Corporations and whole nations are betting on quantum computing, hoping to exploit its power to design more efficient vehicles, create life-saving new drugs and streamline industries to revolutionize the economy. But this is only the beginning. Quantum computers could allow us to finally create nuclear fusion reactors that produce clean, renewable energy without radioactive waste or threats of meltdown. They could help us crack the biological processes that generate natural, cheap fertilizer and enable us to feed the world’s growing populations. And they could unravel the fiendishly difficult protein folding that lies at the heart of previously incurable diseases such as Alzheimer’s, motor neurone disease and Parkinson’s, helping us to live longer, healthier lives. Told with Kaku’s signature clarity and enthusiasm, Quantum Supremacy is the story of this exciting frontier and the race to claim humanity’s future.

Corporations and whole nations are betting on quantum computing, hoping to exploit its power to design more efficient vehicles, create life-saving new drugs and streamline industries to revolutionize the economy. But this is only the beginning. Quantum computers could allow us to finally create nuclear fusion reactors that produce clean, renewable energy without radioactive waste or threats of meltdown. They could help us crack the biological processes that generate natural, cheap fertilizer and enable us to feed the world’s growing populations. And they could unravel the fiendishly difficult protein folding that lies at the heart of previously incurable diseases such as Alzheimer’s, motor neurone disease and Parkinson’s, helping us to live longer, healthier lives. Told with Kaku’s signature clarity and enthusiasm, Quantum Supremacy is the story of this exciting frontier and the race to claim humanity’s future.

Imagine a future where we are not alone – where our universe is just one of countless parallel worlds, some strangely familiar, some almost unimaginable. And that, when planet earth finally runs down to a cold, dark wasteland, we will be able to escape into these new worlds and start again.

Michio Kaku’s thrilling guide to the galaxy shows us how it could happen sooner than we think – and the future for intelligent life is one of endless possibilities.

‘This book is absolutely impossible to put down … if and when we do find out what the universe is, and how it was created, it’s going to be absolutely mind-blowing’
   Independent on Sunday

‘One of the gurus of modern physics’
   Financial Times

‘An exhilarating read … nobody who reads this book can be anything less than amazed by the possibilities it presents’
   Scotland on Sunday

‘The journey he takes the reader on is so picturesque and the conclusions so startling that you are gripped’
   Sunday Telegraph

Michio Kaku is a leading theoretical physicist and one of the founders of string theory, widely regarded as the strongest candidate for the ‘theory of everything’. He is also one of the most gifted popularizers of science of his generation. His books published by Penguin include Parallel Worlds, The Physics of the Future and The Physics of the Impossible. He holds the Henry Semat Professorship in Theoretical Physics at the City University of New York, where he has taught for over twenty-five years.