"Blasphemous" statements
One of the most respected physicists, Dr. Mitchio Kaku, recently said he has found proof that God exists by using primitive semi–radius tachyons showing us living in space created by an intelligence. This really had risen strong wave of reactions and opinions all across scientific world and also general public.
We will try to go deeper into this to help people like me (and possibly some of you) to understand what it is all about and what could lie behind these statements before we block our ability to search for the truth with our own prejudices.
Image: Tachyon visualization
Dr. Michio Kaku
Michio Kaku is a Japanese American theoretical physicist, futurist, and popularizer of science, professor of theoretical physics at the City College of New York and CUNY Graduate Center. He has written several books about physics and related topics, has made frequent appearances on radio, television, and film, and writes online blogs and articles. He has written several best sellers about physics.
Kaku has had more than 70 articles published in physics journals such as Physical Review, covering topics such as superstring theory, supergravity, supersymmetry, and hadronic physics. In 1974, Kaku and Prof. Keiji Kikkawa of Osaka University co-authored the first papers describing string theory in a field form. And string theory is an important part of this story.
Image: Dr. Michio Kaku
String theory
This is going to be hard for most of us. Particles are expected to be most basic elements with some properties. String theory sees each of them one-dimensional object called string. This theory describes string propagation and interactions. Each particle has mass and charge and other properties. In string theory, these properties are described by vibrational state. So it's this vibrational state that says it's certain particle. Certain state corresponds to graviton, other state to different type of particle.
Image: Known particles are seen as a String state from String Theory perspective
This theory fits many problems and it's a good candidate for a theory of everything. The issue with this theory is that is very universal and it's hard to do "reverse engineering" for example to find new particles, etc.
Image: Estimated visualization of strings
Well, to make extra long story short, research went on an on. Over the next years, Gabriele Veneziano, an Italian theoretical physicist and pioneer of string theory concluded that the lightest particle must be a tachyon.
What is tachyon
Tachyon is hypothetical particle. Here we go, we will operate on hypothetical level here. What does it mean? It means that some scientists believe it exist and some don't. That's not really nice start. But let's continue . That's not all, it's expected that tachyon moves faster than light. Hold on here. Yeah, I suppose that you know light moves in space with certain constant speed. Depends on type of space, but in vacuum it travels 299792458 meters per second [m/s]. This is something that is believed as constant and nothing can be faster as Albert Einstein postulated. Well, tachyon can, according to certain theories. This bring new opportunities or issues (depends how you see it) like breaking causality which, simply said, means that traveling in time is possible.
Image: Tachyon properties
The semi – ray used by Kaku, has a few theoretical properties of these particles which are able to create the effect of the real tachyon as it is hypothesized. However, this does not work on a subatomic scale. You wish to have some thick dense about tachyon cosmology, feel free to check resources below. I'll leave it to your interest and suggest you read "Thoughts on tachyon cosmology" so you have some better idea what this is all about. My intention is to stay on earth as possible and keep things as simple as possible (but not simpler).
What Dr. Kaku said
He said several statements which launched hua ge avalanche of reactions on various places. There are the major statements:
“I have concluded that we are in a world made by rules created by an intelligence”, he affirmed. “Believe me, everything that we call chance today won’t make sense anymore.“
“To me it is clear that we exists in a plan which is governed by rules that were created, shaped by a universal intelligence and not by chance.”
"God is a very intelligent mathematician."
"God's way of thinking can be compared to Music."
"We live in a “Matrix””
Image: Playing on strings (particles)
And the most detailed one
- "Analyzing the behavior of matter at the subatomic scale, hit by the pitch radius semi tachyon for the first time in history, a tiny point in space, totally free of any influence of the universe, matter, force, or law, is perceived in an unprecedented way absolute chaos. So, what we call chance no longer makes more sense, because we are in a universe governed by established rules and hazards not determined by universal plane. This means that, in all probability, there is an unknown force that governs everything.
These are very serious statements and for me (someone who were watching his comments on various topics) very surprising. Why? It's Dr. Kaku mostly express the highest respect to science and scientists itself and count it as an ultimate possible goal of a human effort. So Dr. Kaku is definitely not religious, nor spiritual man or man going this direction. And even so there he is declaring ultimate governance on sub-atomic particles level, a very strong statement and I believe it must have been quite challenging to him to admit and proclaim this.
Our homework
Here I wish to go through his statements about tachyons so we can understand what he meant. But I must disappoint you because most of us (including myself) don't have enough theoretical knowledge about sub-atomic particles, theoretical physics and String Theory that would be required. However even if we have all this knowledge it is not certain that we would be able to follow all the reasoning for the statements above. It's because theoretical sub-atomic particle physic is still very open to various theories and certain assumptions cannot be proven in any known way and declaration of some theory as major is based on consensus. This is also a reason why there is a group of scientists who are having issues with String Theory and these conclusions.
Criticism
And so it's not that surprising that also many other people (some scientists included) refused Dr. Kaku statements basically because these statements deny their life-philosophy where they are their own masters in the world created by chance without higher purpose. It's quite understandable but still it would be worth to understand more regardless to our opinoins about the world.
Image: This is what statements above invoke in many people (some scientists included)
Big unknown
Here we are with findings Dr. Kaku refers. Unfortunately, Dr. Kaku didn't publicly elaborate more on this topic or at least it is not recorded in known internet and so I was not able to find anything more specific and so let's try to do our best translate what he could mean by some understandable way.
Here is my best understanding of his findings:
When we observe (mathematically, experimentally or both) tiny sub-atomic particles hit by special tachyons on their level there where is no place for any chaos and uncertainty is, it leads to a conclusion that there is higher governance as coincidence and probability has no place here.
That is how I read these statements it and I give a notice in advance that my understanding might not be ultimately right and you have to bring your own effort here.
Image: This never happened
Conclusion
It's obvious that Dr. Kaku observed something special that led him to the interesting and serious conclusions he expressed. Based on his expertise, previous statements and his general world-view we can assume that he found something that moved him to these conclusions about the Higher Intelligence who governs the Universe at least on sub-atomic level. I also understand skeptics who are trying to discredit his work although they were his fans while he was still in harmony with their agnostic views. I personally welcome these findings because they confirm with my world-view as well as same other people can hate them because they deny theirs. For most of us, all of this unfortunately stays is the area of beliefs as we are no experts in sub-atomic physics, String Theory and Tachyons and we cannot (at least without great effort) to go deep enough through equations and experimental results as Dr. Kaku and some others who can. We can only try to critically follow his ways of thinking as far as we can understand them and make some personal conclusion. Or we can become experts in theoretical physics and confirm or disprove his findings on a scientific level. But that would be quite a long journey. Anyway, I still hope this article gave you a slightly better picture about given problematic with avoiding overwhelming complexity and made you think about these ideas with an open mind.
Image: Choice is yours
Resources:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachyon
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Particle
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriele_Veneziano
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michio_Kaku
- http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/34234/does-michio-kaku-claim-he-has-found-proof-of-gods-existence
- http://mkaku.org/
NOTE: If there are some experienced theoretical physicists I would definitely like to hear your comments on the matter