Pod Insights Mayim Bialik's Breakdown Co-Inventor of String Theory Dr. Michio Kaku on How Quantum Computers Will End Disease & Aging, Explain Parallel Universes & Reveal What Happens When We Die About this episode What if the technology that could save humanity…could also predict its end?
In this episode of Mayim Bialik's Breakdown, Michio Kaku — legendary cofounder of string field theory and author of Quantum Supremacy — breaks down the quantum revolution that’s about to change everything.
What is quantum computing, really?
Dr. Kaku explains its evolution from wild theory to world-altering reality — and how it could soon solve problems today’s supercomputers can’t even touch.
But that’s just the beginning. He reveals how quantum computing could:
- Extend human longevity and transform medicine
- Track dangerous asteroids before they strike
- Accelerate the search for extraterrestrial life
- Predict possible planetary catastrophes
- Help us study parallel universes
Are black holes actually gateways to interstellar travel?
Dr. Kaku explains the shocking physics that suggests they might not just destroy matter, but connect distant regions of space-time.
Are we alone in the universe?
He explains why he believes we are not, and how string theory may one day prove the existence of a multiverse.
Artificial Intelligence: Humanity’s Greatest Tool — or Its Biggest Threat?
Dr. Kaku shares why advancing AI deeply concerns him, why fighting AI may be the wrong strategy, and why he believes we may eventually need to merge with it instead.
Could AI and robots become our partners in space exploration?
Will artificial intelligence ever achieve consciousness?
What would physically merging with technology actually look like?
And what safeguards must we build before that future arrives?
Plus: Why he predicts we may see more “3I/ATLAS”-type interstellar comets entering our solar system, and what that means for Earth.
From quantum supremacy to the multiverse…from AI-human integration to black holes as cosmic gateways…this conversation explores the future of humanity at its most extreme edge.
The future isn’t science fiction. It’s already unfolding.
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Dr. Michio Kaku’s book, Quantum Supremacy: How the Quantum Computer Revolution Will Change Everything: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/697040/quantum-supremacy-by-michio-kaku/
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 Why do we get old? Why do we have to die? Ordinary computers cannot crack the code.
0:05 Mayim Bialik? This is actually one of my favorite contemplations of what quantum computing even means or how it could apply to us.
0:12 Speaker 00 There could be aliens communicating with distant star systems at the center of almost every single galaxy. We think there is a black hole. It could be a gateway to another universe.
0:24 Mayim Bialik? Can you say more?
0:25 Jonathan Cohen? I was gonna say the same thing.
0:26 Speaker 00 Our universe may not be the only one. There could be a multiverse of universes out there.
0:32 Mayim Bialik? People who have died in our universe might be alive in another.
0:37 Speaker 00 It might be possible to bend space and time so we can hop across a wormhole to a distant part of our galaxy.
0:46 Mayim Bialik? Dr. Michio Kaku is the co-founder of String Field Theory. He's gonna be talking about quantum supremacy, how the quantum computer revolution will change everything.
0:57 Speaker 00 One thing that keeps me up at night is the question of artificial intelligence. What happens when they start to be self-aware?
1:03 Mayim Bialik? Can a robot take my mother to her checkup?
1:05 Speaker 00 We're talking about a whole new realm of things that can be solved. We're not simply observers to the dance of nature. We are now becoming choreographers to the dance of nature.
1:24 Mayim Bialik? Hi, I'm Iain Bialik.
1:25 Jonathan Cohen? And I'm Jonathan Cohen.
1:26 Mayim Bialik? And welcome to our Breakdown.
1:28 Jonathan Cohen? This is one of my favorite kind of episodes because it's both spiritual and practical. It's an exploration of science and it's a look at how the world is going to change drastically in a way that many people haven't even considered yet. And it's happening faster than we can imagine.
1:50 Mayim Bialik? We're gonna be talking today about the possibility that the way science, our approach to the environment, our approach to longevity, detecting cancer, all of the ways that we've been doing all of those things have come to an end. You may not have known it, but they've come to an end because we are entering the world. of quantum computing. And it's going to change every aspect of our lives. Whether you like it or not, whether you're alive or not, when it happens, it has already started happening. What is a quantum computer? What does it mean to even calculate things on a quantum level? Well, we're going to speak to the co-founder of String Field Theory.
2:32 Mayim Bialik? Dr. Michio Kaku is a professor and theoretical physicist at the City University of New York. And that's right, you didn't hear me wrong. He is the co-founder of String Field Theory. He's the author of so many acclaimed science books, including Hyperspace, Beyond Einstein, Physics of the Impossible, The Future of the Mind, The God Equation. And today, we're going to be talking specifically about quantum supremacy, how the quantum computer revolution will change everything and is already changing everything. Is the multiverse real? We're going to actually explain it from a quantum physics perspective. What is dark matter? And why does it take up so much space in the universe?
3:17 Jonathan Cohen? Also, is there life on other planets, in other galaxies and solar systems? Are they more advanced than us? And can we contact them?
3:26 Mayim Bialik? In addition, we're going to talk about what it would look like to merge with technology and the kind of cultural and societal conflict that could arise from different perspectives about if we should even embark on this.
3:39 Jonathan Cohen? We also discuss the future of artificial intelligence and when we need to be able to pull the plug if robots become dangerous. We do something really special in this episode, which is have a few asides where we deep dive into explanations of core concepts to help people better understand. We had a limited time with Dr. Kaku, but it's an amazing conversation that I know you're going to enjoy.
4:03 Mayim Bialik? And with that, we will welcome Dr. Kaku to the Breakdown. Break it down.
4:10 Mayim Bialik? In your new book, Quantum Supremacy, which I read every single page of and enjoyed very much, you talk about how the world as we know it is about to change. Can you help us get a framework for what that looks like?
4:25 Speaker 00 Okay, well, let's start at the beginning. For thousands of years, humans lived in poverty, sickness, disease. We didn't live very long. You were lucky to reach the age of 25 or 30, and then you would die of wars and diseases and things like that. And then around 1800, something magical happened. After so many thousands of years of misery and disease and poverty, what happened was, science began to happen. In the 1800s, all of a sudden, we had locomotives. All of a sudden, we had sewing machines. All of a sudden, the industrial revolution began to take its hold.
5:08 Speaker 00 And then around 1900, a century later, all of a sudden, we had yet another revolution taking place with electricity. All of a sudden, we had the electric revolution lighting up the cities and our homes. And then after World War II, we had the transistor. So we had the computer revolution that took hold. And now, we're in stage four. We're in stage four with artificial intelligence. And we can see the beginnings of the state of stage five, where we have quantum computers. So history is accelerating very quickly right now.
5:51 Speaker 00 So we are in the fourth stage, the fourth stage of artificial intelligence. But we can see the beginnings of the next stage, quantum supremacy, where we begin to compute on atoms, not just molecules and transistors.
6:06 Jonathan Cohen? For people who may not understand the implication of that, can you help? Make it a little clearer how that jump leads to some unbelievable breakthroughs.
6:17 Speaker 00 Yes, we realize that what you have on your desktop today, okay, is hundreds of times more powerful than what you used to have. But what's coming down the line is quantum computers, which in some sense are millions of times more powerful than the digital computers sitting on your desk. So that's going to change everything. Once we have computers that powerful, millions of times more powerful than what's sitting on your desk. For example, take a look at medicine. Cancer is a mystery. What about the Parkinson's disease? What about all the diseases that we don't understand? Ordinary computers cannot crack the code.
7:02 Speaker 00 Ordinary computers simply hit or miss. Try different avenues of approach, but it's not systematic. Quantum computers work at the atomic level, at the level of neutrons and protons and DNA. And so we think that this could have a revolution in in terms of disease. And also in terms of energy. Nuclear fusion, people have always talked about it. But why don't we have fusion reactors that light up our cities, the power of the sun on the earth? And that's because we don't have computers powerful enough to mimic fusion power. And that's coming with quantum computers.
7:46 Speaker 00 Not to mention things like global warming. Why can't we predict the weather? You realize that computers are not powerful enough to predict the weather more than just a few days ahead. And then, again, this is where quantum computers come in. Quantum computers will be able to solve the global warming problem as well. So we're talking about a whole new realm of things that can be solved with quantum computers that compute on atoms, individual atoms, rather than transistors, which compute on zeros and ones, zeros and ones, zeros and ones.
8:23 Mayim Bialik? One of the other applications of quantum computers, and the book is a really beautiful explanation, you know, even for laypeople, you know, who may be sort of trying to understand the basics, right? You kind of walk us through the journey from how we get from digital to, you know, to this kind of quantum realm. One of the other arenas that there may be quantum supremacy in that would really impact a lot of us would be in terms of helping us live longer and better. And you talk about sort of the level of analysis that we've been doing as to why certain people, you know, have particularly good health, why certain people seem to, you know, have the luck of the draw in terms of aging.
9:06 Mayim Bialik? Can you explain how quantum computing can help us understand longevity differently?
9:10 Speaker 00 First of all, if you want to see a quantum computer, simply go outside. Go outside and you see leaves and trees and animals. They're not computing on zeros and ones, zeros and ones, zeros and ones. They're not digital computers outside your door. They are quantum computers. And that's why we have the variety of vegetation, the variety of animals, the variety of what you see right outside your door. And now we're beginning to understand how the aging process is working and how that affects the development of Homo sapiens. And so we're beginning to understand Mother Nature on her own language. And this is amazing. Before that, it was all magic.
9:55 Speaker 00 Why do people get old? Oh, well, it's just aging. That's all it is. But you begin to realize that things like the aging process are quantum mechanical. We age at the molecular level. And if you want to understand this, think of a car. Where does aging take place in a car? The engine, because that's where waste products build up. That's where you have combustion and waste products and soot building up inside a car. Well, what about a human now? Why do we get old? Why do we have to die? The same thing. We consume energy. Energy creates waste. It creates mistakes.
10:39 Speaker 00 These mistakes build up, and that's why you get old. That's why your skin starts to get sagging. And that's why your bones begin to creak. It's because of the buildup of errors. And so we're going to begin to cure some of these things in the future. And does it mean that we're going to live longer? Well, that's the goal.
10:57 Mayim Bialik? You mentioned that there's an asteroid that is coming, and it's going to be very close to our planet. I believe you said April 2029. There's an asteroid that's going to be coming close? How can quantum computing help us predict the demise of our planet? In particular, in trying to track asteroids that may be coming towards this planet?
11:22 Speaker 00 Yes, that asteroid is only the third one. The third one to come into our solar system from outside the solar system. And that's why it's caused so much fear and anxiety. So many websites are devoted to trying to understand, is it aliens that are behind this thing? Well, to the best of our knowledge, we're not talking about aliens. We're not talking about superhuman devices that could impact on the planet Earth. We're talking about a natural phenomenon. A natural phenomenon created by asteroids and meteors from outside the solar system. This is only the third time it's happened. The third time it's happened.
12:06 Speaker 00 And we're still using the primitive computers that we have here on the Earth in order to understand its trajectory. And we're beginning to understand that it's normal. It's not alien. It's not a spaceship from outer space. But it does mean that our tracking abilities are much better than before. We have telescopes. We have sensors. We have probes by which we can see these objects in outer space floating.
12:36 Speaker 00 And we can tell whether or not one of them can compose a danger to the planet Earth.
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14:15 Mayim Bialik? Let's take a pause and talk about quantum computers. When we talk about quantum computing, what are we even talking about? So Jonathan, I'm going to speak to you as if you're my class right now because I feel like this needs a little bit of instructional, you know, kind of explanation. And this is like, if you want to learn this for yourself, quantum supremacy is the way to go. So, modern computers that we know about, right? Like the ones that we're using? They encode things in binary, right?
14:46 Mayim Bialik? Like zeros and ones. And you don't even have to understand it. I don't even really understand it more than that.
14:51 Jonathan Cohen? I know that I type google.com and information comes to me.
14:55 Mayim Bialik? So the zeros and ones go through some sort of digital processor. And again, we don't need to know what that processor is. We just need to know that some calculation is done based on these zeros and ones, and you get an output. So when you think about like your internet connection, that's the example that he used. That's gigabits per second, right? They're actually called gigabits, gigabits per second. That means that a billion bits are sent to your computer every second. That's what makes you allowed to view things, to watch videos in real time.
15:29 Jonathan Cohen? To see you right now.
15:30 Mayim Bialik? To see me right now. However, and Richard Feynman is a huge part of the conversation about the shift from understanding this transition from zeros and ones into a quantum understanding. So what Feynman said is, what happens if we replace zeros and ones with the states of atoms? And it's a theoretical construct at first. So what we know about atoms, and this is just basic stuff, they're like spinning tops. That's how he describes it. So if you place atoms in a magnetic field, they can either align with respect to the field or in opposition to the field.
16:15 Mayim Bialik? That would correspond to zero or one. So the power of a digital computer relates to the numbers of zeros and ones. But in the subatomic world, when atoms are being kind of calculated and considered, atoms can spin in any combination, right? Of these states. For example, I'm just going to give you the example from the book. An atom can spin up 10% of the time and down 90% of the time. It can spin up 65% of the time and down 35% of the time. And this is the key thing. There are an infinite number of ways that an atom can spin.
16:57 Mayim Bialik? That increases the number of states that that atom can exist in. So an atom is not just carrying information that can be held in a bit. It can be held in a qubit, which is a simultaneous mixture of up and down states. So. What we also know is that objects existing simultaneously in multiple states is called superposition, okay? That's what it's called. So what happens is when qubits interact with each other, they can get entangled. You've heard of entanglement? Quantum computers are exponentially more powerful than digital computers because the
17:40 Mayim Bialik? qubit power is what makes it different. So for example, today, quantum computers can have over 100 qubits. That means they are 2 to the 100th times more powerful than a computer that just has one qubit. I don't know if this helped, but that is the explanation. So Google's Sycamore Quantum Computer, that was the first to achieve quantum supremacy, has the power to process 72 million billion bytes of memory. It has 53 qubits. So the power of a quantum computer dwarfs any conventional computer.
18:21 Mayim Bialik? There's a quantum computer on page 89 of Quantum Supremacy, and I'll be honest, it looks like a chandelier. I'm showing Aton. It looks like a chandelier. I didn't even know what it looked like. Most of the complex hardware is pipes and pumps that are necessary to what? To cool the core to near absolute zero. And the reason that it has to be cooled is literally because like atoms move fast, it gets hot, it's gonna overheat, and we've heard about this as a problem. What's fascinating is that Mother Nature is calculating on a quantum level without anything needing to be cooled down. And he talks about this throughout the book, and this is the fantastic, like, understanding
19:06 Mayim Bialik? of our limitations as humans. We have to build something that mostly is made of things to cool it to a temperature when we can isolate the movement of atoms that Mother Nature does all by herself in all sorts of temperatures. So, the heart of a quantum computer may be as small as a quarter, but the rest of it is everything that's involved to cool everything down. That's your brief primer into what quantum computing is.
19:35 Jonathan Cohen? Just before we get back to the episode, talk a little bit about... How this technology finds solutions in ways never before imagined?
19:46 Mayim Bialik? I love that you're asking this question. So what does it mean to be able to utilize the power of a quantum computer? It means that everything is faster. And I don't just mean like, oh, you're not waiting for something to upload. It means that the number of calculations of possibilities is happening at a quantum level. And if you don't understand that, that's okay. That's what quantum means. It means that every single possibility in the universe is being simultaneously calculated. It can still take some time for some of the more sophisticated mathematical equations, but I'll give you an example.
20:25 Mayim Bialik? Pandemics. You know how we have to figure out a vaccine that goes with a virus? And that the virus is mutating? Remember with COVID, there were all these different strains?
20:37 Jonathan Cohen? And if you got the vaccine, you were worried that the virus was going to mutate faster than your immune system?
20:43 Mayim Bialik? It was. So a quantum calculation of the trajectory of a virus means that computer can track what all the possible growth trajectories are for all the possible mutations that might exist simultaneously. So in real time, we are potentially able to say, this is how it's mutating. This is the drug that would have to meet it. And, most importantly, how do you stop the spread of a virus? By detecting it early, by understanding its mutation, and by trying to figure out how to coordinate off. So literally, people would not have to...
21:25 Mayim Bialik? We would not have to have a million people die before we could figure out how to contain it. We would have learned about it much earlier. We would have learned about its mutation patterns and ways to devise a vaccine much quicker, with much less catastrophic impact. That's just one example. That's just pandemics. Screening and curing cancer. So this is an amazing thing. You've heard of dogs that can detect cancer, right?
21:53 Jonathan Cohen? They can smell it.
21:54 Mayim Bialik? They can smell it.
21:55 Jonathan Cohen? I mean, if we're not teaching Archie how to do that, what are we doing?
21:58 Mayim Bialik? Dogs are being used to detect coronavirus. I didn't know that dogs were trained to detect coronavirus. A specially trained dog was able to give a 95% accurate identification within 10 seconds. I know the Helsinki Airport did it because they're ahead of everything.
22:16 Jonathan Cohen? Not before he's had his walk and been told he's a good boy, though.
22:19 Mayim Bialik? Dogs have been trained to identify lung, breast, ovarian, bladder, and prostate cancer. Dogs have a 99% success rate in detecting prostate cancer by sniffing a patient's urine sample. Dogs can detect breast cancer with 88% accuracy. Lung cancer with 99% accuracy. Why? They have 220 million nasal scent receptors. We only have 5 million. So their sense of smell is exquisite. And the question is, why have we not been able to figure out what they are detecting in a way to replicate it?
23:02 Mayim Bialik? The answer is because we didn't have quantum computing. So this is one of the places where a quantum computer is able to access and assess...
23:10 Jonathan Cohen? Smell like a dog.
23:12 Mayim Bialik? No, but they're able to figure out what are these components? What are these parameters? In ways that are much more rapid and, in many cases, are simultaneous.
23:22 Jonathan Cohen? Think about that applied to all problems. The notion of battery storage and how to exponentially increase battery storage. Exponentially increase solar capture and transition into battery storage.
23:36 Mayim Bialik? Quantum computers have the ability to understand why we don't have enough successful grain production in parts of the world where people are dying, right? This is what it can be used for. Global warming. The understanding of what is actually happening and how to repair it. In terms of, like, there's a whole thing about nitrogen pairing and nitrogenase. All of that can be calculated with extreme precision, extreme accuracy, and it is literally, it's bending time by saving time, right? It's getting us to this next parameter, not in a linear fashion, which is how history's gone, and there've been little spikes. This is a quantum projection, right?
24:19 Mayim Bialik? Of the capability of the planet's resources, sickness, the way to fix disease. I mean, it's unbelievable.
24:29 Jonathan Cohen? Let's get back to the episode and stick around for the outro where we will describe more applications for how a quantum computer can solve some of the world's biggest problems.
24:41 Mayim Bialik? So, speaking of aliens, in terms of your understanding of our place on this planet, what can you tell us about the human interest in exoplanets? And in potential either intelligent life or even non-intelligent life on other planets?
25:02 Speaker 00 Well, you know, when I was a child, I still remember getting a coloring book where you color Saturn, Jupiter, and whatever. And at the end of the book, the book said, "That's all, folks. That's all there is. From Mercury out to Pluto, that's all there is." Now we realize that's not all there is at all, that there are other solar systems that we can photograph. This is amazing. Our probes are good enough now that we can log on to distant stars and see the imprint of a planet, a planet orbiting around these stars. And we can even start to count how many planets there are in our vicinity. This is amazing.
25:47 Speaker 00 And we begin to find that none of these planets look like ours. We used to think that our solar system was perhaps typical, normal. They're all just like us. Nope. We realize that there are solar systems out there that are bigger, larger, faster, smaller.
26:06 Speaker 00 That we are the exception to the rule, in fact. And does that mean that there are aliens out there? Well, who knows? But it does mean that we underestimated the diversity of what's out in our own celestial backyard.
26:23 Jonathan Cohen? What do you imagine is out there? Obviously, there are a lot of studies still exploring the nature of what could be out there. If you put your theoretical hat on, what do you imagine we may find? Do you think there is future alien civilizations or intelligent civilizations?
26:43 Speaker 00 Well, let me stick my neck out and say that, yes, I believe they're out there. I believe that there are other intelligent beings. We're not the only game in town, okay? However, the distance between stars is so great that you would have to be extremely advanced to reach us from a distant star in our own backyard, in our own galaxy. And so it's possible. It's possible that there are civilizations out there that are older than ours, that have mastered the art of interstellar travel, but we haven't. We're just beginning. We're just beginning. We're novices in this game. We're just beginning to shoot probes
27:26 Speaker 00 out to the distant nearby planets. Well, we think that out there, there could be aliens that have already mastered the art of communicating with distant star systems, much farther than what we know about the Earth. And that takes us into black holes, takes us into pulsars, takes into all sorts of celestial things that could be out there that have life forms that are older than ours and have already mastered distant travel to different stars. Like black holes, for example. Black holes were first looked at by Albert Einstein himself in the 1930s,
28:09 Speaker 00 but he thought that they would not be able to be seen. They're simply too great, too fantastic. Nice to think about, but they're not going to be reachable from the planet Earth. But we now realize that black holes could be, get this, could be gateways. Gateways to distant realms around the universe. So if this is a sheet of paper... A sheet of paper and we are here and there's a distant star over here. It might be possible to bend space and time. And so that we can then hop across a wormhole to a distant part of our galaxy. Now, of course, this is still science fiction. We don't know for sure whether that's possible.
28:53 Speaker 00 But the equations show that, yes, it, if you have a black hole, you may be able to create a shortcut between the stars.
29:02 Jonathan Cohen? Just like every Marvel movie, little whirling image opens up and we just jump through to another timeline. Which opens up a lot of complicated issues about time itself. And is it linear? Is it circular? Are there multiple universes happening simultaneously? And if I jump through one of these black holes, am I messing up what's happening in my current reality?
29:30 Speaker 00 Well, this gets us into what's on the other side of a black hole. We see black holes out there. They're not science fiction anymore. In fact, at the center of almost every single galaxy that we see with our telescopes, we think there is a black hole. And then the next question, what happens if you fall into a black hole? Do you come out the other end? And the answer is, we simply don't know. But there are mathematics. There are mathematical theorems that show that it may be possible to survive a passage through a black hole. I'm not saying that's going to be easy. I'm not saying that it's going to be like commonplace to go through a black hole. But it could be a gateway to another universe. And what would it be like?
30:14 Speaker 00 Well, think of our universe. Our universe is a bubble of some sort. And the bubble is expanding. That's called the Big Bang Theory. But if string theory is correct, it means that there are other bubbles out there. Other universes. That our universe is not the only one. There's a multiverse. A multiverse of universes out there. And perhaps gateways to reach them through a wormhole. And again, this is still speculation. We don't have any concrete evidence. But the mathematics seems to indicate that we could be in a bubble bath.
30:55 Speaker 00 A bubble bath of universes.
30:58 Mayim Bialik? Say more about a bubble bath of universes.
31:01 Speaker 00 Think of a bubble bath where we have different balls that can collide to create a bigger ball, or can fission and create two smaller balls. So, these are the gyrations that you get with a multiverse of universes, which we now think could exist. When you look at string theory, you realize that string theory says that our universe may not be the only one, that there could be other bubbles out there. And these bubbles can collide, they can bump into each other, or they can fission, fission into two smaller bubbles. And so we think that, at least the theory seems to indicate, that there could be a multiverse,
31:44 Speaker 00 a multiverse of universes out there.
31:47 Mayim Bialik? One of the things you talk about in the book is, is if you apply quantum theory, not just to our kind of daily experience, or even our cellular experience, but if you apply, you know, all of the principles of quantum theory to the entire universe, it would hold that there may be parallel universes. And I don't mean that necessarily in a science fiction sense, but if, if everything can exist, right, in all possible states and forms, why would the universe be any different?
32:23 Speaker 00 Well, that's the subject of a tremendous debate within the physics community, because of the fact that we do have the Big Bang Theory. The Big Bang Theory says that the universe started from a single bubble, a single bubble that then expanded rapidly to create the stars, the galaxies, you and me. But why one? Why simply just one universe that created the entire universe as we know it? Why not a multiverse of these universes? And string theory seems to indicate that that's the way to go. String theory, we think, is the ultimate theory of everything. That all the universes are nothing but different kinds of string states within a multiverse called string theory.
33:08 Speaker 00 And we think that, therefore, string theory can coexist with other different universes.
33:15 Speaker 00 And even Stephen Hawking talked about this. Stephen Hawking talked about the fact that if you go to the small scale now, not to other galaxies, but to your own backyard, and look at small distances, that space is not smooth. Space becomes bubbly. And there are bubble universes. Bubble universes that we never see because they're so tiny that they pop into existence and pop right back. And so Stephen Hawking said the vacuum is full of tiny baby universes. And one day, one of these bubbles simply did not pop into vanish again, but it just kept on going.
33:59 Speaker 00 And it kept on going and expanding, and that created our universe. So our universe may have started from one of these bubbles. One of these bubbles that existed. And most of these bubbles simply pop into existence and pop right back into the vacuum. But one day, one of them just kept on going, and that's you and me.
34:25 Jonathan Cohen? We're going to take another very quick pause and explore parallel universes.
34:29 Mayim Bialik? We know what electrons are, right? Can we just like think of a tiny little ball? Just think of it like that. Now, I might tell you, it's not a ball, it's a wave. We'll get to that in a second. So Jonathan, we've talked about before that before you observe an electron, right? You don't know where it is. And you could say that about anything. Like, before I observe you, I don't know where you are, right? The thing about an electron is that when you measure where an electron is and when you go to look for it, the way we describe it is that the wave function, it normally propagates as a wave, it collapses, and you're able to isolate where that electron is. That's how essentially you get an answer from a quantum computer. Because you have a probability, the electrons like all over,
35:13 Mayim Bialik? it's in a fuzzy state, this is how we learned it in school. But when you measure it, it's not all over, right? You can't measure something unless you're looking at it.
35:21 Jonathan Cohen? This is the slit experiment.
35:23 Mayim Bialik? So yes, it can be demonstrated with the slit experiment, and it's called the collapse of the wave function. The collapsing, as Dr. Kaku says, has haunted quantum physicists for the past century.
35:34 Mayim Bialik? Because it doesn't really make sense. Like, if you take a really, like, big step back, what do you mean we live in a world where a wave function collapses so that you can see a particle? Why? How? What does that mean? How can we utilize it? And, yes, the double slit experiment is an example of that. So, if you think about this electron that, again, doesn't have a location until you measure it, it can live in any number of states and worlds, right? There are an infinite number of places where it can be. Those are the parallel universes that we talk about. Every branch of the multiverse is as real as any other,
36:18 Mayim Bialik? but it's representing all possible quantum states of that. That's the notion of parallel universe. So, how do you get to us having parallel universe experiences? It's if you use the principle of superposition and you say, "This can happen on every level." That's the most simplistic way for us to understand that parallel universes, in theory, it's not that they can exist, they have to exist. Just like all states of that electron have to exist until you measure it.
36:52 Jonathan Cohen? They have to exist, but then you choose the one that you want to inhabit. So, how does that relate to our actual physical reality? We sliding doors that...
37:02 Mayim Bialik? That's exactly it. So, we're all constantly choosing. The question is, why? Why do we choose this? Why does my wave function collapse to lead me to sit in this chair and talk to you right now, right? Why does any particular choice get chosen? What's the probability of one thing being chosen over another? This is the basis of a conversation about the multiverse. It's the basis of, you know, all of our favorite, in particular, Marvel, you know, comics and movies, right? What is it like to step into? I mean, I think the Deadpool is the one that, you know, kind of comes to mind most recently.
37:43 Mayim Bialik? What's it like to step into a reality where you're not the sex or gender that you thought you were? You're not the age that you were. You didn't grow the same. You sliding doors that shit, as Jonathan likes to say. All of those paths, in theory, could have existed. And what I would say is that people, maybe who do readings, people who are doing past-life regressions for people, or people who are psychic, maybe, I'm being super generous here, maybe those people are tuning into other possibilities. Could it be your imagination? Absolutely. But like, what's your imagination, other than an alternate state of the life that
38:26 Mayim Bialik? you're living and the path that your electron is on right now?
38:30 Jonathan Cohen? What is creativity but a quantum computer evaluating possibilities and dreaming up a scenario that could be possible?
38:37 Mayim Bialik? The only thing I can compare to a quantum computer is what it's like to brainstorm with Jonathan.
38:44 Jonathan Cohen? You know what I'm brainstorming? Getting back to our conversation with Dr. Kaku.
38:49 Mayim Bialik? I wonder if you can go into string theory a little bit for people. You know, this used to be something that, when I studied physics, it was really on the fringes, you know, of even being able to sort of be comprehended, especially on sort of an undergraduate or even a graduate level. Can you explain what string theory is and what it can explain and what it can't?
39:11 Speaker 00 Sure. Back in the 1930s, we had a very simple understanding of matter and energy. Everything consisted of neutrons, protons, and electrons. That's it, folks. That's the universe. Electrons, neutrons, and protons. That was it, back in the 1930s. And then after the war, we built atom smashers, machines that could create higher particles. And all of a sudden, we were drowning. drowning with new subatomic particles being created by our atom smashers. And J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, was so frustrated
39:53 Speaker 00 that one day he announced that the Nobel Prize in Physics should go to the physicist who does not discover a new particle this year. People are just drowning in these things, okay? So that's the way it was for many decades. We just kept finding more and more subatomic particles, gave them bizarre names, not just neutrons and protons, but lambda particles and hyperons and all sorts of different names to catalog all these subatomic particles. Now we have string theory, which has not yet been proven yet, okay? So that's why we're not going to get the Nobel Prize anytime soon.
40:35 Speaker 00 But the string theory says, why do we have all these particles? And the answer is music. These are just musical notes on a vibrating string. So this would be an electron. This would be a proton. This would be a neutron. They're nothing but different vibrations of a string. And so how many vibrations are there? Well, how many notes are there on a piano? If you think about it, they're an infinite number of notes. Because you just make the string longer, stronger, tighter, and you create another note. So how many notes are there on a piano? Infinite.
41:19 Speaker 00 The infinite number of notes you can play on a piano. So if this string of a piano was a subatomic string, how many particles are possible with string theory? Infinite number of particles. And that's why we are drowning in subatomic particles today. When I was a graduate student, getting my PhD, I had to memorize the names of all these subatomic particles. And I thought to myself, maybe one day when you get your PhD and they ask you, why are there so many particles? The answer would be string theory. It's nothing but different vibrations of a string.
42:02 Jonathan Cohen? Another brief aside, we're going to explain string theory in a little bit more depth.
42:07 Mayim Bialik? The leading and essentially only candidate for a quantum theory behind the standard model that we've been using is string theory. And as Dr. Kaku said, it is a theory, right? This is theoretical. There's a lot of competing theories, but if you're going to have a theory of everything, and string theory is sort of playing into this, if you're going to have a theory of everything, it has to contain Einstein's theory of gravity, it has to contain the standard model of particles like quarks, gluons, neutrinos, all this stuff, and it must be finite and free of anomalies. The only thing that can satisfy those three criteria is string theory. That's why we're talking about string theory. And I'm just gonna go
42:49 Mayim Bialik? like, I'm gonna work from a little bit of what Dr. Kaku said, but also the way he describes in the book is so beautiful. So, string theory says that elementary particles are like musical notes on teeny tiny vibrating strings, hence string. So, you know how a rubber band, if you pull a rubber band, and if you pull the rubber band really tight, it'll be like, high, right? It's like a higher frequency, and if you let the rubber band go like this, it'll be a lower frequency. So, just like a rubber band, string theory says that each vibration of these tiny bands or strings corresponds to a particle. So, it would say
43:29 Mayim Bialik? that all of these particles, electrons, quarks, neutrinos, everything from the standard model that we talked about, they're just like different notes, right? They're different notes. If you think of the universe as a symphony, right? These are just different notes. So, physics is corresponding to the harmonies that one can play on these strings, which I just like, gives me chills, I could be the only one. Chemistry is the melodies created by the vibrating strings. I mean, literally, this brings me to tears. This is why I study what I do. The universe can be compared to a symphony of strings. So I'm going to do this again.
44:13 Mayim Bialik? Physics is the harmonies that you can play on the strings. Chemistry is the melodies that the strings present. And the universe is a symphony. Wait for it. The mind of God that Einstein wrote about would correspond to cosmic music resonating through the universe. If that's not beautiful, I don't know what is. So this is a very, very simple explanation of string theory. But think of it as physics is just explaining what exists. Chemistry is just explaining what exists, right? The universe is just trying to hold everything that exists.
44:58 Mayim Bialik? And the God that people like Dr. Kaku would say is for another field. According to Einstein, that is the cosmic music that is resonating through the entire universe. That is Dr. Kaku's explanation of string theory.
45:16 Mayim Bialik? In your book, you talk about, and you know, these are some of our favorite facts and figures, and we recently spoke to Neil deGrasse Tyson, and we talked about this with him. 68% of what we experience, what we see, what we can't even understand is dark energy. 27% is dark matter. 5% is hydrogen and helium, and then 1% is just about everything else. Can you explain what it means for people who don't know anything about dark energy or dark matter? What does it mean to say that most of what we can access or most of what we're in the middle of is dark energy or dark matter?
45:57 Speaker 00 Well, we think that dark matter and dark energy are nothing but higher musical notes on a vibrating string. Everything you see around you, the neutrons, the protons, they're nothing but the lowest vibrations of a vibrating string. But they're higher vibrations. These higher vibrations have been catalogued with our atom smashers. But where does it end? It doesn't. It just keeps on going forever. The next set of subatomic particles that we would find on the earth would be invisible. They don't have electromagnetic properties. They're not like light beams. And so, why do we have dark matter? They're nothing but the next vibration, the next musical note.
46:41 Speaker 00 The next musical note of string theory, beyond the neutron, the proton, the lambda, and so on and so forth, is dark matter. So dark matter is not a mystery. Now, how do you prove that? That's difficult, because it's difficult to do experiments on something that is way out there. We're talking about dark matter that envelops galaxies. And so therefore, it's difficult to find an experiment by which we can capture dark matter, put it in a jar, and then analyze it and say, "Ah, it's nothing but a higher vibration of a string." Okay? But the betting is, the betting is among a lot of physicists,
47:23 Speaker 00 that dark matter is nothing but a higher musical note. Because the theory predicts that the next musical note would be invisible. And sure enough, dark matter is invisible, just like what the theory says. String theory is going to the point where we know everything about the Big Bang, why it happened, where it happened, what does it mean when we have an explosion of that nature? And what does it mean? Okay? And so, it's not that we're going to be able to use this to create a religion, or to create a sect, or to enhance our understanding of spirituality. No, we're not talking about that.
48:08 Speaker 00 We're simply talking about, do we know why we're here? Do we know why we have neutrons, protons, electrons? Do we know why we have DNA? And if so, then can we alter it? Can we perhaps change it a bit? Thank you, Within. But it's not as if the question is, does it mean that there is a higher authority, a God, a spirit? No, we're not talking about that. Some people would like to talk about that, but I'm a physicist, and I would rather just talk in the realm of mathematics.
48:44 Mayim Bialik? I mean, all of the great quantum physicists believed in God, believed in mystical experiences. So I would say it is very de rigueur to reject a religious notion. But even the initial calculations that were done and the introduction of quantum mechanics as a possibility included some notion of a separate plane that was beyond our understanding, which many physicists accidentally use to describe what many mystical experiences also seem to articulate.
49:21 Speaker 00 Well, Einstein himself was asked about these things. And Einstein thought that, yes, the mathematics was such that it does look as if things are designed. But at that point, he would not take a position. Because it means that there is a designer who designed the universe. So even though the universe looks like it could be designed, he refused to take a position on the question of a designer. Okay? And I think that's a rational way to look at things. That the further we push our understanding of religion and the universe, we begin to realize that there's a realm that we cannot penetrate. And that realm is the question of, is there a God?
50:06 Speaker 00 Is there a design to the whole thing? And so far, we see no concrete evidence, one way or the other.
50:16 Mayim Bialik? We're gonna hit pause on our conversation with Dr. Kaku, but there is so much more in part two. We're gonna talk about long-term concerns about robots becoming too intelligent. We'll talk about what it's like to merge with technology and what it might mean for people who don't want to. Also, are there more 3i atlases coming?
50:37 Jonathan Cohen? Join us on Substack for a deep dive into this episode and bonus content you can't get anywhere else. And we are so excited for you to see part two, so make sure you're subscribed on audio or on the YouTube page.
50:50 Mayim Bialik? And from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have, we will see you next time.
Previous Re-Air: Why Our Current News Media is in the Toilet & How the Legendary Connie Chung Changed Media Next Part Two: Co-Inventor of String Theory Dr. Michio Kaku on How Quantum Computers Will End Disease & Aging, Explain Parallel Universes & Reveal What Happens When We Die Page updated October 31, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated