The future of humanity : terraforming Mars, interstellar travel, immortality, and our destiny beyond Earth /

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

The #1 bestselling author of The Future of the Mind traverses the frontiers of astrophysics, artificial intelligence, and technology to offer a stunning vision of man's future in space, from settling Mars to traveling to distant galaxies.

We are entering a new Golden Age of space exploration. With irrepressible enthusiasm and a deep understanding of the cutting-edge research in space travel, World-renowned physicist and futurist Dr. Michio Kaku presents a compelling vision of how humanity may develop a sustainable civilization in outer space. He reveals the developments in robotics, nanotechnology, and biotechnology that may allow us to terraform and build habitable cities on Mars and beyond. He then journeys out of our solar system and discusses how new technologies such as nanoships, laser sails, and fusion rockets may actually make interstellar travel a possibility. We travel beyond our galaxy, and even beyond our universe, as Kaku investigates some of the hottest topics in science today, including warp drive, wormholes, hyperspace, parallel universes, and the multiverse. Ultimately, he shows us how humans may someday achieve a form of immortality and be able to leave our bodies entirely, laser porting to new havens in space.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Acknowledgments (p. xi)
• Prologue (p. 1)
• Introduction: Toward a Multiplanet Species (p. 7)
• Part I Leaving the Earth
• 1 Preparing for Liftoff (p. 19)
• 2 New Golden Age of Space Travel (p. 36)
• 3 Mining the Heavens (p. 54)
• 4 Mars Or Bust (p. 62)
• 5 Mars: The Garden Planet (p. 76)
• 6 Gas Giants, Comets, and Beyond (p. 96)
• Part II Voyage to the Stars
• 7 Robots in Space (p. 111)
• 8 Building a Starship (p. 137)
• 9 Kepler and a Universe of Planets (p. 167)
• Part III Life in the Universe
• 10 Immortality (p. 185)
• 11 Transhumanism and Technology (p. 206)
• 12 Search For Extraterrestrial Life (p. 225)
• 13 Advanced Civilizations (p. 247)
• 14 Leaving the Universe (p. 291)
• Notes (p. 309)
• Suggested Reading (p. 323)
• Illustration Credits (p. 325)
• Index (p. 327)

Excerpt provided by Syndetics

PROLOGUE   One day about seventy-five thousand years ago, humanity almost died. A titanic explosion in Indonesia sent up a colossal blanket of ash, smoke, and debris that covered thousands of miles. The eruption of Toba was so violent that it ranks as the most powerful volcanic event in the last twenty-five million years. It blew an unimaginable 670 cubic miles of dirt into the air. This caused large areas of Malaysia and India to be smothered by volcanic ash up to thirty feet thick. The toxic smoke and dust eventually sailed over Africa, leaving a trail of death and destruction in its wake. Imagine, for a moment, the chaos caused by this cataclysmic event. Our ancestors were terrorized by the searing heat and the clouds of gray ash that darkened the sun. Many were choked and poisoned by the thick soot and dust. Then, temperatures plunged, causing a "volcanic winter." Vegetation and wildlife died off as far as the eye could see, leaving only a bleak, desolate landscape. People and animals were left to scavenge the devastated terrain for tiny scraps of food, and most humans died of starvation. It looked as if the entire Earth was dying. The few who survived had only one goal: to flee as far as they could from the curtain of death that descended on their world. Stark evidence of this cataclysm may perhaps be found in our blood. Geneticists have noticed the curious fact that any two humans have almost identical DNA. By contrast, any two chimpanzees can have more genetic variation between them than is found in the entire human population. Mathematically, one theory to explain this phenomenon is to assume that, at the time of the explosion, most humans were wiped out, leaving only a handful of us--about two thousand people. Remarkably, this dirty, raggedy band of humans would become the ancestral Adams and Eves who would eventually populate the entire planet. All of us are almost clones of one another, brothers and sisters descended from a tiny, hardy group of humans who could have easily fit inside a modern hotel ballroom. As they trekked across the barren landscape, they had no idea that one day, their descendants would dominate every corner of our planet. Today, as we gaze into the future, we see that the events that took place seventy-five thousand years ago may actually be a dress rehearsal for future catastrophes. I was reminded of this in 1992, when I heard the astounding news that, for the first time, a planet orbiting a distant star had been found. With this discovery, astronomers could prove that planets existed beyond our solar system. This was a major paradigm shift in our understanding of the universe. But I was saddened when I heard the next piece of news: this alien planet was orbiting a dead star, a pulsar, that had exploded in a supernova, probably killing everything that might have lived on that planet. No living thing known to science can withstand the withering blast of nuclear energy that emerges when a star explodes close by. I then imagined a civilization on that planet, aware that their mother sun was dying, working urgently to assemble a huge armada of spaceships that might transport them to another star system. There would have been utter chaos on the planet as people, in panic and desperation, tried to scramble and secure the last few seats on the departing vessels. I imagined the horror felt by those who were left behind to meet their fate as their sun exploded. It is as inescapable as the laws of physics that humanity will one day confront some type of extinction-level event. But will we, like our ancestors, have the drive and determination to survive and even flourish? If we scan all the life-forms that have ever existed on the Earth, from microscopic bacteria to towering forests, lumbering dinosaurs, and enterprising humans, we find that more than 99.9 percent of them eventually became extinct. This means that extinction is the norm, that the odds are already stacked heavily against us. When we dig beneath our feet into the soil to unearth the fossil record, we see evidence of many ancient life-forms. Yet only the smallest handful survive today. Millions of species have appeared before us; they had their day in the sun, and then they withered and died. That is the story of life. No matter how much we may treasure the sight of dramatic, romantic sunsets, the smell of fresh ocean breezes, and the warmth of a summer's day, one day it will all end, and the planet will become inhospitable to human life. Nature will eventually turn on us, as it did to all those extinct life-forms. The grand history of life on Earth shows that, faced with a hostile environment, organisms inevitably meet one of three fates. They can leave that environment, they can adapt to it, or they will die. But if we look far enough into the future, we will eventually face a disaster so great that adaptation will be virtually impossible. Either we must leave the Earth or we will perish. There is no other way. These disasters have happened repeatedly in the past, and they will inevitably happen in the future. The Earth has already sustained five major extinction cycles, in which up to 90 percent of all life-forms vanished from the Earth. As sure as day follows night, there will be more to come. On a scale of decades, we face threats that are not natural but are largely self-inflicted, due to our own folly and shortsightedness. We face the danger of global warming, when the atmosphere of the Earth itself turns against us. We face the danger of modern warfare, as nuclear weapons proliferate in some of the most unstable regions of the globe. We face the danger of weaponized microbes, such as airborne AIDS or Ebola, which can be transmitted by a simple cough or sneeze. This could wipe out upward of 98 percent of the human race. Furthermore, we face an expanding population that consumes resources at a furious rate. We may exceed the carrying capacity of Earth at some point and find ourselves in an ecological Armageddon, vying for the planet's last remaining supplies. In addition to calamities that we create ourselves, there are also natural disasters over which we have little control. On a scale of thousands of years, we face the onset of another ice age. For the past one hundred thousand years, much of Earth's surface was blanketed by up to a half mile of solid ice. The bleak frozen landscape drove many animals to extinction. Then, ten thousand years ago, there was a thaw in the weather. This brief warming spell led to the sudden rise of modern civilization, and humans have taken advantage of it to spread and thrive. But this flowering has occurred during an interglacial period, meaning we will likely meet another ice age within the next ten thousand years. When it comes, our cities will disappear under mountains of snow and civilization will be crushed under the ice. We also face the possibility that the supervolcano under Yellowstone National Park may awaken from its long slumber, tearing the United States apart and engulfing the Earth in a choking, poisonous cloud of soot and debris. Previous eruptions took place 630,000, 1.3 million, and 2.1 million years ago. Each event was separated by roughly 700,000 years; therefore, we may be due for another colossal eruption in the next 100,000 years. On a scale of millions of years, we face the threat of another meteor or cometary impact, similar to the one that helped to destroy the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Back then, a rock about six miles across plunged into the Yucatán peninsula of Mexico, sending into the sky fiery debris that rained back on Earth. As with the explosion at Toba, only much larger, the ash clouds eventually darkened the sun and led temperatures to plunge globally. With the withering of vegetation, the food chain collapsed. Plant-eating dinosaurs starved to death, followed soon by their carnivorous cousins. In the end, 90 percent of all life-forms on Earth perished in the wake of this catastrophic event. For millennia, we have been blissfully ignorant of the reality that the Earth is floating in a swarm of potentially deadly rocks. Only within the last decade have scientists begun to quantify the real risk of a major impact. We now know that there are several thousand NEOs (near-Earth objects) that cross the orbit of the Earth and pose a danger to life on our planet. As of June 2017, 16,294 of these objects have been catalogued. But these are just the ones we've found. Astronomers estimate that there are perhaps several million uncharted objects in the solar system that pass by the Earth. I once interviewed the late astronomer Carl Sagan about this threat. He stressed to me that "we live in a cosmic shooting gallery," surrounded by potential hazards. It is only a matter of time, he told me, before a large asteroid hits the Earth. If we could somehow illuminate these asteroids, we would see the night sky filled with thousands of menacing points of light. Even assuming we avoid all these dangers, there is another that dwarfs all the others. Five billion years from now, the sun will expand into a giant red star that fills the entire sky. The sun will be so gigantic that the orbit of the Earth will be inside its blazing atmosphere, and the blistering heat will make life impossible within this inferno. Unlike all other life-forms on this planet, which must passively await their fate, we humans are masters of our own destiny. Fortunately, we are now creating the tools that will defy the odds given to us by nature, so that we don't become one of the 99.9 percent of life-forms destined for extinction. In this book, we will encounter the pioneers who have the energy, the vision, and the resources to change the fate of humanity. We will meet the dreamers who believe that humanity can live and thrive in outer space. We will analyze the revolutionary advances in technology that will make it possible to leave the Earth and to settle elsewhere in the solar system, and even beyond. But if there is one lesson we can learn from our history, it is that humanity, when faced with life-threatening crises, has risen to the challenge and has reached for even higher goals. In some sense, the spirit of exploration is in our genes and hardwired into our soul. But now we face perhaps the greatest challenge of all: to leave the confines of the Earth and soar into outer space. The laws of physics are clear; sooner or later we will face global crises that threaten our very existence. Life is too precious to be placed on a single planet, to be at the mercy of these planetary threats. We need an insurance policy, Sagan told me. He concluded that we should become a "two planet species." In other words, we need a backup plan. In this book, we will explore the history, the challenges, and the possible solutions that lie before us. The path will not be easy, and there will be setbacks, but we have no choice. From near extinction approximately seventy-five thousand years ago, our ancestors ventured forth and began the colonization of the entire Earth. This book will, I hope, lay out the steps necessary to conquer these obstacles that we will inevitably face in the future. Perhaps our fate is to become a multiplanet species that lives among the stars. Excerpted from The Future of Humanity: Terraforming Mars, Interstellar Travel, Immortality, and Our Destiny Beyond by Michio Kaku All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Physicist Kaku (Henry Semat Professor of Physics, City Coll. of New York; Physics of the Future), cofounder of string field theory, has written a bold prediction on the survival of our species that includes both reflections on history and a road map toward the future. While Kaku agrees with fellow theorist Stephen Hawking that humans will need to leave Earth to survive, he is much more positive about the prospect. The author admirably accomplishes his goal of discussing visions on how to leave the planet, drawing on contemporary and past interviews and research. Along the way, he covers many details about the solar system and space technology, incorporating parts of the latest research (e.g., new information on Jupiter from the Juno spacecraft). Kaku's treatment spans near-future concepts such as the Deep Space Transport to far-future notions, including laser porting digitized human consciousness throughout the multiverse. He verges into the mystical with his space-time theory of consciousness, but his clear prose will easily hold readers' interest. Verdict This inspiring treatise on humanity incorporates solid physics in the impressive discussions and is sure to enthrall YA and adult readers attracted to topics about science and space.-Sara R. Tompson, Jet Propulsion Laboratory Lib., Archives & Records Section, Pasadena, CA © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Theoretical physicist Kaku (The Future of the Mind) wonderfully illuminates possible ways the human race could survive on other planets. Kaku, certain that "either we must leave the Earth or we will perish," begins with a brief history of humanity's space-faring efforts before turning to current efforts to return to the Moon and reach Mars, led by billionaires such as Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, and Elon Musk. After discussing how Mars might be rendered livable, Kaku describes the possibility of reaching bodies beyond our solar system. Following these theoretical milestones, Kaku plots increasingly speculative ways that humans might reach further solar systems and eventually escape the end of the universe itself. The lengthy journeys required to reach such destinations prompt discussions of robots and AI, ways in which humans might become immortal, and the characteristics of advanced alien civilizations. Kaku generally keeps his concepts understandable (one notable exception is his use of string theory in explaining how we could travel to other universes), aided by pop culture references to Star Trek and science fiction novels. Given Kaku's track record of bestselling popular science books, this work, too, should go far. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Kaku, the noted theoretical physicist and popular-science writer (The Future of the Mind, 2014), takes us on an adventure of the imagination. Colonization of other worlds used to be the domain of science fiction, but, at an ever-increasing pace, it's becoming science fact. Leaving Earth, the author tells us, may no longer be optional, not if we want to survive as a species. In this deeply fascinating and energetically written book, Kaku explores how, exactly, we might go about colonizing other planets. Drawing on the work of a multitude of experts Murray Gell-Mann, Buzz Aldrin, Gregory Benford, Fritjof Capra, and Jared Diamond, to mention just a small handful Kaku lays out a detailed and entirely plausible plan for moving out into the solar system and even beyond into the stars. Kaku's writings have garnered a reputation for combining hard science with clever speculation, and his latest book continues that winning trend. A breathtaking voyage through what is almost certainly the next major period in the history of humanity.--Pitt, David Copyright 2018 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

Enthusiastic scientific speculation on the future of space travel.Acclaimed science popularizer Kaku (The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind, 2014, etc.), the co-founder of string field theory, confines his expertise to physics, but the 226 experts listed in the acknowledgements have plenty to offer on a variety of scientific disciplines. Alert readers will notice that the stirring words "we are entering a new golden age of space travel when exploring the universe will once again become an exciting part of the national agenda after decades of neglect" are not the author's. That statement applies to China, the single nation with an active national manned space program and leaders eager to mortify the United States, its superpower rival. Having accomplished the feat of the Apollo moon landing in 1969, the U.S. government, it seems, feels no pressure to keep up with the Chinese. National rivalries aside, our current technology, writes the author, will get us to Mars. However, making Mars as habitable as Earth ("terraforming"), traveling to far planets and their moons, mining precious metals from asteroids, and voyaging to the stars will require technical advances that are well underway and a revolution in energy that, sadly, is not. Computer efficiency has increased astronomically since World War II, and rocket motor efficiency has perhaps tripled. Always optimistic and undaunted, Kaku delivers a fascinating and scattershot series of scenarios in which humans overcome current obstacles without violating natural laws to travel the universe. The author digresses regularly into related areas of study, including extrasolar planets, radical life extension, intelligent robots, and the details of settling other worlds.An exhilarating look at the future, although American readers may yearn for a Chinese bombshell ( la Russia's launch of Sputnik in 1957) to stimulate the U.S. government to achieve at least one marvel during their lifetimes. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

MICHIO KAKU is a professor of physics at the City University of New York, cofounder of string field theory, and the author of several widely acclaimed science books, including Beyond Einstein, The Future of the Mind , Hyperspace , Physics of the Future , and Physics of the Impossible . He is the science correspondent for CBS This Morning and host of the radio programs Science Fantastic and Exploration .