University of New York and I specialize in something called string theory.  I'm a physicist.

  Some people ask me the question, "What has

physics done for me lately?  I mean, do I get better color television, do I get better

internet reception with physics?"  And the answer is yes.  You see, physics is at the

very foundation of matter and energy.  We physicists invented the laser beam, we invented

the transistor.  We helped to create the first computer.  We helped to construct the

internet.  We wrote the World Wide Web.  In addition, we also helped to invent television,

radio, radar, microwaves, not to mention MRI scans, PET scans, x-rays.  In other words,

almost everything you see in your living room, almost everything you see in a modern hospital,

at some point or other, can be traced to a physicist.

Now, I got interested in physics when I was a child.  When I was a child of eight, something

happened to me that changed my life and I wanted to be part of this grand search for

a theory of everything.  When I was eight, a great scientist had just died.  I still

remember my elementary school teacher coming into the room and announcing that the greatest

scientist of our era has just passed away.  And that day, every newspaper published

a picture of his desk.  The desk of Albert Einstein.  And the caption said, I'll never

forget, "The unfinished manuscript of the greatest work of the greatest scientist of

our time."  And I said to myself, "Why couldn't he finish it?  I mean, what's so hard?  It's

a homework problem, right?  Why didn't he ask his mother?  Why can't he finish this

problem?"  So as a child of eight, I decided to find out what was this problem.

Years later, I began to realize that it was the theory of everything, the Unified Field

Theory.  

Unified Field Theory: A Theory of Everything  

An equation one inch long that would summarize all the physical forces in the universe.  An

equation like E=mc².  That equation is half an inch long and that equation unlocks the

secret of the stars.  Why do the stars shine?  Why does the galaxy light up?  Why do we

have energy on the earth?  All of it tied to an equation half an inch long.

But then there was another thing that happened to me when I was around eight years old.  I

got hooked on the Saturday morning TV shows.  In particular, Flash Gordon.  And I was

hooked.  I mean, every Saturday morning watching programs about alien from outer space, star

ships, ray guns, invisibility shields, cities in the sky, that was for me.  But after a

few years, I began to notice something.  First of all, I began to notice that well, I didn't

have blond hair and blue eyes, I didn't have muscles like Flash Gordon, but it was a scientist

who made the series work.  In particular, a physicist.  He was the one who discovered

the ray gun, the star ships.  He was the one who created the city in the sky.  He

was the one who created the invisibility shield.  And then I realized something else.  If

you want to understand the future, you have to understand physics.  Physics is at the

foundation of all the gadgetry, the wizardry, all the marvels of the technological age,

all of it can be traced to the work of a physicist.  Including computers, also biotechnology.

 All of that can eventually traced down to physics.

  Physics and the Impossible

Most of science fiction is in fact well within the laws of physics, but possible within maybe

100 years.  And then we have type two impossibilities, impossibilities that may take 1,000 years

or more.  That includes time travel, warp drive, higher dimensions, portals through

space and time, star gates, worm holes.  That's type two.  And then we have type three, and

those are things which simply violate all the known laws of physics, and they're very

few of them.

So in my life I've had two great passions.  First is to help complete Einstein's dream

of a theory of everything.  An equation one inch long that would allow us to, "Read the

mind of God."  

But the second passion of my life is to see the future.

You know, if you were to meet your grandparents at the year 1900, they were dirt farmers back

then.  They didn't live much beyond the age of 40, on average.  Long distance communication

in the year 1900 was yelling at your neighbor.  And yet, if they could see you now, with

iPads and iPods and satellites and GPS and laser beams, how would they view you?  They

would view you as a wizard or sorcerer.

However, if we can now meet our grandkids of the year 2100, how would we view them?

 We would view them as gods, like in Greek mythology.  Zeus could control objects around

him by pure thought.  Materialize objects just by thinking.  And there're perks to

being a Greek god, Venus had a perfect body, a timeless body.  And we are beginning now

to unravel the genetics at the molecular level, of the aging process.  And then Apollo, he

had a chariot that he could ride across the heavens.  We will finally have that flying

horse, I mean, that, we will have that flying car that we've always wanted to have in our

garage.  We will be able to create life forms that don't exist today.

And so in other words, if you want to see the future, you have to understand physics,

and you have to realize that by the year 2100, we will have the power of the gods.  

To paraphrase Arthur C. Clark, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from

divinity."

So let's now begin our story.    

The History of Physics

The history of physics is the history of modern civilization.  Before Isaac Newton, before

Galileo, we were shrouded with the mysteries of superstition.  People believed in all

sorts of different kinds of spirits and demons.  What made the planets move?  Why do things

interact with other things?  It was a mystery.

So, back in the Middle Ages, for example, people read the works of Aristotle.  And

Aristotle asked the question, "Why do objects move toward the earth?  And that's because,"

he said, "objects yearn, yearn to be united with the earth.   And why do objects slow

down when you put them in motion?  Objects in motion slow down because they get tired."

 These are the works of Aristotle, which held sway for almost 2,000 years until the

beginning of modern physics with Galileo and Isaac Newton.

So, when the ancients looked at the sky, the sky was full of mystery and wonder, and in

the year 1066, the most important date on the British calendar, there was a comet, a

comet which sailed over the battlefield of Hastings.  It frightened the troops of King

Harold, and a young man from Normandy, swept into England and defeated King Harold at the

Battle of Hastings, creating the modern British monarchy.  In fact, British history dates

to 1066 with William the Conqueror.

But the question is, where did the comet come from?  What was this comet that mysteriously

paved the way for the coming of the British monarchy?

Well, believe it or not, that same comet, the very same comet that initiated the British

monarchy, sailed over London once again in 1682.  This time, everyone was asking the

question, "Where do comets come from?  Do they signal the death of the king?  Why do

we have messengers from heavens in the sky?"  Well, one man dared to penetrate the secrets

of comets, and that was Isaac Newton.  In fact, when Isaac Newton was only 23 years

old, he stumbled upon the universal force of gravitation.

According to one story, he was walking on his estate in Woolsthorpe, and he saw an apple

fall.  And then Isaac Newton saw the moon, and then he asked the key question which helped

to unlock the heavens.  If apples falls, does the moon also fall?  And the answer

was, "Yes."  And answer overturned thousands of years of mystery and speculation about

the motions of the heavens.  The moon is in freefall, just like an apple.  The moon

is constantly falling toward the earth.  It doesn't hit the earth, because it spins around

the earth, and the earth is round, but it's acting under a force, a force of gravity.

So Newton immediately tried to work out the mathematics and he realized that the mathematics

of the 1600's was not sufficient to work out the motion of a falling moon.  So what did

Isaac Newton do?  When he was 23 years old, not only did he stumble upon the force of

gravity, but he also created calculus.  In fact, he created at the rate at which you

learn it, when you are a freshman in college.  And why did he create calculus?  To calculate

the motion of a falling moon.  The mathematics of his age was incapable of calculating the

trajectories of objects moving under an inverse square force field, and that's what Isaac

Newton did.  He worked out the motion of the moon.  And then he realized that if he

understands the moon, he also understands the motion of the planets in the solar system.

 And Isaac Newton invented a new telescope.  It was the reflecting telescope and he was

tracking the motion of this comet.

Well, it turns out that everyone was talking about the comet, including a rather wealthy

Englishman by the name of Edmund Haley.  Everyone was talking about the comet, so Edmund Haley,

being a wealthy merchant, decided to make a trip to Cambridge to talk to England's illustrious

scientist, Sir Isaac Newton.  Well, Edmund Haley asked Newton, "What do you make of this

comet?  No one understands comets, they're a mystery.  They've been fascinating people

for centuries, for millennia, what are your thoughts?"  And then, I paraphrase, but Isaac

Newton said something like this, he said, "Oh, that's easy.  That comet is moving at

a perfect ellipse.  It's moving in an inverse square force field.  I've been tracking it

every day with my reflecting telescope and the path of that comet conforms to my mathematics

exactly."  And of course, we don't know what Edmund Haley's reaction was, but I paraphrase,

he must have said something like this, he said, "For God's sake, man, why don't you

publish the greatest work in all of scientific history?  If correct, you have decoded the

secret of the stars, the secret of the heavens.  Nobody understands where comets come from."

 And then Newton responded and said, "Oh, well, it costs too much.  I mean, I'm not

a wealthy man, it would cost too much to summarize this calculus that I've invented and to work

out all the motion of the stars."  And then Haley must have said this, he must have said,

"Mr. Newton, I am a wealthy man.  I have made my fortune in commerce.  I will pay

for the publication of the greatest scientific work in any language."  And it was Principia.

 The principals, the mathematical principals that guide the heavens.  

Believe it or not, this is perhaps one of the most important works ever written by a

human being in the 100,000 years since we evolved from Africa.  Realize that this book

sets into motion a physics of the universe.  Forces that control the motion of the planets,

forces which can be calculated, forces which govern the motion of cannonballs, rockets,

pebbles, everything that moves, moves according to the laws of motion and the calculus of

Sir Isaac Newton.

In fact, even today, when we launch our space probes, we don't use Einstein's equations,

they only apply when you get near the speed of light or near a black hole.  We use Newton's

laws of gravity.  They are so precise that when we shoot a space probe right past the

rings of Saturn, we use exactly the same equations that Isaac Newton unraveled in the 1600's.

 That's why we have glorious photographs of the rings of Saturn.  That's why we have

fly-by's right past Neptune.  That's why we've been able to unravel the secrets of

the solar system, compliments of the laws of motion of Isaac Newton.

So what Newton did was not only did he set into motion the ability to calculate planets,

he also set into motion a mechanics.  Machines now operated upon well-defined laws.  Newton's

three laws of motion.  The first law of motion says that objects in motion stay in motion

forever, unless acted on by an outside force.  You see that in an ice skating rink.  You

should a puck and it goes all the way down forever, unless acted upon by an outside force.

 That's different from Aristotle's law of motion.  Aristotle said, "Objects in motion

eventually stop, because they get tired."  Newton says, "Objects in motion stay in

motion forever."  Sailing past Pluto, unless acted on by an outside force.

The second law of motion says, force is mass times acceleration.  And that equation made

possible the Industrial Revolution.  Steam engines, locomotives, factories, machines,

all of it due to the mechanics set into motion by Isaac Newton's second law of motion, force

is equal to mass times acceleration.

And then Newton had a third law of motion.  For every action, there's an equal and opposite

reaction, that's the law of rockets.  That's why we have rockets that can sail into outer

space.  In fact, Newton was the first human who could actually calculate how fast you

have to run to jump to the moon.  That was a number that mystified ancients.  How do

you get to the moon?  Can you jump to the moon?  Well, Newton could have calculated

that number, 25,000 miles per hour, that's the escape velocity of the earth, a number

which could have been calculated by Isaac Newton himself.

So the lesson here is, when scientists unravel the first force of the universe, gravity,

that set into motion the Industrial Revolution.  A revolution which toppled the kings and

queens of Europe, which displaced feudalism, ushering in the modern age.  All because

a 23-year-old gentleman looked up and asked the question, "Does the moon also fall?"

So, rockets, the motion of planets, and even buildings in Manhattan, all of them owe their

existence to Newton's laws of motion.

You know, when I was a kid growing up in California, I would see pictures of the Empire State Building.

 And I said to myself, "How could that possibly build such a big building and not know that

it's going to fall?  I mean, why doesn't it fall?  They didn't build scale models

of the thing, you couldn't have an Empire State Building that big to test whether it's

going to fall or not.  How did they know ahead of time that that building wouldn't

fall?  And the answer is:  Newton's laws of motion.

In fact, today, I teach Newton's laws of motion, and you can actually calculate the forces