Michio Kaku: X-Ray Vision and Telepathy Already Exist | Big Think

Michio Kaku: X-Ray Vision and Telepathy Already Exist
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Technology already allows for primitive versions of superhuman abilities. One day we might also have contact lenses that allow us to surf the Internet and see infrared radiation.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MICHIO KAKU:

Dr. Michio Kaku is the co-founder of string field theory, and is one of the most widely recognized scientists in the world today. He has written 4 New York Times Best Sellers, is the science correspondent for CBS This Morning and has hosted numerous science specials for BBC-TV, the Discovery/Science Channel. His radio show broadcasts to 100 radio stations every week. Dr. Kaku holds the Henry Semat Chair and Professorship in theoretical physics at the City College of New York (CUNY), where he has taught for over 25 years. He has also been a visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Study as well as New York University (NYU).
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIPT:

Question: Will we one day evolve to have superhuman abilities like infrared-sight or telepathy or telekinesis? (Submitted by Roy Janho)

Michio Kaku: Roy, at the present time our senses are inadequate to do the things you mentioned. However, with the addition of technology it is very easy to imagine a time in the future when we would have super-senses. For example, our eyeball can only see red, green and blue, the primary colors, but animals can see different colors. Bees, for example, can see ultraviolet radiation. That is how they lock onto the sun. When it’s raining and it’s cloudy you think that bees would starve to death because they don’t know where the flower patch is. Wrong, they lock onto to sun, and under ultraviolet radiation bees can see the sun.

So for us, however, we can’t see infrared. We can’t see ultraviolet. However, it is possible that one day we’ll have contact lenses... contact lenses with full internet capability so we will blink and we will be online. And these contact lenses could be sensitive to infrared or ultraviolet radiation in which case we could see radiation that is invisible to us.

Already, it’s possible to get the x-ray vision of Superman. If you think of Superman comics you think: "No way, you can’t have x-ray vision. You have to have a photographic film behind the person. You would have to shine x-rays, develop the film to get the x-ray of the person. You can’t do that with an eyeball." It turns out we can. There is something called backscattered x-rays which gives you x-ray vision a la Superman almost indistinguishable from the x-ray vision of Superman comics. Here is how you do it: You get a light bulb that emits x-ray radiation that floods a room. The x-rays bounce off the walls. Then you put on special goggles or lenses which are sensitive to x-rays. X-rays hit the wall, go behind the person’s back, go through the person and into your goggles. That is how you do it without photographic film. It’s called backscattered x-rays. It already exists and in fact because of the 9/11 attack there has been a rush... a rush to put backscattered x-rays in airports at the present time. In fact, it’s already causing civil liberties lawsuits because some people don’t want their privacy invaded. They don’t want a Superman to look at them with their x-ray vision.

So... and even telepathy. We have certain forms of telepathy even today by putting MRI scans and EG scans onto our brainwaves, so we can actually peer now into the fabric of our own thoughts. It’s rather primitive. However, we have a dictionary, a dictionary of objects like dogs, cats, houses and brain patterns. So by looking at a person’s brain pattern through an MRI you can actually tell if the person is looking at a dog or a cat. That exists today. In the future our vocabulary of maybe 20 pictures may be increased to a few thousand and at that point that is beginning to look like real telepathy.

Recorded September 29, 2010
Interviewed by Paul Hoffman

[Chpsahoy]

I like this guy. He puts astronomy, biology, physics, and just life in general in very simple and straightforward terms

[hseoepy]

just listening to this guy makes me feel so smart

[Keyx]

This channel looks so awesome, it explains a lot of things I've been thinking about for several years. I'm definetly subscribing.

[HamzaHGreen]

Tomorrow’s Technology Depends on Today’s Physics.

[SecretAgent]

The majority of the industry is digital based now, which you could say is an improvement over the older film based technologies. The only places still using film are rural hospitals that can't afford the switch to digital and small offices with older radiologists who refuse to switch. We are constantly reminded of the ALARA principle (As low as reasonably achievable) for patient dose. Risk vs. Benefit is also something that physicians are supposed to weigh carefully.

[chiakikadaj]

I love how he explain with simple words that layman like me can understand and getting more interested with science

[aramis]

Your right, except Green and red make yellow :D in the primary set. Red, Yellow and blue is the set of primaries used by most artists, simply because of its warmer tendencies. But vision can be mapped much clearer with RGB.

[igotsachubby]

@NickIsOriginal
because light rays on the EM spectrum are not mixed like paint colors are mixed. It's a spectrum of wavelengths, the visual spectrum we can see as color is in a range of like 400-700nm. Yellow is just perceived by the cones probably either green/red, somewhere along that spectrum. It's a little complicated, if ur still confused, Google is a good friend to have. Or a biology book...

[bowerbjo]

@imcoollikeful Telepathy is defined as the communication between two or more minds. More specifically, it is the transfer of thoughts from one mind to another without utilizing standard communication (that is, the thoughts need not be broken down to words or sounds, etc.). If a machine could facilitate this it would be scientific and technology based. We practically already do this with the internet and smart phones.

[Ichthyodactyl]

Depends on the context; the CMY(K) method is much more effective for certain kinds of pigment-related function such as printing.

[michaelbballard]

When light is refracted it separates into the wavelengths that can and can't be seen on a reflective surface. It's the wavelength composition that the brain interprets into something discernable. Just as a substance separates light wavelengths through absorption which u can't see and reflecting other wavelengths that you can see; allowing color to be the interpretation by the brain. Articles about Newton mislead by saying "colors in sunlight". Good question. Haven't thought about this in awhile.

[lubermanl]

@weefeatures Actual colors are just different wavelengths of light, but televisions/electronics often use RBG as primary colors. There are different color models that use different primary colors. Basically our eyes have 3 different 'light sensors' for color called cone cells. So its common to use a set of 3 colors to blend in various ways to trick us into seeing different colors. Red Blue Green happens to be the most common one.

[warewolf]

@rednarok being dense enough to block out a lot of the x-rays leave a blank mark on the paper, therefore you get an outline of your bones. The way this is useful, is if there is some form of fracture, or break in the bones, then more of the x-rays get through showing the shape, and position of said fracture. What he is talking about is more of an x-ray "echo" but the basic idea is still the same. (only in this case, minus the special paper)

[michaelbballard]

Brief correction..Color doesn't actually exist until our brain encodes info from the senses(also color doesn't reside in light). Attention is required to bring sensory information from the sensory register to the working memory. By the time a person attends to a color perception, the brain has already processed, in accordance with the limitations of our eyes, how much EMR is reflected and absorbed by a given composition of matter. So, really paint has no color without light, eyes, and a brain.

[TheMastergoon]

concerning the contact lenses, if Michio literally meant "blink and you'll be online" what about during REM sleep? It would cause problems, and also taking them out at night would not be very economical

[ChristopherTheSensei]

actually since backscatter x-rays can't see through skin, unlike the traditional x-ray, it cause less damage to the body

[TheApocalypsePals]

I have a passing interest in philosophy to be honest. Late nights, little sleep, or too much of a good thing tend to get my inner thinker out. I recently stumbled across Daniel Dennett, I don't know if you've any interest in his ideas but he certainly approaches things more to my style. I think I agree with you again, maybe. I'm better at contemplating small matters that concern me more directly, I'll leave the more complicated issues to folks like you :)

[umadbro]

"However"
I swear Dr. Kaku has mastered this word.

[Usammityduzntafraidofanythin]

Think about how some sci-fis do it, and that's probably how we'd manipulate dreams.

Usually the one that makes most sense is interposing a sort of virtual reality overlap that's subtle enough that the person doesn't wake up, and can be attuned to somehow adjust the person's dream state.

[DarthHater]

@TheLockon00 Not necessarily, red, yellow and blue are the primary colors if you are using pigments. For instance, the colors in an inkjet printer are RYB, or cyan, megenta and yellow, NO green.

If you've ever mixed several different colors of paint, you get a dark brown, or a black. If you mix all the colors of light you get white.

So why do I have the feeling you already know all of this? Anyways, just throwing my two cents in for the uninformed.