Michio Kaku is one of science's greatest communicators. With popular science books since the 1980s and countless television shows, he is well known to the public looking to learn more about modern science.
Kaku is also a respected academic, having published papers and textbooks on physics topics such as string theory.
Like other people who study science and have an innate curiosity, Dr. Kaku is interested in a wide range of topics and is willing to talk about a number of them.
These are the three predictions of the American academic for the future:
Humans will become an interplanetary species
Given the money, the level of commitment from both government and private sources, and the vision behind some of the ideas Dr. Kaku is optimistic that humanity is ready to move into a "golden age of space exploration".
Of course, it's also practical for the problems we'd face if we tried to move a million people to Mars.
For example, he notes that few people ever seem to explain how to provide housing for a million people on Mars, or how they would go about obtaining the necessary means to build the buildings there. He suggests that the answer may be to rely on "self-replicating" robots, but that requires inventing them first.
We will expand the capacities of the brain
Given the progress of science in making cheaper, smaller and faster computer chips, known as Moore's Law, Dr. Kaku suggests that it's likely only a matter of time before we have access to free computers everywhere all the time – including those embedded in people. It offers an image of a brave new world of high technology.
We will beat cancer
Dr. Kaku argues that we are very close to beating cancer once and for all and ushering in a new era of scientific discovery.
