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MICHIO KAKU: Esoteric Physics Made Simple

The 7th hearing yesterday of the House January 6 Committee evoked visions of a Netflix series.  Everything seems to be following a script to convict Donald Trump of planning, following through and failing to overturn democracy and the United States government.  No reason to believe otherwise, for the proofs shown so far have been convincing involving sort of average officials.  No top level government personage has yet been summoned to become a public witness.  Will the future include Mike Pence, or even maybe the Donald himself?  Hearing #8 will occur next week Thursday in prime time.  Some say this will the final one so the Department of Justice can keep Trump busy for the next half a year.

Heroines/heroes are blossoming.  Certainly Congresswoman Liz Cheney, who at this moment only has an 8% chance of returning to her seat from Wyoming.  Challenger Harriet Hageman is a lawyer and essentially a nobody, but Cheney's role on the Committee has soured her chances to prevail in any Republican primary.  70% of Wyoming voters in 2020 were Republicans, versus 12% Independents and 18% Democrats.  Funny, though, that a later poll of voter identification showed 47% Republicans, 38% Independents and 15% Democrats.  The Republican primary is in August.  I wonder if she can run as an Independent on November 8?

The entire House Committee has gained a measure of stardom.  Certainly too individuals like Arizona Republican House Speaker Rusty Bowers, Georgia Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Republican West Wing staffer Cassidy Hutchinson (left), and White House counsel for Trump, Pat Cipollone (right).  Not former Veep Mike Pence, unless he gets out of his shell and comes forth with the truth. 

So on to my science topic of the day.  Michio Kaku is a 75-year old American theoretical physicist who is affiliated with the City College of New York and is an authority on string and quantum field theory.  He is the pre-eminent popularizer of physics.
I am a couple of inches taller, but he is seven years younger than me.  When I read his bio, I was intrigued because we went through various similar circumstances and surely must have crossed paths on several occasions. Alas, we've never met.

  • His parents were interned in the Tule Lake War Relocation Center during World War II, but he was born in 1947 in San Jose.  Went to Palo Alto's Cubberley High School just about the time I was graduating from Stanford.  Here is a photo of his class of '64 reunion, but I'm not sure he is in it.
  • In 1968 he was drafted into the U.S Army and served two years as an infantryman.  Spent some time at Fort Lewis in Washington, where I did a two-week summer camp.
  • To skip the draft, I joined the Army Reserves and served in the 442 Infantry Regiment, which was in the mid-60's headquartered in Hilo.  I went through 16 weeks of advanced infantry training, and like him was supposed to be an infantryman.  However I was proficient playing the Army game, and was placed in a control group that was excused from attending weekly training because I lived more than 50 miles from the nearest unit.  Went to graduate school in 1968 just before the military activated everyone in control groups, and sent most of them to Vietnam.  As I was a graduate student, I again evaded active service.
  • Kaku graduated summa cum laude from Harvard and earned a PhD from Cal Berkeley in 1972, when I got my PhD in biochemical engineering from LSU.
  • Kaku worked for Edward Teller at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, as I did too, but I don't recall seeing Michio in my laser fusion group.  But they have 7,500 employees, and people pretty much worked in small groups on a variety of secret missions.  Teller recruited Kaku, while my links to the Father of the Hydrogen Bomb were two gatherings in Hawaii.
  • Photo  to the right of Kaku protesting at Cape Caneveral on the Trident nuclear weapon.  Here is his speech at that gathering.  He was fearful of plutonium.  He would have blessed my work on nuclear fusion.
  • Wrote the following books.
    • Beyond Einstein:  The Cosmic Quest for the Theory of the Universe (with Jennifer Thompson( 1987)
    • Hyperspace (1994)
    • Visions (1997)
    • Einstein's Cosmos (2004)
    • Parallel Worlds (2004)
    • Physics of the Impossible (2008)
    • Physics of the Future (2011)
    • The Future of the Mind (2014)The Future of Humanity (2028)
    • The God Equation (2021)

I've written five books, but nothing close to his intellectual level.  I compare myself to him only for self-deprecating humor, as I've long admired Michio Kaku as one of my cherished heroes.  Here is a final photo, with his wife, Shizue, twelve years ago.

What I'd like to do next is attach his You Tube explanation of various esoteric physics phenomena that baffle most, including me:

Another photo from the James Webb Space Telescope, of the Southern Ring Nebula.

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