Transcription
We have a a well-known professor who is going to educate us on the topic of dark matter. Professor Michio Kaku is here with us today and we so appreciate your time. Thank you so much for being here on Chicago Live.
Okay. I cannot hear him. I I believe you might be muted.
Okay. Hi. Can you hear me now?
I can hear you now.
Okay. Well, I'm going to present to you a mystery. A mystery that's so profound that if you figure it out, you could win the next Nobel Prize in physics and be declared the next Einstein.
Oh boy.
Here's the problem. It's a very simple problem. We live in the Milky Way galaxy. And the Milky Way galaxy looks like a pin wheel. It spins like a pin wheel. But when you calculate the rate of rotation of the Milky Way galaxy, it turns out that it spins too fast. It doesn't spin like it's supposed to spin. Therefore, astronomers threw their hands up and said, "Maybe there's a halo, a halo that surrounds the Milky Way galaxy that explains why it doesn't rotate like it should." But photographs of the Milky Way galaxy, you've seen it. Looks like a pancake. Looks like a flying saucer. Where is this mysterious dark matter that holds it together? It's invisible. In other words, we are now postulating a new form of matter. Matter that's invisible. Matter that weighs 10 times the weight of ordinary matter. And if you could figure out what this invisible matter is that holds the Milky Way galaxy together, you could win the next Nobel Prize. And you can imagine a lot of scientists are jumping in on the bandwagon, making all sorts of crazy proposals as to what is holding the Milky Way galaxy together when by rights it should fly apart like a pin wheel. At Fourth of July, you see these pin wheels spiral out of control. That should be the way the Milky Way galaxy is. But the galaxy is stable, and it's been stable for billions and billions of years, and we're clueless as to why.
Now, one candidate is called string theory, which is what I do for a living. And string theory says that the neutron, the proton, the electron, they're nothing but musical notes on a rubber band. So this is the electron if you could magnify it somehow. This is the proton. This is a pimeon. They're nothing but musical notes on a string. And so how come we have hundreds of subatomic particles? It's music. Music that vibrates that creates the subatomic particles that make up chemistry. So when you think of all the elements that make up atoms, you realize you're not you're just talking about vibrations of a string. But and here's the catch. String theory also predicts that there are higher vibrations. The vibrations of the next octave. If you're a musician, you know that there's another octave beyond the lowest octave. That's dark matter. So we think that dark matter is a higher musical note, higher music that surrounds surrounds the Milky Way galaxy. And if you could ever figure out what dark matter is, tell me first and we'll win the Nobel Prize together.
Okay, we'll do it together. Oh my goodness. I mean, it it it makes it makes your head spin uh as you're kind of trying to conceptualize all of these things. What are some of the other theories out there?
Well, like I said, most people think that the world is made out of atoms and there are hundred or so kinds of atoms and that's it. But now we have atom smashers that tell us that there are thousands of different kinds of subatomicles. Why should nature be so malicious to create thousands of subatomic particles? The leading theory is they're nothing but higher musical notes that the lowest vibration is the electron, the neutron, the proton. That's the lowest vibration, but they are higher vibrations, higher harmonics. So, think of a piano. We what you see around you is just the lowest notes on a piano. The higher notes make up the rest of the galaxy. And if you could figure that out, what are these higher notes which are invisible? There's a Nobel Prize waiting for you and you'll be declared the next Einstein.
So, let's say whoever figures it out. What does that open up? What possibilities does that open up to us?
Well, it explains where we came from. It explains the Big Bang. It explains the origin of the universe itself. You see, we have a theory which is called string theory. And it it looks it works pretty well all the way down to the instant of the big bang. But at the big bang, all hell breaks loose. Nobody but nobody has a complete theory of creation itself. And that's where this new dark matter could come into play. And also realize that it's not just dark matter. There's also something called dark energy which is even more prevalent. Dark energy is the energy of nothing. It's the reason why the universe expands. Why does the universe expand? Because there's something called dark energy which is even more powerful than dark matter which is responsible for the spin of the Milky Way galaxy. So in other words, we physicists are realizing that we are children. We are children trying to understand the basic nature of the big bang and reality itself.
And why do you think it still hasn't been named a thing? Why why do you think this is a theory that why why do you think it's still a theory and not something that's been proven yet that the information is not readily available to us yet in in society?
Well, the bottom line is I hate to be a party pooper. People can spin off the theories all the time. I get a lot of theories in the mail every day. But the bottom line is you got to test it. And that's where satellites come in. One day we hope to send satellites out there or create detectors called spark chambers on the planet Earth that'll detect the presence of this invisible matter. Think about it. It's a new form of matter. It's invisible. It has weight and it holds the galaxy together. If it wasn't for dark matter, the galaxy would have spun out of control billions of years ago and we would be floating lifeless in outer space. So, thank goodness for dark matter. It holds the galaxy together. But what is it? We're clueless. We simply don't know.
Sorry about that.
Oh, what is it that the more we know, the more the more you know, more things change, the more things stay the same. um you know we we find out like okay we we learn new things but at the same time we still don't know so much.
That's right. People think of knowledge is like a pancake. The larger the pancake the more unknown there is of the pancake that you don't understand. So the bigger the universe is the more unknowns we find. And the biggest unknown right now is where the big bang came from. The secret lies in dark energy and dark matter. That explains the Big Bang. But where do they come from? What is it made of? Sorry about that. We're clueless. And like I said, if you ever figured it out, tell me first.
How close do you think we are to an answer?
Well, we do have a proposal. It's called string theory. String theory says all the vibrations are like musical notes on a violin string. How many notes can you make on a violin string? Hundreds. Thousands of notes you can make on a violin string, but it's only one string. So we think that all of matter is nothing but vibrations of one string. It has many forms. It has many frequencies. But all of it boils down to what is called string theory. Now what's the problem with string theory? String theory predicts that there are, get this, 11 dimensions in hyperspace. This is something out of science fiction. In science fiction, we don't talk about hyperspace except in the movies. But that's where string theory lives. String theory lives in 11dimensional hyperspace. It blows people's minds away.
Well, uh it feels like my mind is blown today. Um uh tell us when when you you are a theoretical physicist. So
that's right. In the range of things that you have tried to answer in the span of your career, where does this rank?
Well, it really ranks way up there because we're beginning to understand the nature of reality itself. We can now explain, believe it or not, everything down from the instant of the Big Bang all the way out to perhaps the end of the universe itself. Everything in between. Everything in between the big bang to the big crunch and and the big freeze. Everything in between we can understand using the atomic theory. But then it breaks down. All hell breaks down. Because once you get to the big bang itself, then you begin to realize that maybe atoms are not stable at that point. We have not just one particle but a whole zoo of subatomic particles. And all of a sudden we realize mother nature is more crafty than we originally thought. We thought we had a handle. We thought we knew everything from the big bang to the to the big freeze. Everything in between we thought we knew. Now we begin to realize that we don't understand the big bang and we don't understand the end of the universe either. And like I said, if you ever figured it out, tell me.
What are some of the other big questions you're working to answer right now?
Well, we're building huge atom smashers that cost billions and billions of dollars to catalog to catalog and give names to these things. It used to be so simple in the 1930s. There was the neutron, the proton, and the electron. And that's it, folks. It seems so simple. Then we discovered the mezzons and we discovered the hydrons and the lepttons. Now we are drowning drowning in subatomic particles. And so what are they? The leading theory is get this that all these subatomic particles are nothing but music. Music of vibrating strings. Because if I take a string and I vibrate it, how many different kinds of vibrations can you make on a string? An infinite number. You can bend it any which way and it never breaks. And so we think that ultimately the nature of reality itself is based on vibrating strings. Strings that vibrate in 11dimensional hyperspace.
How does it help us to better understand things on Earth though?
Well, this theory not only explains the universe of the of the big bang that happened roughly 12 13 billion years ago. It also explains perhaps where the universe is going. How the universe will eventually die or will it die? There's a debate a debate among scientists right now. Some say the universe will expand and then stop and then recontract and then begin to create a second big bang. And these big bangs go on forever. Another theory says, "No, no, no, no. There's a multiverse. A multiverse of parallel universes. What we have is a bubble bath. Our universe is a bubble, but it coexists with other bubbles out there in a bubble bath of universes. This is called the multiverse theory. And believe it or not, even Marvel comics got wind of it. And all the superheroes of Marvel comics live in the multiverse. And that's why you have not just Spider-Man, but you have counter Spider-Man and different parallel Spider-Man. So we physicists, some of us do believe in a multiverse of universes that our universe is not alone. that our universe does not necessarily have to die in a big bang.
Mhm. And and how would the multi- in in more practical theory than what we've seen with Superman? What would the multiverse like what what would be the effects from what we know versus what's happening out there in a multiverse?
Well, think of a bubble bath of balloons that you make with a uh a bubble bath. However, we think that these bubbles can sometimes touch each other. They can then merge to create a bigger bubble and the connection between them is called a wormhole. A wormhole is a gateway through space and time. Now the first mention of a wormhole in the literature was done by Lewis Carol uh otherwise known as the mathematician Charles Dodson who wrote Alice in Wonderland. The looking glass is a gateway between Oxford and Wonderland. Today we physicists create wormholes. We think that wormholes can be we can create them in our mathematics. Wormholes are gateways between universes. And maybe, just maybe, one day we may be able to use a wormhole to break the light barrier. This, of course, is still science fiction. But there are some physicists who think that perhaps we can go faster than the speed of light, reach the stars using a wormhole, which is a gateway. In the same way that Alice went to Wonderland, perhaps one day we will be able to go faster than the speed of light and enter a parallel universe. This means that perhaps one day we'll be able to reach the stars. And believe it or not, there are some scientists who think that maybe the aliens have already done this. Why is it that aliens can reach the Earth when we're so far away from the these aliens? It would take thousands and thousands of years for an alien species to reach the Earth, but not if they can create a hole in space and time. And believe it or not, string theory does have solutions which allow for gateways between universes. And again, this is still conjectural. No proof. I repeat, no clue.
But there are scientists who think that yeah, maybe there's a multiverse of universes and we can travel between them interdimensionally.
Okay. So, do you think that like the Marvel movies get it right?
Well, I think that's where the inspiration came from. Uh, if you take a look at the old Star Treks, right, where did they get all those special effects and those ideas come from? They came from Einstein in 1935. For the first time in history, Albert Einstein talked about the possibility of a gateway, a gateway to a parallel universe. And of course, he didn't think we'd be able to build a machine that could do that. But now we're actually thinking about our future. Maybe one day we'll be able to punch a hole through space and time the way they do it on Star Trek. So again, the inspiration for Star Trek comes from Albert Einstein.
H Okay. And you mentioned aliens. So before I let you go, I have to ask you your thoughts on the UFO files that are being released.
Well, I think it's long overdue. Before it was just basically citizens saying, "Look, ma pa, I see something in the sky." That's called close encounters of the first kind. when you see flashes of light in the sky. Uh hopefully in the wealth of documents being declassified, we'll get into close encounters of the second kind that is actually making contact with a crashed UFO or the carcass of a dead body of an alien. Who knows? That's close encounters of the second kind when you get tangible evidence of an extraterrestrial civilization. And then there's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which of course became a movie. And so, right now, we're still at Close Encounters of the First Kind. Eyewitness accounts, jet pilots, uh people said, "I saw something fly right next to my jet airplane." But that's a close encounter of the first kind. Close encounters of the second kind means you can touch the wreckage. You can touch the bodies. We're not there yet, but hopefully in the mountain of documents that the president is declassifying, hopefully we'll find some evidence of close encounters of the second kind.
Oh boy. Professor Mio, thank you so much for being here and enlightening all of us. Uh we so appreciate you coming on the show today.
Okay. Thank you.
All right. Take care. Right here.
Mhm.