Michio Kaku believes the universe is music. Not metaphorically, but literally—a vast, multidimensional orchestra where every subatomic particle is a vibration on a cosmic string. The man who co-founded string field theory and introduced the concept of an equation just an inch long to explain the entire universe is also the man now warning of AI, praising quantum computers, and imagining intergalactic lifeboats for a species edging towards self-destruction. In an interview, on the podcast This Is World, Kaku lays out a mind-bending roadmap through black holes, wormholes, and digital immortality, with detours into UFOs and the fate of consciousness.
“String theory is the only game in town,” he says. Not because it has been proven, but because it hasn’t yet been replaced. Kaku compares the universe to a violin, with different particles emerging from different notes. Gravity? Just another frequency. Chemistry? Interacting strings. Physics? The harmony of it all. And the mind of God, the phrase Einstein invoked in his final years, becomes, in Kaku’s language, “cosmic music resonating through 11-dimensional hyperspace.”
That number—11—isn’t plucked from whimsy. Kaku explains that string theory functions only in ten or eleven dimensions. More than that, and the maths break down. Fewer, and you lose the symphony. “We are the fish,” he says, referencing a Japanese tea garden from his youth. Fish in a two-dimensional pond, unable to imagine the hand that lifts them. Humanity, it seems, is just beginning to poke its head above the surface.
But if string theory is so elegant, why hasn’t it won? “We are too primitive,” Kaku states. The particles it predicts require energy far beyond our current tools. Our atom smashers tinker in the trillions of electron volts. String theory demands billion. Kaku calls this the “Planck energy” — a realm accessible only to a type-three civilisation. By his count, Earth doesn’t even qualify as type one.
That limitation is why string theory remains elegant but untouchable, like Bach for a species still learning to bang rocks together.
When it comes to UFOs, Kaku is more cautious. “About 95% are explainable,” he says. But the remaining 5%? Those raise eyebrows. He wants tangible proof. “Next time you’re kidnapped by aliens,” he quips, “steal something.” An alien chip. A hammer. Anything. Until then, it remains in the grey area between curiosity and conspiracy.
On the multiverse, he is more speculative. Universes, he says, are like bubbles. They collide, split, and form others. Big bangs, in his telling, happen all the time. Ours is just one among many. But he acknowledges that, for now, this remains untestable. What we call “dark matter” may hold the key. Most of the universe isn’t made of atoms, he reminds us. It’s made of something else. Something string theory might explain in a higher octave.
The real star of the show, however, is quantum mechanics. Kaku cannot stress this enough: without it, you wouldn’t exist. Classical physics, the domain of Newton, collapses under complexity. Quantum theory, with its probabilistic waves and uncertainty, is what holds atoms together. It’s what makes photosynthesis work. And maybe, just maybe, it’s what makes free will possible.
“If the brain is digital,” he argues, “then we have no free will. We are robots.” But if the brain functions quantum mechanically, then uncertainty allows for creativity. Consciousness, in this view, is a feature of quantum mechanics. Not a bug.
This idea feeds into one of Kaku’s favourite themes: digital immortality. It’s not science fiction, he insists. It’s already begun. William Shatner, for example, has been digitised. His image, with lifelike responses pulled from extensive interviews, can now speak to future generations. The other kind—organic immortality—remains out of reach. But even that, he suggests, is a matter of engineering. “It’s not impossible,” he says, “just impractical. For now.”
The ultimate ambition? Upload consciousness. Launch it aboard a spacecraft. Let it land, connect to a robotic body, and explore new worlds. We wouldn’t need to terraform Mars, he reasons, if we could just re-engineer ourselves to thrive there.
Kaku is careful not to overstate the present. Our quantum computers, he concedes, can only solve one problem at a time. They are nowhere near replacing your laptop. But their power is real. And when scaled, they could unlock realities we can’t yet conceive. This is why he calls history directional. Not because it’s perfect, but because viewed century by century, we are clearly moving away from toil and towards discovery.
He admits that physics comes with costs. Nuclear weapons. Climate collapse. AI that could end us before it uplifts us. But he remains hopeful. “History, viewed decade by decade, is depressing,” he says. “But century by century, it’s astonishing.”
Black holes? Possibly portals. Einstein himself imagined them as gateways—the famous Einstein-Rosen bridges. But crossing one requires the same Planck-scale energy. And that means we’re again back to civilisations far beyond our own. “They might find us boring,” he speculates. Just as we rarely hold extended conversations with deer, so too might aliens glance our way and move on.
Which brings us to time travel. Yes, wormholes might allow it. Yes, there are loopholes to Hawking’s objections. But you’d need absurd amounts of energy to pull it off. And if you did it more than once, the loop would collapse. One pass? Maybe.
All of this traces back to Einstein’s desk. Kaku was eight when he saw it on the evening news. The book Einstein couldn’t finish. The theory of everything. “Why couldn’t he just look up the answer?” Kaku wondered. He grew up trying to find out. Built an atom smasher in his garage. Blew the power in his house. Made contact with Edward Teller. And eventually, created an equation one inch long that, he hopes, brings the strings into harmony.
The string, he says, is the paradigm. “Music captures emotion, creates worlds, unifies everything.” Maybe even the universe.
And if that’s true, then the machine we’re building—the one training on our voices, predicting our sentences, and humming in the background—may already be learning the tune.
Whether it dreams in music or mimics our melody remains, as always, uncertain.
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