yeah, a computer circuit would have a low excitation of the string, I mean, a low excitation of the electron. But the electron itself is an excitation of the string.

• 44:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Of the string, got it, okay.

• 44:34Chuck Nice?

  There you go.

• 44:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, do we have one last quick question?

• 44:37Chuck Nice?

  All right, let me see here.

• 44:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Make it quick.

• 44:40Chuck Nice?

  All right, how about this one? This, here we go. Charles Mako, or Mako. He says, hey, what comes after quantum computing?

• 44:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Ooh! Woo! Ooh!

• 44:57Michio Kaku?

  Well, I think, I think that the step beyond quantum computing is nuclear computing. Because quantum computing computes on electron shells. We're talking about the electron shells that give us the Bohr atom, you know, electrons going around the nucleus. But the nucleus itself is nuclear, and it also is quantum mechanical. And that, in principle, is stable, so you can make things out of it. However, of course, if you, if you don't watch out, you could hit critical mass, in which case that would ruin your day.

• 45:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It would destroy the universe. Yes.

• 45:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so it's interesting. What you're saying, Michio, is that all these rules that we're talking about are electron-based, and electron orbitals and all of this, electron spins, but you can go deep into the nucleus, and there's a whole other realm that is in principle in reach.

• 45:57Michio Kaku?

  That's right. And the energy scale of that is millions of times the energy scale of the electron, and that's why we have nuclear weapons. The nuclear weapons, in fact, the sun, the sun itself is a simple example of what happens when you tap into the nuclear fire that drives the sun and lights up the universe. That's what lights up the universe, the nuclear force.

• 46:19Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah.

• 46:20Michio Kaku?

  So that could be the next step beyond. Quantum computers would be nuclear computers.

• 46:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so when quantum computing looks old, and we get you on the show, in the old days, quantum computing, we thought that was fast. We'll get you on for that and take us into the nukes. All right, Michio, it's great to see you again. Hadn't seen you since pre-COVID. Great to have you back on the show.

• 46:40Michio Kaku?

  Good.

• 46:41Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So we'll be looking for your book, just came out, Quantum Supremacy, How Quantum Computers Will Change Everything. And no doubt about it, from how you described it, it definitely will.

• 46:51Michio Kaku?

  Yeah.

• 46:52Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right, Chuck, always good to have you, man. Always a pleasure. All right, Neil deGrasse Tyson here for StarTalk, another episode of Cosmic Queries. As always, I bid you to keep looking up.