Michio Kaku - In Search of the God Particle

Are there more dimensions to our universe than just three? What is the so-called God particle? And what, if anything, existed before our universe came into being? The quest to answer these important scientific questions may finally come to an end next summer when the long-awaited Large Hadron Collider goes online in Europe. One of humanity’s most significant technological achievements to date, the “LHC” is a massive underground ring, seventeen miles in circumference, lying deep beneath the border between Switzerland and France. Using pulsing magnets, the LHC will accelerate streams of subatomic particles to nearly the speed of light, smashing them into each other to create tiny explosions that replicate energetic conditions similar to those that existed only one-billionth of a second after the big bang. And if the scientists who built it are right, the LHC could help to shed light on some of physics’ most elusive mysteries.

In the first in a series of conversations with some of the world’s leading scientific minds for an article in our March-May 2009 issue, EnlightenNext’s Tom Huston speaks with the acclaimed futurist and theoretical physicist Michio Kaku about the scientific and spiritual implications of the LHC. In addition to helping to pioneer “string field theory,” Professor Kaku is one of the world’s leading proponents of bringing cutting-edge scientific ideas and discoveries to a popular audience. To that end, he has appeared on a variety of television and radio programs and written a series of popular books with titles like Beyond Einstein, Hyperspace, and his most recent New York Times bestseller, Physics of the Impossible. In this fast-paced and wide-ranging interview, Kaku brings decades of experience at the leading edge of physics to bear on the LHC and tells us why he thinks  it will radically reshape the way we understand reality.

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