447 Quotes by Michio Kaku

For example, it takes the entire planet Earth to attract a feather to the floor, but we can counteract Earth’s gravity by lifting the feather with a finger. The action of our finger can counteract the gravity of an entire planet that weighs over six trillion trillion kilograms.

I sometimes think about how easy it is for a nation to slip into complacency and ruin after decades of basking in the sun. Since science is the engine of prosperity, nations that turn their backs on science and technology eventually enter a downward spiral.

Physicists believe that at the instant of the Big Bang, the universe was in perfect symmetry and there was an equal amount of matter and antimatter. If so, the annihilation between the two would have been perfect and complete, and the universe should be made of pure radiation. Yet here we are, made of matter, which should not be around anymore. Our very existence defies modern physics.

Tachyons at first seem to violate causality, but physicists believe that their true purpose was to set off the big bang and hence they are not observable anymore.

Telling a lie causes more centres of the brain to light up than telling the truth. Telling a lie implies that you know the truth but are thinking of the lie and its myriad consequences, which requires more energy than telling the truth.

Nobel laureate Richard Feynman was fond of saying that no one really understands the quantum theory. Ironically, although the quantum theory is the most successful theory ever proposed by the human mind.

Graphene consists of a single molecular layer of carbon atoms tightly bonded to form an ultra-thin, ultra-durable sheet. It is almost transparent and weighs practically nothing, yet is the toughest material known to science – two hundred times stronger than steel and stronger even than diamonds. In principle, you could balance an elephant on a pencil and then place the pencil point on a sheet of graphene without breaking or tearing it. As a bonus, graphene also conducts electricity.

One reason why childhood lasts so long is because there is so much subtle information to absorb about human society and the natural world.

And Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, said in 1943, “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.