{"id":2552,"date":"2009-12-02T09:48:58","date_gmt":"2009-12-02T14:48:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=2552"},"modified":"2009-12-02T09:48:58","modified_gmt":"2009-12-02T14:48:58","slug":"sci-fi-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=2552","title":{"rendered":"Sci-Fi Science"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I watched the first two episodes of Michio Kaku&#8217;s Sci-Fi Science show last night (for a review, see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.calendarlive.com\/tv\/la-et-physics1-2009dec01,0,6515361.story\">here<\/a>).  The format of the show is that Kaku uses supposedly real physics to design on his laptop a revolutionary new device, then unveils it at the end of the show to a group of sci-fi fans for what I guess is supposed to be a form of peer review.  The adoring fans are suitably impressed.  In the first episode the device was a warp drive, in the second a portal to other universes, based on a big accelerator and &#8220;negative matter&#8221;.  In both cases &#8220;negative energy&#8221; played a big part.<\/p>\n<p>Neither episode involved a non-negligible amount of legitimate science, instead treating the physics in a completely misleading way.  The second episode included participation by Max Tegmark, Alan Guth and Neil Turok.  I wonder if they&#8217;ve seen the final product and what they think of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I watched the first two episodes of Michio Kaku&#8217;s Sci-Fi Science show last night (for a review, see here). The format of the show is that Kaku uses supposedly real physics to design on his laptop a revolutionary new device, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=2552\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2552"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2554,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2552\/revisions\/2554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}