Michio Kaku

A scene from every science show ever made.

To deep-voiced narrator, a CGI depiction of the early universe. To Michio Kaku, shiny bubbles of space-time. Tell your friends.

Michio Kaku is that Japanese science guy, who is always failing in his attempts to describe extremely complex scientific concepts in words the viewer can understand. Despite appearing on every science show ever made, nobody seems to know his actual name.

Kaku generally appears about one-third of the way through every science show, regardless of the show's subject. After the viewer is bombarded by Deep-Voiced Narrator's esoteric and unwieldy concepts, the scientist "translates" Deep-Voiced Narrator's sentences into everymanese. Due to his everyman charm and nerd-lite persona, every viewer believes that they understand the words coming out of his mouth, and therefore the concepts that the show is describing. Although this isn't actually true, it keeps viewers tuning in to science shows that they otherwise would not, about subjects they will never understand, only claim to their bar buddies that they do - using Kaku's meaningless actual words.

Everymanese

Everymanese is the language invented by Michio Kaku that at best loosely translates Deep-Voiced Narrator's words into phrases that every man can just about almost grasp. The actual meaning of Deep-Voiced Narrator's sentences is of little importance to the translation process, however, and as a result every man fails to truly grasp the scientific concept at hand.

Here is an example:

Deep-Voiced Narrator:

“ The quantum vacuum can never remain empty in the classical sense of the term; it is a roiling sea of virtual particles spontaneously popping in and out of existence. In quantum theory, the usual notion of zero energy corresponds to the vacuum with all these fluctuations. So if one can somehow contrive to dampen the undulations, the vacuum will have less energy than it normally does – that is, less than zero, or negative energy. ”

Everymanese:

“ It would take a civilization far more advanced than ours, unbelievably advanced, to begin to manipulate negative energy to create gateways to the past. But if you could obtain large quantities of negative energy — and that's a big if — then you could create a time machine that apparently obeys Einstein's equation and perhaps the laws of quantum theory. ”

The perspicacious scientist will see that Kaku completely failed to factually and helpfully apply Deep-Voiced Narrator's well-formed scientific concept. All he did was give you a time travel boner that has nothing whatsoever to do with actual applied quantum theory. You, however, will buy his drivel without question and try badly to repeat it after four beers at McMurray's Irish Pub.

Credentials

There was a time when Michio Kaku was a respected member of the scientific community. He graduated summa cum laude, first in his Harvard physics class. But as soon as word spread that he was attempting to craft a message that the science laity could understand, the science establishment excommunicated him from the fold, branding him with the demeaning epithet "populizer of science". He found a vehicle for his message on cable television science channels, and ever since he has been ubiquitous and infamous for his soft-spoken, soothing but meaningless hooey.

Appearances

Here is a list of the science programs that Kaku has appeared in:

• All of them.