Intelligent Dinosaurs and Living Universes ­ an Interview with 

Michio Kaku

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thiesen@uni-muenster.de

(c) Stefan Thiesen, 2003

Transcript of the Interview of Astronomer and Science Writer

Stefan Thiesen, Ph.D. (ST) with Professor Michio Kaku (MK)of
October 4, 2003 in Interlaken, Switzerland; also present:
Author and SZ Editor Peter Fiebag (PF)and physics student and
AAS Student Researcher Patrick Grete (PG)

ST: I think the most interesting thing for the audience of the
magazine revolves around the different types of civilizations,
and also the density of the civilizations. Do you have an
opinion, any informed opinion, about the number of
civilizations that might occur per galaxy or in our galaxy?

MK: Well it is impossible to say. However, many

astrophysicists have speculated whether in our galaxy - not in
a hypothetical galaxy, but in our galaxy - whether or not
there is a type three civilization. And the big question that
we ask is, if there is, are we sufficiently advanced to detect
them - to detect their presence? This may sound like a stupid
question if there is a mighty type three galactic civilization
in our galaxy: do we know of it? But the answer that most
scientists will give is that probably no. We are probably so
primitive that we probably don’t even know that there is a
type three civilization in our own backyard. That’s how
primitive our technology is. We don’t know the frequencies
they communicate on, we don’t know how they function, we don’t
know what their motivations are, so that’s a statement as to
how primitive we are. However, the problem is that we always
assume that they are just like us, except more advanced. We
assume that that they use radio in the same way that we use
radio. We assume that they have the same kinds of technologies
that we do, except only bigger. That’s a big mistake I think
because I think that that String Theory, if it’s correct,
means that there are going to be many revolutions, many
revolutions to come in terms of energy, understanding matter,
understanding gravity, and I think it is incorrect for us to
impose our type zero thinking on a type three civilization.

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ST: Yes. I think there was an example of Erich von Däniken,
where he compared this problem to a jungle tribe trying to
communicate with jet airplanes by means of bongo drums.

MK: Yeah. It’s worse than this. If you are looking… if you go
down the street and see a bunch of ants, the difference
between ant technology and you, is on the order of the
difference between a type zero technology and a type three
technology. So ants would not know how we communicate, they
would not know the language, they would not know our
intentions, they would not know anything about the four
fundamental forces. The ants would be at total loss to
understand basically who we are. Now the only difference is,
however, we do have String Theory and it gives us the hope
that at the other side of the galaxy, if there are intelligent
beings, they also, will discover String Theory. It is often
said that if Einstein never lived, we would still discover
Einstein’s Theory through String Theory. One of the lowest
vibrations of a String, is all of Einstein’s Theory. All of
Einstein’s Theory is nothing but one note - one note on the
String.

ST: Ultimately it’s just discovering reality, then. So if you

search for reality, you will always find the same results.

MK: That’s right. So aliens will also have to obey the same
reality and the same laws of thermodynamics as us. Now this
classification by the way, comes from Nikolai Kardashev, who’s
a famous Russian astrophysicist who asked the question: Can we
quantify - can we quantify extra-terrestrial civilizations?
And there are two ways to quantify these civilizations. One is
by energy and the second is by information storage. So if you
calculate the total number of bits stored in a civilization,
that allows you to also rank civilizations by not only energy,
but also information storage. So we figured that if you’re a
type three Q, that is perhaps a civilization that can use the
Unified Field Theory to go across galaxies – if it’s possible.
And each letter of the alphabet corresponds to an amount of
bits that they process. A would be 10 to the 1, B would be 10
to the 2, so by the time we type 3Q, you are a super
civilization. With the energy ten billion times, ten billion
times the energy of today, with an energy consumption
corresponding to the letter Q.

ST: Well - that really is quite unbelievable.

MK: Yeah, right.

PG: One question. Another speaker talks about the Fermi

Paradoxon. So with your theory, with your speech, you solved
the Fermi Paradoxon.

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What’s that? Oh, the Fermi Paradox. Right. The question is –
where are they, right? The answer is, you see, we always take
a look at it in terms of our technology imposed upon them. We
have to look at it at the point of type three civilization.
From the point of view of the type three civilization, they
are perhaps scanning ten billion stars within the Milky Way
galaxy. They are sending probes that exponentially expand.
They are landing on moons and investigating planets, but from
that perspective we are actually kind of insignificant. They
may not have the time and energy and we’re not even type one,
yet.

ST: But I actually believe that even a type one civilization

can scan for signatures of life on other planets. So long
before they reach this time or this stage of type two or type
three, they might already be very well informed about the
situation of life in the galaxy.

MK: They may be aware about that. Type three may be very well
aware of the type twos and type ones that are out there and
they may even of maybe perhaps another type three.

ST: If I speculate a bit, couldn’t it be that life is actually

quite rare? If we look at the Drake Equation it could be that
one of the factors is close to zero, and then we get a very
small number but still over a long period of time, all the
different types of civilizations might evolve in the galaxy…

MK: Yeah. This is the famous Zero-Times-Infinity Problem. If I

take zero and multiply it by infinity, you can get almost any
number you want. So if zero is a probability of having a
civilization, but infinity is the number of stars you have in
the universe, then zero times infinity can be pretty much
anything you want it to be. So we simply don’t know
realistically how probable intelligent life is in the galaxy.
Drake himself thought maybe ten thousand planets in our galaxy
- which is not so many - but even then they will probably be
only type one and to go to type three, okay remember, type
zero to type one is a very dangerous transition. Type zero you
still have all the savagery of fundamentalism, nationalism,
sectarianism – everything goes wrong. Type one is planetary,
so they have ironed out many of their problems because they
have a planetary system, a planetary way of dealing with
conflicts between ethnic groups and things like that. But type
zero is quite violent. So of the ten thousand planets that
make type zero status and can reach outer space with signals,
maybe only a fraction of them become Type one and Type two.

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ST: What do you think are the chances for us to become at
least type one?

MK: I think if we make it through the next hundred years, we

will see perhaps an age of aquarius. My friend Sir Martin
Reece, he is the Astronomer Royal of Great Britain, he has
stated that we have a fifty-fifty chance of making it through
this period of time. When we have all these technologies of
weapons of mass destruction, we now have the capability of a
small group of people destroying all life on the planet Earth.
He gives us a fifty-fifty chance of negotiating this and
becoming Type one. However, once, he says, that we become type
one, then there’s a possibility we may expand throughout the
universe. We do have the possibility of worm holes, super
luminal transportation, we do have the probability that if we
can master the Unified Field Theory, we could use it to go to
the other star systems, other galaxies - maybe even create
baby universes.

ST: Create baby universes?

MK: This is a very hot topic in physics right now. Stephen

Hawking wrote about it called Black Holes and Baby Universes.
A Baby universe is assembling enough energy in one spot, so
that matter and space become unstable. Virtual universes
become real universes. A virtual particle is a particle that
is a ghost-like thing. It doesn’t exist here or there but we
see them all the time. All of modern physics is based on
virtual electrons. That’s why we have electronics, for
example. That’s how tunneling takes place: when the electron
becomes virtual. We now believe in virtual universes. So if a
universe can be virtual, it can become real if you add enough
energy to it, okay, so that’s why we believe that if we become
type three, you have the possibility of playing with these
things. These are of course beyond anything we can conceive
of, but there’s nothing in the laws of physics, nothing in the
laws of physics preventing this.

PG: So if you speculate, maybe our universe is such a baby

universe with the origin by a super civilization which
observed such ...

MK: It can’t be ruled out. The latest theory is called

Inflation, and Inflation is based on the internal inflation
that the universe’s bud off other universes, so our universe
looks very much like a black hole. If you look at the Black
Hole Equation of Schwarzschild: they’re identical. The
parameters of a black hole are identical to our universe. Our
universe has an event horizon, our universe looks very much
like a black hole, and in some sense maybe it is a black hole.
It fissioned off a larger universe and became a white hole, so

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in some sense our universe may actually be a white hole which
is a time-reversed black hole. Now we’ve never seen white
holes up there. We’ve looked for white holes. We’ve never seen
any white holes.

ST: And we possibly sit in one…

MK: But we may be sitting in a white hole.

ST: This really is a mind-blowing idea!

MK: But again, all of this is consistent with the known laws
of physics. You see some things we can dismiss as being
inconsistent with the laws of physics. Everything I’m telling
you, is consistent with the laws of physics. Stephen Hawking
used to say that time travel was impossible because where are
the tourists from the future? He doesn’t see tourists from the
future taking pictures of him but now he has retracted that
statement, he doesn’t say that anymore. He says that time
travel is possible but impractical and improbable but he says
it seems to be consistent with the laws of physics.

ST: But like Feynman once said, “The question is not whether
something is possible, the question is, whether it’s actually
going on“. So I would say that’s also the question about the
Däniken Theory. Do you think that it’s not only possible but
that it also might actually have happened that there was
already a contact in the past of some kind?

MK: First of all, I believe that they’re out there. If you

take a look at the sheer numbers - within the visible
universe, just the visible universe that we could see with our
telescopes, there are about a hundred billion galaxies and
there are probably more galaxies beyond our event horizon. But
our telescopes can see about a hundred billion galaxies and
each galaxy contains a hundred billion stars so we have a
hundred billion times a hundred billion stars and the Hubble
Space Telescope has now photographed solar system’s in
formation, baby solar system, baby ecliptic plains. We’ve now
discovered over a hundred, that was last year, a hundred
planets circling in other star systems, many Jupiter-sized
planets. So I think first of all, you would have to actually
argue the opposite: why don‘t we see intelligent life in the
outer space? I think rather than arguing for intelligent life,
I think you have to argue the other direction. Why don’t we
see intelligent life in outer space? So I think on the first
question, “Are they out there?“ the answer is Yes. On the
second question, “Well, where are they?“ okay, you have to ask
the question, “Are they type three?“ And then we narrow down

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the number of such civilizations because many of these
civilizations never make it to type one status. Once you’re
type one and you reach the type two, you’re immortal. Nothing
known to science can destroy type two. Volcanoes, Earthquakes,
and ice ages...

ST: But certainly Type three can destroy Type two...

Ah yeah. There are only two things that can destroy type two.
One is by committing suicide and the other is encountering
type three.

ST: Yes.

MK: But other than that there are no natural disasters, no

natural disaster can destroy type two. Cometary impacts can be
diverted, supernovas - you can simply move the planet or
quench the fusion process so that you don’t get a neutrino
burst coming out of the supernova. So if you are type two,
you’re a mortal against any natural disasters except suicide,
which is unnatural, and being gobbled up by type three.

ST: In your talk you mentioned Star Trek, you mentioned the
Borg and Q Continuum. What if really the type or the form of
existence of a very highly developed civilization or creature
completely changes and evolution really takes totally
different pathways than we can imagine right now?

MK: I think that could happen rashly, relatively soon on this

time scale of million of years, we’re talking about perhaps
within a hundred years of merging carbon with silicon. We are
carbon- based technologies but silicon technology is rapidly
advancing and carbon-silicon technologies are now advancing.
We have DNA
Chips, for example, chips which can scan DNA within a matter
of minutes rather than years or months in the past. We have
DNA computers, computers that compute on DNA molecules.
Digital computers compute on zeros and ones, DNA computers
compute on ATCG, the four nucleic acids. So we are saying the
merger of carbon and silicon – we see now for example the
human body shop, already taking place before our eyes. Right
now, this year, we can create artificial noses, ears,
bladders, bone, skins and connective tissue. That’s today -
they can be manufactured in the laboratory. Within five, ten
years, we are talking about perhaps manufacturing the first
artificial liver, growing them by stem cells in the
laboratory, because livers are not that complicated. Only a
few tissues and cells make up the liver. In ten, twenty years,
we are talking about a human body shop, being able to create

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organs as they wear out. And we’re also the discovering the
genetic basis of ageing. We’ve discovered over seventy genes
now that control the human ageing process, there are probably
be hundreds. We’ve isolated already seventy in human, not
mice, not fruit fly, seventy human genes that are involved in
the human metabolism and the human ageing process. So if you
were to take this to a hundred, two hundred years into the
future, where we can become type one, we may be able to play
with our own genetic heritage by that point. And so when we go
into outer space, then we may be able to play with our
architecture even more, for example suspended animation and
other kinds of technology to take us into space. Suspended
animation by the way is not possible today. If you take a look
at fish, some fish can be frozen solid, and then thawed out.
We now know the reason why. Their blood has glucose in it
which acts as an anti-freeze. Certain frogs and certain fish
can be frozen solid in ice but their body temperature is a
little bit below freezing but they have anti freeze inside,
and so their bodies are not frozen as a consequence. In the
future we may be able to play with our own DNA to create anti
freeze in our own DNA, so that we can be frozen solid and
still survive. But that again is a hundred, two hundred years
from now. So the answer is yes. By the time we go to the outer
space we’ll have nano-technology, and the rigors of the outer
space - when we’ll actually meet civilizations in outer space,
they may be part organic, part computer. The spaceship itself
may be alive. Freeman Dyson has written about astro-chicken.
Astro-chicken is a genetically modified rocket ship that uses
chicken technology to self-replicate...

ST: ... it is a semi-living organisms as well, yes.

MK: So the spaceship itself may be partly living.

ST: Is there a reason at all then for the original

civilization or for the original life forms to go to outer
space? Why don’t they just send their robots or their probes?

MK: Well the most mathematically and this is not necessarily

the most correct, but the most mathematically efficient way to
explore outer space is with von Neumann self-replicating
probes. I can think of a virus, a virus is a molecule - a few
tens of thousands of Atoms, but it’s a molecule. A molecule
will colonize the entire human body in a week giving us a cold
and it does this by hijacking the molecular machinery of each
cell. So each cell produces hundreds, thousands of more
viruses – that is the most mathematically efficient way of
exploring the galaxy, so that you would have a sphere
expanding at the speed of light, a sphere of probes. Each
probe landing on a moon, creating more probes which rocket out

7
at near the speed of light. You could have a sphere of
trillions of probes expanding at the speed light landing on
every single moon within that sphere and creating more copies
of itself.

ST: But that also is a scary aspect if we think about Star

Trek once again. The Borg - a type three intergallactic
civilization - they basically act the same way as a virus.

MK: Now I would assume that intelligent life in outer space,

if we’ll meet them, will probably be descendant from
predators. I see this for the following reasons; look at the
planet Earth – who are more intelligent, animals with eyes to
the front of their face or animals with eyes to the side of
their face? If you are a rabbit or a deer your eyes are at the
side of your face because your eyes need a 380° vision because
you wanna run from the predator if you were a rabbit or a
deer. If you were a tiger, a lion, a weasel, a hunter, you
have your eyes on the front of your face. You have stereo eyes
in front of your face because you hunt. To hunt means you can
ambush. You can plan, you know the habits of deer and animals
- you have stealth. You know how to be clandestine, and that
requires high technology in the brain.

MK: But in fact birds have that also.

MK: Yeah, but birds are probably descendant… - well some

predator birds like hawks, have a very, very focused bifocal
vision, okay. Sharks would have a very focused binocular
stereovision. So not just mammals but in the animal kingdom
usually organisms with eyes in front of their face are
predators with a more complex neural architecture. Hawks are
smarter than dogs for that reason. So we’ll be going to outer
space hmm they may be descendant from predators. However, that
does not necessarily mean they’re gonna want to eat us because
they’re not gonna made of the same DNA, or it’s gonna be very
much altered DNA than our cellular structure. So they may not
be able to digest our protein. We have very specific proteins
in our planet Earth that can be digested, and aliens in outer
space may not have those proteins so they’re not gonna want to
eat us. However, in the back of our mind we have to realize
that they may be descendant from predators, so we have to keep
that in mind.

ST: Maybe they are also afraid to land here because they see
what we eat. From their point of view we often eat our nearest
relatives...

8
MK: My personal point of view is though, by they’re Type one,
and they are planetary, they have treaties, they have
negotiations, they have ways in which to get rid of all the
rapacious savagery that typify their emergence from the swamp.
To come out of the swamp requires a tremendous amount of
competition, and that means a lot of savagery in the swamp.
However, once we attain type one status then it becomes
counter productive to be so savage in our relationship to
other tribes, to other species. Therefore by the time they hit
type two they will have thousand of years to iron out all the
vicious rapaciousness that typify their origin from the swamp.
So I think that they’re gonna be peaceful-like because they
will have had not centuries, they will have had millennia,
tens of millennia to iron out most of their problems.

ST: So basically you could say that those who do have reached
the stage of type two must be peaceful, otherwise they might
not have reached it.

MK: Yeah, but if they have used their weapons of mass

destruction against themselves, they would have destroyed
themselves. And again, they are planetary already. They could
talk to each other in a planetary language, they can laugh at
the same planetary jokes ...

ST: Technically we already can do that...

MK:...only the elite - only the elite on Earth can do that at

the present time. See, take a look at the rise of nations, the
rise of nations was typified by the rise of big industrialists
and capitalists who wanted a common language, common tariff,
common taxation, common borders to do business. So in some
sense the rise of nation follow the rise of capitalism. Now we
had nations before capitalism but not modern nations. They
were fiefdoms basically. The joke was that in France, if you
go between two provinces in France you had to change currency
and change dialect at the same time. There was no unified
France as we know it, there was no modern France, no modern
England. The modern currency, the modern tariff and taxation
system is a by-product of capitalism. Now we are entering a
type one system whereby we have European Union. Now all the
sudden taxation, and the common currency and tariffs are being
modified. Why are they doing it? To oppose NAFTA, because
NAFTA already has a common language, a currency and reduced
tariffs. So we are seeing the beginning of a planetary economy
which is less rapacious, less savage than the economies of
centuries ago.

9
ST: So you’re also suggesting that with entering outer space
and expanding to other planets, actually an infinite growth
basically is possible?

MK: Yeah because you’re colonizing different star systems. Now

let me be real clear about this. We’re probably gonna be
struck on the planet Earth for quite a few centuries. People
dream about terraforming Mars but that’s still very distant.
And there’s a reason for that and that is cost, because of ten
thousand dollars, ten to forty thousand dollars to put a pound
of any thing in orbit. Now think of John Glenn, the astronaut,
made out of solid gold, a solid gold astronaut. That’s what it
cost to put John Glenn into outer space. It is enormously
expensive! That’s why only the Americans and maybe the Chinese
now can afford to divert a portion of their national treasure
to put things into orbit which cost an enormous amount of
money. That cost is probably not gonna go down very much in
the next several decades. So I think we’re all gonna be stuck
in the planet Earth for several centuries. And we’re gonna
have centuries to iron out all our national rivalries,
sectarian, religious rivalries, so I suspect that in the outer
space they will also have the same problem. Outer space travel
is very expensive for them, too. And so by the time we meet
them, they’ll be peaceful rather than having this savagery of
being a predator.

ST: And they also have to find out somehow how to live with
their limited resources and whatever other problems they have
during the time they still stay in the planet.

MK: That’s right. Before they become type two and stellar, in
which case they directly consume energy from the sun.

ST: That’s the survival problem. I think it’s at least as

dangerous as rivalry.

MK: Yeah. There is a survival problem because sooner or later

they exhaust the power of the planet and still they do not
have space travel cheap enough to harness the power of the
sun. They do not have gigantic solar collectors that can get
an infinite energy from the sun and they’re only confined to
one planet so there is a problem there. Type one is still a
bit unstable. Type two is relatively stable because they have
infinite energy from the sun, but Type one is still relatively
unstable. So by the time we meet them they’re probably be
already type three. In which case they’re even beyond that.

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ST: Under what scenario can you imagine that a type three
civilization might be interested in lower developed
civilization?

MK: I think they will be interested in us because they’re

gonna be curious. That’s what typified their rise from the
swamp. Evolution seems at least on the Earth, prefer creatures
that are intelligent, that are curious about their environment
and can explore and harness new environments, and so I think
they will have the curiosity to explore and I think they will
wanna make contact with other type one civilizations.

PG: So on the other hand if we take into consideration that

there is a type three civilization and they are peaceful
because otherwise they would not be type three civilization
and if they want to explore other planets, it is quite
probable that they give us, that they give a barbaric culture
some kind of higher culture to ...

ST: Maybe, but you see I think we’re simply too primitive for
them to play with. Some people say why don’t they meet us and
give us some technology and stuff like that, right? But if you
meet ants on an anthill, do you give them beads do you give
them medicine, do you give them nuclear physics? You say no.
The ants can’t absorb it. It would be dangerous for them to
have this technology.

MK: But the ant does not understand and is not even able to
conceive the idea that something like us exists, whereas you
have conceived and others have conceived the idea that the
Type three civilization exists, and we are even looking for
them. So that should make it interesting for them after all.

MK: Well it is interesting for some of us but for the average

person - the average ant, right - it would be terrified. If
these ants encounter you, the first thing they do is run,
okay, so I think they would not be able to assimilate this
technology, they would not be able to understand it. So I
think again from their (rem: the Type one civilization’s)
point of view, they have nothing to gain from talking to type
zeros.

ST: Yeah. But we have entomologists. There must be some type

three entomologists.

MK: (laughing) Well, but they could get that information from
us scanning us from the moon or, you know, they may have a
base on the Earth, too. Who knows? Maybe they have monoliths
on the Earth.

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MK: That you also find in Star Trek, always these camouflaged
bases on other planets from where they observe the savages.

MK: And you observe because again, you don’t want to create
terror. You don’t wanna get terror on the part of these
individuals and you know the contact you’ll have is gonna be
very, very specific. You know to get certain kinds of
information, to make certain limited contacts but you’re not
giving them the benefit of global technology because you know
you can destroy with this technology, and evolution is a very,
very competitive theory. I mean we have a very competitive
aspect to our brain.

ST: Absolutely. Yes.

MK: And if you were to give ray guns to Cro-Magnon men, they
would have wiped out the Neandertals within a matter of weeks.
At the end of those they still got wiped out even without ray
guns, so I think that there is a danger when a very advanced
species like that give weapons or technology to very, very
primitive species, and they’re gonna carry out their evolution
very, very quickly with those weapons.

ST: Might they have something like contact ethics – again also
like in Star Trek?

MK: It’s conceivable.

ST: Like that the Earth is declared a protected area or as

long as Type one status is not reached, the planet is really
under protection and is not allowed to be touched?

MK: Yeah, we could speculate. But it is conceivable that

certain areas will simply be left unexplored to them. Certain
areas that are not worth exploring, there’s no interesting
Type one civilization in a certain area and again there are so
many, so many planets now that we think exist in the galaxy
and each one has to be visited. So I think it will take a long
time before any type of contact is made and if even a contact
is made, they want to keep it minimum. We’re not type one yet.
Once you become type one then you’re literally harnessing the
thought, the thinking, the creativity of you know, tens of
billions of well-educated inhabitants, rather than now having
an elite that governs largely, you know, ignorant masses of
people.

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PG: Another question. Wouldn’t it be for us that we could see
it if there are type three civilizations, maybe they are
galactic ones and they can control the energy of a galaxy so
if we look into the sky and see all the galaxies, wouldn’t we
recognize a galaxy which isn’t like the others which is a ...

MK: Well, we’ve thought about that. I mean several astronomers

have noted that when we look into outer space, all the
galaxies look the same. You don’t see any remnant of any life.
However to move things in a galaxy so we could see them from a
distance is quite difficult. If you have to photograph the
Earth using our own probes, you find that most probes show
that there is no life on Earth. It is quite interesting but
the Galileo, actually, was able to show that there is life on
Earth.

ST: So it was designed to find out all those fingerprints to

find those trace of gases and everything.

MK: Right. And so it is quite difficult to see presence of any

life on the Earth.

ST: But we will be looking for exactly what we search for. I

mean we know what to look for.

MK: Right.

ST: We know now what the signature of life looks like, so when
we scan extrasolar planets in the future with the Darwin
Project or with the other systems that come in the middle of
the century, we will look for ozone, we will look for oxygen,
we will look for water vapor and other trace gases that are
typical for life.

MK: For type zero, right? By the time we’re type one, we don’t
have hydrocarbon chemistry anymore.

ST: We still have ozone in the atmosphere, I guess - I hope.

MK: Well yeah to protect yourself, right. But again – if you

take a place like the moon Europa, you may have a civilization
there with none of these characteristics….

ST: So that’s again that we keep looking for ourselves?

MK: That’s right. See, on Europa (rem.: the Jupiter Moon) you
have an example with volcano vents. Volcano vents may give you
the energy without sunlight. In fact that’s probably how we
got started. If you think about it, sunlight is very critical

13
for our existence where all our machinery, molecular
machinery, is geared to sunlight. However, that’s probably not
how we got started. We probably got started near volcano vents
independent of sunlight. Our chemistry was based on the
chemistry probably of volcano vents and that’s what we have on
Europa. We have an ocean under the ice cover. We have
probably volcano vents so again life that started from a fish.
Fish without eyes, fish without astronomy, but fish that
perhaps had an industry that exist under the ice cover of
Europa with a totally different architecture. First they won’t
have spaceships because they won’t know about the existence of
stars, except sea stars.

ST: That’s true. So how should we look for other civilizations

in the universe?

MK: Well, of course we have to look for ourselves, because how

else are we gonna do it? However we have to look for a rich
chemistry, and so far the rich chemistry that we see is
carbon-based. Carbon has four bonds. And you know silicon has
four bonds, but not as rich. We have to look for carbon-based
chemistry, and we have to look for energy source. To create
life you have to have energy, you have to have stability, you
have to have complexity. Energy is from the sun, stability
because you’re on a circular planet in the Goldilock Zone and
complexity because carbon with its four bonds. Well - other
than that, anything can really happen.

ST: In connection with the Däniken Theory, there also is the

search for extra-terrestrial artifacts. You mentioned a
possible base on the moon for example - as a very hypothetical
idea. If one would look for extra-terrestrial artifacts in
the solar system, what do you think one should look for there?

MK: First of all we should not look for Type zero technology.
We should look for type three technology on the Earth, for
example, nano technology. Many of these theories of extra-
terrestrial intelligence were formulated in the thirties and
forties before the coming of nano technologies. Now in nano
technology we can miniaturize things, make things super strong
at the molecular level with carbon nano tubes perhaps make
atomic machines, perhaps make atomic laboratories that are
atomic size. So when Kubrik did his movie, he had this
monolith being in the order of fifteen feet tall or so. It
doesn’t have to be fifteen feet tall!

ST: It might be invisible.

MK: It could be, again, as small as a bread box. It just has

to have the information storage by which to replicate itself

14
and begin the process of searching for type one emissions,
studying type one civilizations, and they could be on the
Earth. Of course there is more erosion on the Earth so they’re
gonna have perhaps not last as long. On the moon they will
last for billion of years but you know, the Earth has a rich
carbon chemistry. So independent of what you think of the
Earth, you would think that the Earth would be a laboratory
for new life forms to be started. If you were an intelligent
life form visiting our solar system before the coming of
humans and you saw these dinosaurs run the face of the Earth,
you could say to yourself, well yeah, give it enough time
perhaps you have intelligent dinosaurs. So why not land a
probe there? Why not land a probe and make a colony, you know,
just to set up and investigate things and to wait. To wait.
And again these beings may be semi-computerized. You know,
part of their intelligence may be in part machines. In which
case if we meet one of these outposts, they will seem rather
bizarre to us, because we assume they’re gonna be type zero
technology imposed upon type zero. Type three technology will
use nano technology. It will be a merger of carbon and silicon
perhaps. It will be partly living – the object if you leave
behind a probe, it will be partly living, it will be micro-
miniaturized on a fantastic scale.

ST: But if I think about that now, this is technology that’s

conceivable even for us who are not even type one.

MK: Right.

ST: So maybe in reality we really have to expect something

that we cannot even remotely imagine...

MK: Maybe we cannot even conceive. That’s right. Remember as

you said, our theories are based on the current day thinking
projected.

ST: And they changed dramatically in the last thirty years

only.

MK: Yeah. Just for that period of time. We no longer look at

the UFO thirties, forties model. We look at the possibilities
of dimensional transport going through dimensions even without
spaceships, for example. We look for the possibility of micro-
miniaturization and we look for the possibility of carbon-
silicon merger. So fifty years from now (laughs). That’s why I
look at the laws of physics. The laws of physics don’t change
that much. It took three hundred years for Einstein to replace
Newton and now String Theory is coming along but String Theory
is the extension of Quantum Theory, an extension of Einstein’s

15
Theory. So we think the laws of physics are gonna be pretty
good for thousands of years.
The laws of biology, the laws of computer science will change
rapidly. But even in the short period of time where we had
biology and computer science, we already do believe that
intelligent encounters with beings from outer space could be
quite different to the 1950’s, 1940’s encounter.
(A blackbird is flying up and down outside a Window of Erich
v. Däniken’s office)
There’s a bird trying to make contact with us, right?

ST: (laughing) Maybe it was an alien robot...

MK:...it can’t conceive of glass. They can’t conceive there is

such a thing as glass, so they bump into things. You know
there is such a thing as glass… So you’re right, we don’t
know. So that’s why I’m a phycisist and that’s why I think
that from the physics point of view, the laws of physics will
not change in a thousand years until we discover new layers in
physics.

ST: But you don’t know how big our current portion of the
actual knowledge is. I mean the knowledge that you have now
might turn out to be just a tiny speck of a much bigger model.

MK: Yeah. However we do think, not everybody, but we do think

there is a Final Theory. I think we’re very close now to the
Final Theory. Biology, for example – when DNA was finally
unravelled, that was the final theory. From now on all the
searches in biology are DNA based.

ST: But you’re talking about nothing less than explaining the
very nature of reality.

MK: Yeah, I want the DNA of reality. Right. That’s what we

gain - the cosmic code, which already happened in biology. The
biologists already have their cosmic code. We are looking for
the DNA of the universe, basically the genetic code that
allowed our universe to be created.

ST: And after that everything is just going to be applied

physics?

MK: Well, look at biology. Biology is all applied DNA. And

look at chemistry. Chemistry is nothing but applied atomic
physics and atomic physics is applied nuclear physics. And
applied nuclear physics, we think, is applied String Theory.
String Theory itself, we think is the DNA of all theories. So

16
I guess we can’t prove it, but all indications are that this
is the final theory.

ST: Yes the proof is another problem. You mentioned a few ways
how it can be proven indirectly…

MK: Yeah. The W-MAP satellite (rem.: the Wilkinson Microwave

Anisotropy Probe) in February of this year took baby pictures
of the universe dating back 379,000 years after the onset of
creation. It has given us the most detailed pictures of the
Big Bang, photographs essentially of the after shocks of the
Big Bang. Within fifteen years we’re gonna send LISA (rem.:
Laser Interferometry Space Antenna) up into outer space. Three
satellites that will detect gravity waves. These are not the
shock waves of the aftershock but the actual shock waves
(rem.: of the Big Bang) themselves. We’re gonna photograph
them with our satellites in fifteen years. We’ve been given
preliminary approval from NASA, three satellites orbiting in a
triangle connected by laser beams as they circle in outer
space. Any wave that hits these three laser beams will jiggle
them, will make them out of phase. And we’ll be able to detect
black holes, neutron stars, supernovas in outer space and
creation itself, which is still reverberating throughout the
universe. That should clinch it or it is clinch the periphery
of the theory. We should be able to give hard information.
People say you cannot test String Theory because we don’t have
an atom smasher the size of the galaxy. Well, we have
something much better than that. We have an atom smasher the
size of the universe. If the universe itself, the Big Bang was
an atom smasher, it smashed a lot of atoms when it got
created. And the shock waves, we’re gonna photograph the shock
waves, the gravity shock waves from a a trillionth of a second
after of the Big Bang not 379,000 years after the Big Bang but
within trillionth of a second of the Big Bang. That should
differentiate inflationary theory which is the dominant theory
of Cosmology, but even beyond that it should give us an
inkling about String Theory as well.

ST: So you are still looking forward to exciting times.

MK: Yeah, this is a great time to be a physicist…

ST: I can hear that.

MK: …because now instead of just simply mouthing-off that

there should be a unified field theory, now we have one. We
just have to prove that it is the Unified Field Theory. It
forced us to confront things like worm holes, time machines,
higher dimensions that normally we would not want to think
about but we’re forced to confront these things, and on the

17
other side of the galaxy any intelligent being on the other
side of the galaxy will also have to go trough the same
stuffs. They will also smash atoms, they will also understand
their four forces and they will also understand that there is
a unified field theory underlying all fundamental places and
they’re gonna repeat the same stuffs that we are going
through. And perhaps if they’re a hundred thousand years ahead
of us, perhaps they use this as a playground for their
activities. Also one more thing, we now know from the W-MAP
Satellite that the universe is accelerating and the universe
is probably dying in a big freeze trillions of years from now.
At that point I think that we should leave the universe. Any
intelligent being that advanced will have to look at the
options seriously of leaving the universe and going to a
hotter universe.

ST: But I assume if the Planck Energy can be utilized, then

this can be extended for a very long time?

MK: Well, the expansion of the universe seems to be

accelerating. And billions of years from now it can get very
cold and so we may have to leave the universe we may have to
create a lifeboat to go to other universe. But that’s a
subject in my next book.

ST: Maybe we can create it ourselves then.

MK: Oh yeah. That’s what Allan Guth, the father of

Inflationary Theory, who will probably win a Nobel Prize at
some point in the future. He has actively written about baby
universes. He calls them daughter universes. What will it take
to create a universe in another? Of course the temperature is
a trillion trillion degrees centigrade, but again, it is
conceivable that an advanced technology will have a trillion
trillion degrees centigrade. Laser beams for example. They may
be able to create super laser beams that that concentrate
enough energy so that virtual universes become real. Just like
in the laboratory we can get virtual electrons and make them
real. They might be able to make virtual universes and make
them real.

ST: About the Big Freeze - maybe you have read or at least
heard about Freeman Dyson’s work, Time Without End?

MK: No, is it a new book?

ST: It’s older already – seventies - and he argues there,

thermodynamically mostly, that it will get very cold but it
will never get down to absolute zero, so that every process
will get very slow, but it will never stop entirely.

18
MK: He’s probably wrong. There was an article published in the
Scientific American about two years ago by Lawrence Kraus,
saying that he’s probably wrong. However, he’s wrong because
of a loophole. We now believe that there is a cosmological
constant in the universe. Dark energy.

ST: So that’s re-introduced!

MK: Re-introduced, right, from 1917 actually it was in 1960,

it was introduced, so if there is a dark energy there is a
floor. There is a minimum floor and you can’t go below that
floor and because of that then as the universe gets colder and
colder and colder and reaches that floor, then all machines
will stop. Information processing will become impossible.
Information processing is possible only if you have a
difference in temperature. If Delta T (rem.: the temperature
differences) goes to zero then the information process goes to
zero. Life can be defined as information processing, so
therefore all information processing will cease, when we hit
the floor which is dark energy.

ST: You are right - he did not have a cosmological constant.

MK: He did not have it? Right. That was only introduced in the
last three to five years.

ST: Yes, it was from the seventies. Looked convincing, though,

for me.

MK: Yeah, it looked convincing. Right.

PG: You talked about your work in the future. There are some
student researchers in the AAS and maybe can you give them
some advice how to work on this topic, so it is very
interesting, should they study physics or should they contact
you or what should they do? Could you give some advice as
well?

MK: Well, I think science is sort of like building a house.

First, you have to have a real, solid foundation. The more
solid the foundation, the better the house you can build. Then
you have to be an architect to be able to get the rooms, the
windows and stuffs like that. But then you have to be an
artist. You have to be an artist to make sure that the house
looks pretty, and it looks magnificent. So if we are to become
a scientist, first we have to understand the real basics. We
have to understand the Quantum Theory. You have to understand
Relativity. You have to understand DNA technology, have real
foundations. Then you have to build rooms, you have to be able
to speculate, you have to be able to dream about a house but
ultimately you have to be an artist. You have to be creative.

19
You have to be these flashes of insight and imagination, which
cannot be taught in a book, cannot be learned, and that’s the
mark of a great scientist. Many scientists can build
foundations and rooms but to be a great scientist you have to
be an artist. And that’s what Einstein was. He was an artist
who could create something out of nothing, basically. Same
thing with Isaac Newton. So I think that we have to dream. We
have to dream, but the solider the foundation the more we can
dream. So I think that we have to be grounded, you know, in
physics, biology, chemistry - but the more we’re grounded the
more we can dream.

PG: Okay. Thank you.

ST: Maybe one speculation again about the alien visitors.

MK: Okay.

ST: One last thing. We are at a very exciting point of history

for mankind. The signs, hopefully a peaceful global
civilization is forming - or let’s say we are at the threshold
of something and we don’t quite know yet what that will be.
Couldn’t it be, just as a science fiction speculation now,
couldn’t it be that there’s only a very, very small number of
planets in the galaxy where a civilization finds itself at
this very specific point of evolution, and that this makes it
very interesting for even a type three civilization so that
this could be a reason why they possibly study it or maybe -
just a speculation again - even might support it, make contact
and help it to avoid the big mistake of destroying itself.

MK: It’s conceivable. The movie 2001 was more or less based on
the idea that a more advanced civilization like a type one
would be interesting. And that’s why in the movie there was a
scene where the astronauts touched the obelisk, and then there
was a sound. Remember there was a sound? That sound was the
message, an alarm clock saying we have arrived. But it is
always conceivable because even in the movie they had the
monolith appearing in front of the apes. So there was a
situation where an alien civilization actually helped the
evolution of the planet Earth and they waited. They simply
waited for us to become type one.

ST: Time plays no role for them I assume.

MK: Yeah, so it’s conceivable. Again, we are speculating.

ST: Of course.

MK: You know, we’re speculating and trying to extrapolate, you

know from our own type zero understanding of evolution,
understanding the laws of physics but it is conceivable that

20
they may want to help us along a little bit but I think that
the dangers are also very present, that if too much of their
technology gets out there, it would be more than we can
absorb. I mean look at the atomic bomb. The atomic bomb was a
consequence of the wartime in the 1930’s. But civilization in
some sense, even today, is not ready to handle the atomic bomb
and that’s why we have problems of nuclear proliferation. So
think of the example of the atomic bomb as being the
technology that we ourselves created and that we have an
enormously hard time controlling. If they were to give some of
their technology to us in a large scale it could really lead
to self-destruction. So that doesn’t mean that they won’t
necessarily want to help us or build an outpost, make contact
with us. You know, tinker with us a bit but I don’t think they
will give us the benefits of their technology it would be too
dangerous. We still have the mind of a savage. Our brains are
identical to the mind that left Africa a hundred thousand
years ago. The best DNA evidence, the best fossil evidence
indicates that we left Africa hundred thousand years ago
as modern humans, humans that looked just like us. But our
brains haven’t changed. The same savagery, the same
rapaciousness, the same violence it’s all there. Nothing’s
changed, really.

ST: Certainly not. Biologically we’re still in the Stone Age

and we’re cave people.

MK: If you take a bunch of campers and all of the sudden they
lose contact, there’s a snow storm and they’re drifting out in
the wilderness, they revert almost immediately back a hundred
thousand years to the same savagery, the same hierarchical
structure. All the things we left a hundred thousand years ago
is literally a day away if you get lost in the mountains and
have limited food supply. So again for a type three to give us
a full advantage of their technology could be very dangerous,
I think we could see that but there’s no reason why they
couldn’t have made contact with us, interact with us, maybe
give us a few things but basically left us alone in the main,
because of the fact that it is very dangerous. And if we were
to make contact with their technology it would look like a
gift from the gods. As Arthur C. Clark has said, any
sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from
magic.

ST: But that’s also part of Däniken’s theory - that’s why he

says that if there was a contact, the contacters or the aliens
or whoever was there, would have been perceived as gods by the
Earth people.

MK: Yeah. There’s no question that even simple things – you

know a radio, a match lighter, a mirror, things that we take

21
for granted, part of everyday life would be considered gift
from the gods for them from their perspective.

ST: It was very interesting. Really.

MK: Thank you.

PF (referring again to the bird that was at the window

earlier): What does a bird think when it sees six people
sitting in the air, perhaps a civilization type five or...

MK:...if there are people floating in the air?

PF: It is the bird, the bird. If it sees us.

MK: What does it see?

PF: And then it thinks, what’s that?

MK: A big, big bird. Right?

ST: (laughing) Without wings.

MK: If they’re type minus one; “Oh, it’s a very big minus one
civilization!“ Big bird big everything. Right?
No. And Bill Gates wrote a book “The Road Ahead”. He tried to
predict the future in 1995, and the book was all wrong. He
simply said we’ll gonna have big PCs. PCs everywhere. PCs
here, PCs there, right (laughs). The book was totally wrong!
The Internet, micro-miniaturization, in the future the PC’s
will have disappeared...

ST: That was in 1995?

MK: It was in 1995. The Road Ahead. That was written before
the Internet revolution really took hold, and he was writing
about stand alones, stand alone PCs being everywhere, super
powerful PCs. That’s not the future. The future is that
computers have disappeared to be everywhere, right? That’s why
it is always dangerous to extrapolate. That’s why with the
laws of physics it’s a little bit easier, because physics
doesn’t change very rapidly, but the laws of computer science
change all the time.

ST: What I also wanted to ask, what do you think about the
problem of complexity? We understand the very basic
fundamental principles of the universe - or at least we begin
to understand them - but we often don’t understand complex

22
systems very well. We cannot predict them. We end up in Chaos
Theory.

Chaos Theory has given us almost nothing.

ST: Yes, right. For example...?

MK: The weather, for example – the Chaos Theory was invented
to help us understand the weather with the butterfly effect.
That’s very nice but which butterflies affect the weather,
when does a butterfly affect the weather, right?
It has no predictive power.

ST: Of course.

MK: Now the brain may be a consequence of complexity in some

sense. If you take a look at the number of genes, there are
only thirty thousand genes that make a human being. There are
hundred billion neurons in the human brain. Hundred billion.
Each neuron is connected to ten thousand, ten thousand other
neurons. So how is it that thirty thousand genes can encode
the information of a hundred thousand neurons, each neuron
connected to ten thousand different other neurons? It is
impossible! It is mathematically impossible. The only way to
do it is self-organization, that each neuron has some sort of
blueprint, certain codes to grow in certain direction where
certain chemical potentials are larger. That’s how each neuron
grows but it’s basically random. So the brain could in some
sense be in the large part a self-organized system with only a
very simple, a very simple program like a cellular automaton
explaining how each neuron grows. Beyond that, that’s it. Once
you hook it up then you have a baby. The baby has to learn how
to bump into things. So here’s an example where Complexity
Theory has shown us that perhaps we’ve been approaching the
brain from the wrong direction. The brain is not a computer.
The brain is not a Turing Machine. It does not input, output;
there’s no CPU, there’s no separate things, there’s no Pentium
chip. Our brain is not a computer. It is a neural network, so
here’s a situation where you cannot simply extrapolate from
the past, you have to rely on some of the insights given to us
from Chaos Theory that even consciousness in the human brain,
is a byproduct of Chaos Theory. That doesn’t help us to
explain it but it does help us to understand that we may be
going in the wrong direction. And now Neural Network Theory is
taking off because now we have a different approach toward
intelligence. Rather than top down, we’re looking at it bottom
up. Top down is where 99 percent of all artificial
intelligence has been going into. Top down. I want a CD Rom
with all the rules of intelligence and put it into a CD Rom,
and the computer says ‘I think’. I am conscious. I understand.
You take the CD Rom out, and it is nothing but a dumb computer
again. That dream is gone. We no longer believe in the top

23
down approach. Now the approach is bottom up. Start with a
bunch of neurons, hook them up randomly and let them learn
like a baby, basically. The Mars program is based on that now.
All the Mars rovers are neural networks. So there’s been a
revolution in artificial intelligence theory: not top down but
bottom up. And so when we send probes into outer space we have
to realize that our probes may be based on the bottom up
technology rather than top down technology.

ST: The survival question in connection with complexity: how

about disturbing complex systems we don’t understand - like
nature, like ecosystems, like the climate system...

MK: It is very dangerous. We live in a web as they like to say

and if you just jiggle one web you think that the next link is
gonna change but of course it doesn’t. It affects all other
links in the chain, so it’s quite dangerous the way that we
are dependent on our ecosystems and that were changing our
ecosystem so much. For example, five food crops return most of
human diet. Five food crops, okay? Rice and wheat and things
like that. Corn. Five crops. That’s very dangerous because if
we sit on top of the food chain and all of a sudden corn-
blight or a wheat-blight affects all the rice and wheat and
corn output, billions would starve as a consequence. You can
affect the destiny of nations so we’re quite dependent upon
our environment, and it is a very narrow environment. It is a
very narrow environment - we’re dependent on a handful of
animals…

ST: We’ve created this situation.

MK: We have created a bubble! A bubble on the top of the food

chain. And it would not take very much to dislodge us because
we live in a bubble. Five crops, a few animals that’s what we
depend upon. Cattle, sheep, pigs, chickens and five basic
grain crops. That’s very dangerous. And so hmm, you know sixty
five million years ago a comet or meteor hit the Yucatan of
Mexico and perhaps wiping out the dinosaurs. In some sense we
are another comet. We have now hit the Earth. We are now
destroying animal life on a scale not seen since sixty five
million years ago.

ST: But if we are stuck on the planet for another few thousand
years or a few hundred years at least, don’t we have to stop
growth?

MK: No. I think what’s gonna happen is that there’s gonna be

some real big shocks. I think there are gonna be some real big
shocks.

24
ST: But then growth also stops.

MK: Temporarily. I think there will be shocks. We’re gonna be

running out of oil pretty soon, the atmosphere is heating up
very rapidly. Most people do nothing about it because they
like their SUVs, they like their lifestyle but the Earth is
changing very rapidly now, and I think nothing has been done
about it. So - I think humanity, unfortunately, won’t do
anything until there’s a big shock. That’s how humans move.
Humans don’t move until they have to move. In fact I’m sure
evolution prefers organisms like that. So our brain is
architectured to not do anything until there’s a mortal threat
to us. So I think there will be a mortal threat. I think it
will come to the point where there are designer germs, where
maybe an atomic bomb escapes, where the ice poles, the polar
ice caps begin to melt and crack apart. I think it will take
serious emergencies for the average person to wake up. Which
is very sad but that is probably why in outer space there are
probably be a lot of type zeros that never made it to type
one. There are probably a lot of dead planets where atomic
bombs did go out. Their atmospheres are radioactive. Their
atmospheres are very hot and there’s no life there anymore.
Type zeros are probably fairly common. Type ones are probably
rare. Type zeros are fairly common. So that’s a lesson. If we
want to be able to become type three, then we have to make
sure that we don’t budge it.

ST: So we should absolutely not be arrogant in any way.

MK: I guess that we should be humble throughout these things.

ST: All right.

MK: Okay.

ST: Thanks a lot.

25