{"id":233,"date":"2010-07-23T16:29:40","date_gmt":"2010-07-23T21:29:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/2010\/07\/23\/michio-kaku-is-not-helping\/"},"modified":"2010-07-23T16:29:40","modified_gmt":"2010-07-23T21:29:40","slug":"michio-kaku-is-not-helping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/2010\/07\/23\/michio-kaku-is-not-helping\/","title":{"rendered":"Michio Kaku is not helping"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m behind on my TV-watching these days, so I’m just getting around to watching Michio Kaku’s appearance<\/a> on the Colbert Report<\/em> a few weeks ago.\u00a0 He says things that are exaggerated to the point of being clearly false:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. When asked about teleportation, he says that “we’re already teleporting atoms.”\u00a0 This is a reference to the technique known as “quantum teleportation<\/a>,” which is really cool, but is just plain not teleportation in the sense Colbert means or in the sense that viewers will think he means.\u00a0 The fact is that we can’t teleport anything, in anything like the usual understanding of that word, and nothing on our current research horizon suggests we’re anywhere near being able to.<\/li>\n
  2. Later, Kaku says, “Within the coming decade we will have something resembling a Harry Potter invisibility cloak.”\u00a0 This is, again, simply not true.\u00a0 Once again, the technique he’s referring to<\/a> is pretty cool, but it’s absurd to suggest it’ll lead to anything remotely like “practical” invisibility ever<\/em>, let alone in a decade.\u00a0 If you stay perfectly still, are spherical, and are illuminated only with monochromatic polarized radio waves, then this technique can make you invisible.\u00a0 I wouldn’t count on this to keep you from getting detention from Professor Snape.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    In both cases, Kaku is not the original offender: both the quantum teleportation community and the “invisibility” researchers started the practice of overselling their goods.\u00a0 But Kaku knows better, and he shouldn’t play this game. People already think that we scientists exaggerate our level of knowledge. Every time a well-known scientist does this, it lowers the credibility of all scientists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I’m behind on my TV-watching these days, so I’m just getting around to watching Michio Kaku’s appearance on the Colbert Report a few weeks ago.\u00a0 He says things that are exaggerated to the point of being clearly false: When asked about teleportation, he says that “we’re already teleporting atoms.”\u00a0 This is a reference to the … Continue reading Michio Kaku is not helping<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/physicsbunn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}