Michio Kaku is one busy guy. When he’s not presenting a weekly programme on US radio, he’s presenting a four part BBC series on Time.
In the meantime we’ve got this book, who’s subtitle is The Science of Alternative Universes and Our Future in the Cosmos. What we get is a whistlestop tour through basic cosmology, learning a lot about Einstein, Hoyle and others along the way.
It’s the latter part of the book that really brings us up to date and if you’re not careful, it’s very easy to get completely lost. I admit that I did in a few places.
Kaku is fantastic at using science fiction novels to illustrate some of the ideas, and I have a long list of books that I feel must be worth reading after hearing Kaku on them.
I think that it’s things like this that make the book as accessible as it is. I note that it’s on the long list for the 2006 Aventis Prize – the shortlist is revealed in a couple of weeks or so.
I certainly came out understanding a lot more about the multi-dimensional nature of the universe, and things like dark matter. Exceptional.