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Cesium, Iodine From The Chernobyl Reactor Accident Went Around The World Many Times And Everyone On The Earth Has A Piece Of Chernobyl In Their Bodies, But It's Very Tiny - Too Small To Cause Much Damage.

-Michio Kaku

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Cesium, Iodine From The

Michio Kaku

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Cesium, Iodine From The Chernobyl Reactor Accident Went Around The World Many Times And Everyone On The Earth Has A Piece Of Chernobyl In Their Bodies, But It's Very Tiny - Too Small To Cause Much Damage.

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The Strength And Weakness Of Physicists Is That We Believe In What We Can Measure. And If We Can't Measure It, Then We Say It Probably Doesn't Exist. And That Closes Us Off To An Enormous Amount Of Phenomena That We May Not Be Able To Measure Because They Only Happened Once. For Example, The Big Bang. ... That's One Reason Why They Scoffed At Higher Dimensions For So Many Years. Now We Realize That There's No Alternative.

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I Want To See Us To Explore Outer Space. But I Want To Do It Safely, Without The Loss Of Human Life, And Democratically: Where Is The Free-wheeling Debate On This Question? Only One Force Can Stop This Mission: The Will Of The American People. They Have Not Been Asked. Do They Want To Endanger Their Loved Ones, Their Industry With This Launch? One Force Is More Powerful Than Plutonium, The Spirit Of The American People United.

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The Universe Is A Symphony Of Strings, And The Mind Of God That Einstein Eloquently Wrote About For Thirty Years Would Be Cosmic Music Resonating Through Eleven-dimensional Hyper Space.

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What Is The Universe? The Universe Is A Symphony Of Vibrating Strings...we Are Nothing But Melodies. We Are Nothing But Cosmic Music Played Out On Vibrating Strings And Membranes.

What We Usually Consider As Impossible Are Simply Engineering Problems... There's No Law Of Physics Preventing Them.

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Time Travel And Teleportation Will Have To Wait. It May Take Centuries To Master These Technology.

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The Human Brain Has 100 Billion Neurons, Each Neuron Connected To 10 Thousand Other Neurons. Sitting On Your Shoulders Is The Most Complicated Object In The Known Universe.

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.

When I Was 16 Years Old, I Assembled A 2.3 Million Electron Volt Beta Particle Accelerator. I Went To Westinghouse, I Got 400 Pounds Of Translator Steel, 22 Miles Of Copper Wire, And I Assembled A 6-kilowatt, 2.3 Million Electron Accelerator In The Garage.

Well, Congress Gave Us A Billion Dollars To Dig The Hole, This Gigantic Hole. Bigger, Much Bigger Than The Hole In Geneva, Switzerland. Then They Canceled The Machine And Gave Us A Second Billion Dollars To Fill Up The Hole. Two Billion Dollars To Dig A Hole And Fill It Up. That Is The Wisdom Of The United States Congress And It Really Makes You Wonder: Is There Intelligent Life On The Earth? Certainly Not In The United States Congress.

We've Done A Miserable Job Of Preparing People For Today's World, Let Alone Tomorrow's.

In Physics, One Of The Most Exciting Areas Is In Nanotech. With Computers Exhausting The Power Of Silicon, Silicon Valley Could Become A Rust Belt, Unless We Can Find Replacements, Such As Quantum Computers And Molecular Computers. To Be A Leader In Any Field, One Has To Have A Great Imagination. Sure, We Have To Know The Basics And Fundamentals. But Beyond That, We Have To Let Our Imagination Soar.

Impossible Is Relative.

They Basically Ask Their Engineers To Volunteer Some Probability Figures, Then They Take The Average. This Is Not Science. This Is Voodoo.

For Most Of Human History, We Could Only Watch, Like Bystanders, The Beautiful Dance Of Nature. But Today, We Are On The Cusp Of An Epoch-making Transition, From Being Passive Observers Of Nature To Being Active Choreographers Of Nature. The Age Of Discovery In Science Is Coming To A Close, Opening Up An Age Of Mastery.

To Become A Theoretical Physicist ... You Need To Have A Passionate Love Affair With The Universe.

Science Is Definitely Part Of America's Infrastructure, The Engine Of Prosperity. And Yet Science Is Given Almost No Visibility In The Media.

When I Get Bored, Or Get Stuck On An Equation, I Like To Go Ice Skating, But It Makes You Forget Your Problem. Then You Can Tackle The Problem With A Fresh New Insight. Einstein Liked To Play The Violin To Relax. Every Physicist Likes To Have A Past Time. Mine Is Ice Skating.

A Hydrogen Bomb, For Me, Was Puny Compared To The Big Bang - The Creation Of The Universe. That's What I Really Wanted To Work On - The Nature Of The Universe Itself, And That's What I Do For A Living.

We Are Slowly Isolating The Genes Involved With The Aging Process. We Do Not Have The Fountain Of Youth, But I Think, In The Coming Decades, We Will Unravel The Aging Process At The Genetic Level.

If All Our Common-sense Notions About The Universe Were Correct, Then Science Would Have Solved The Secrets Of The Universe Thousands Of Years Ago. The Purpose Of Science Is To Peel Back The Layer Of The Appearance Of The Objects To Reveal Their Underlying Nature. In Fact, If Appearance And Essence Were The Same Thing, There Would Be No Need For Science.

Eternal Life Does Not Violate The Laws Of Physics. After All, We Only Die Because Of One Word: "error." The Longer We Live, The More Errors There Are That Are Made By Our Bodies When They Read Our Genes. That Means Cells Get Sluggish. The Body Doesn't Function As Well As It Could, Which Is Why The Skin Ages. Then Organs Eventually Fail, So That's Why We Die.

In String Theory, All Particles Are Vibrations On A Tiny Rubber Band; Physics Is The Harmonies On The String; Chemistry Is The Melodies We Play On Vibrating Strings; The Universe Is A Symphony Of Strings, And The "mind Of God" Is Cosmic Music Resonating In 11 Dimensional Hyperspace.

Technologies That May Be Realized In Centuries Or Millennium Include: Warp Drive, Traveling Faster Than The Speed Of Light, Parallel Universes; Are There Other Parallel Dimensions And Parallel Realities? Time Travel That We Mentioned And Going To The Stars.

When You Come Up With A Theory, You Fall In Love With The Beauty The Simplicity And Elegance Of It. But Then You Have To Get A Sheet Of Paper And Pencil And Crack Out All The Details. Hundreds And Hundreds Of Pages. Because You Have To Prove It.

Falling In Love

We Physicists Know That The Brain Is A Milliwatt Transmitter Of Radio. We Have Computers That Can Decipher Much Of This Gibberish Coming From Our Brain And We Could Then Use That To Control Computers.

We Need More Concept-development And Active Involvement, Less Tuning Forks, Pulleys, And Friction Formulas - Students Know They'll Never Use Those. They Need More Study Of Outer Space And Dna. They Need More Exciting Teaching, More Fair-minded Encouragement, More Career Guidance, More Mentorship. Both Students And Teachers Need More Feedback. It Would Help If We Stopped Protecting Bad Teachers - It's Very Difficult To Get Rid Of Even Sexual Perverts Let Alone Just Bad Teachers.

Cesium, Iodine From The Chernobyl Reactor Accident Went Around The World Many Times And Everyone On The Earth Has A Piece Of Chernobyl In Their Bodies, But It's Very Tiny - Too Small To Cause Much Damage.

Today's Clunky Smart Glasses Will Be Replaced By Smart Contact Lenses. We'll Command Them By Voice, Blinking, Or Even Thinking, To Interact Visually In 3-d With The Internet.

The River Of Time May Fork Into Rivers, In Which Case You Have A Parallel Reality And So Then You Can Become A Time Traveler And Not Have To Worry About Causing A Time Paradox.

An Event Horizon, Or The Point Of No Return, Is Only A Byproduct Of The Bending Of Space. However, Electricity And Magnetism, By Themselves, Have No Event Horizon. It Gets Complicated, However, If A Black Hole Has Charge, And Then This New Solution Does Have An Event Horizon.

Already From Your Own Cells Scientists Can Grow Skin, Cartilage, Noses, Blood Vessels, Bladders And Windpipes. In The Future, Scientists Will Grow More Complex Organs, Like Livers And Kidneys. The Phrase 'organ Failure' Will Disappear.

I Realized Very Early In Life What My Abilities And Limitations Were, And Foreign Languages Was Definitely One Of My Limitations. With Strenuous Effort, I Just Barely Passed My French Class At Harvard So I Could Graduate.

The Brain Weighs Only Three Pounds, Yet It Is The Most Complex Object In The Solar System.

Growing New Organs Of The Body As They Wear Out, Extending The Human Lifespan? What's Not To Like?

Chances Are, When We Meet Intelligent Life Forms In Outer Space They're Going To Be Descended From Predators.

[t]he Yeoman's Work In Any Science, And Especially Physics, Is Done By The Experimentalist, Who Must Keep The Theoreticians Honest.

In Some Sense, Gravity Does Not Exist; What Moves The Planets And The Stars Is The Distortion Of Space And Time.

The Next Big Accelerator Might Be The Ilc In Japan, A Linear Collider Which Might Be Able To Probe The Boundaries Of String Theory. So We Physicists Have To Learn How To Engage The Public So That Taxpayers Money Is Used To Explore The Nature Of The Universe.

String Theory Is Based On The Simple Idea That All The Four Forces Of The Universe: Gravity, The Electromagnetic Force And The Two Nuclear Forces, Can Be Viewed, As Music.

If You Want To See A Black Hole Tonight, Tonight Just Look In The Direction Of Sagittarius, The Constellation. That's The Center Of The Milky Way Galaxy And There's A Raging Black Hole At The Very Center Of That Constellation That Holds The Galaxy Together.

A Hundred Years Ago, Auguste Compte, ... A Great Philosopher, Said That Humans Will Never Be Able To Visit The Stars, That We Will Never Know What Stars Are Made Out Of, That That's The One Thing That Science Will Never Ever Understand, Because They're So Far Away. And Then, Just A Few Years Later, Scientists Took Starlight, Ran It Through A Prism, Looked At The Rainbow Coming From The Starlight, And Said: "hydrogen!" Just A Few Years After This Very Rational, Very Reasonable, Very Scientific Prediction Was Made, That We'll Never Know What Stars Are Made Of.

Once Again, My Colleague Stephen Hawking Has Upset The Apple Cart. The Event Horizon Surrounding A Black Hole Was Once Though To Be An Imaginary Sphere. But Recent Theories Indicate That It May Actually Be Physical, Maybe Even A Sphere Of Fire. But I Don't Trust Any Of These Calculations Until We Have A Full-blown String Theory Calculation, Since Einstein's Theory By Itself Is Incomplete.

Language And Emotions Are Too Easily Misread. For Example, Laughing Can Mean Many Things: Laughing With You Or At You. Does That Laugh Reflect Joy, Anger, Or That S/he's About To Fire You? Too Many Jobs Require Complex Feelings, Pattern Recognition, Common Sense, And The Human Touch.

Reality Has Always Proved To Be Much More Sophisticated And Subtle Than Any Preconceived Philosophy.

We Have Learned More About The Brain In The Last Fifteen Years Than In All Prior Human History, And The Mind, Once Considered Out Of Reach, Is Finally Assuming Center Stage.

So Often, Science Fiction Helps To Get Young People Interested In Science. That's Why I Don't Mind Talking About Science Fiction. It Has A Real Role To Play: To Seize The Imagination.

My Point Is, No One Can Stop The Internet. No One Can Stop That March. It Doesn't Mean That It's Going To Be Smooth, Though.

Sometimes The Public Says, 'what's In It For Numero Uno? Am I Going To Get Better Television Reception? Am I Going To Get Better Internet Reception?' Well, In Some Sense, Yeah. ... All The Wonders Of Quantum Physics Were Learned Basically From Looking At Atom-smasher Technology. ... But Let Me Let You In On A Secret: We Physicists Are Not Driven To Do This Because Of Better Color Television. ... That's A Spin-off. We Do This Because We Want To Understand Our Role And Our Place In The Universe.

Common Sense Has No Place In Quantum Mechanics.

Even If We Mortgage The Next 100 Years Of Generations Of Human Beings, We Would Not Have Enough Energy To Build A Death Star.

In My Mind, There Is No Question That They're Out There. My Career Is Well Established. My Texts Books Are Required Reading In All The Major Capitals On Planet Earth. If You Want To Become A Physist To Learn About The Unified Feild Therory-you Read My Books. Therefore, I'm In A Position To Say: Yes- Most Likely They're Out Their, Perhaps Even Visited, Perhaps On Our Moon.

No One Knows When A Robot Will Approach Human Intelligence, But I Suspect It Will Be Late In The 21st Century. Will They Be Dangerous? Possibly. So I Suggest We Put A Chip In Their Brain To Shut Them Off If They Have Murderous Thoughts.

I Am A Figure Skater, Which Helps Me Appreciate Newton's Theory Of Mechanics.

What Would Happen If History Could Be Rewritten As Casually As Erasing A Blackboard? Our Past Would Be Like The Shifting Sands At The Seashore, Constantly Blown This Way Or That By The Slightest Breeze. History Would Be Constantly Changing Every Time Someone Spun The Dial Of A Time Machine And Blundered His Or Her Way Into The Past. History, As We Know It, Would Be Impossible. It Would Cease To Exist.

Although Humans Have Existed On This Planet For Perhaps 2 Million Years, The Rapid Climb To Modern Civilization Within The Last 200 Years Was Possible Due To The Fact That The Growth Of Scientific Knowledge Is Exponential; That Is, Its Rate Of Expansion Is Proportional To How Much Is Already Known. The More We Know, The Faster We Can Know More. For Example, We Have Amassed More Knowledge Since World War Ii Than All The Knowledge Amassed In Our 2-million-year Evolution On This Planet. In Fact, The Amount Of Knowledge That Our Scientists Gain Doubles Approximately Every 10 To 20 Years.

It Would Be Great If We Had Our Own Personal Force Fields. Just Imagine Creating Your Own Architecture In Your Room. Buildings. You Wouldn't Have To Spend All That Time Saving Your Money For That Second House. You'd Simply Push A Button And Have As Many Houses As You Want.

I Have Nothing Against Investment Banking, But It's Like Massaging Money Rather Than Creating Money.

Faust Was This Mythical Figure Who Sold His Soul To The Devil For Unlimited Power. The Japanese Have Made That Faustian Bargain Because They Don't Have Coal, Oil Or Hydro Power.

The Most Complex Object In The Known Universe: Brain, Only Uses 20 Watts Of Power. It Would Require A Nuclear Power Plant To Energize A Computer The Size Of A City Block To Mimic Your Brain, And Your Brain Does It With Just 20 Watts. So If Someone Calls You A Dim Bulb, That's A Compliment.

Hover Boards, Unfortunately, Currently Violate The Laws Of Physics. Supermagnets Exist, But They Have To Be Cooled To Near Absolute Zero, And They Are Extremely Expensive. So Michael J. Fox's Hover Boards Are Not Possible Until We Invent Room Temperature Super Conductors.

It Is Often Stated That Of All The Theories Proposed In This Century, The Silliest Is Quantum Theory. In Fact, Some Say That The Only Thing That Quantum Theory Has Going For It Is That It Is Unquestionably Correct.

Science Is Given Almost No Visibility In The Media. If A Martian Came Down To Earth And Watched Television, He'd Come To The Conclusion That All The World's Society Is Based On Britney Spears And Paris Hilton. He'd Be Amazed That Our Society Hasn't Collapsed.

Physicists Often Quote From T. H. White's Epic Novel The Once And Future King, Where A Society Of Ants Declares, "everything Not Forbidden Is Compulsory." In Other Words, If There Isn't A Basic Principle Of Physics Forbidding Time Travel, Then Time Travel Is Necessarily A Physical Possibility. (the Reason For This Is The Uncertainty Principle. Unless Something Is Forbidden, Quantum Effects And Fluctuations Will Eventually Make It Possible If We Wait Long Enough. Thus, Unless There Is A Law Forbidding It, It Will Eventually Occur.)

A Soul Might Very Well Exist, But We, As Physicists, Try To Measure And Quantify Everything. So Far, No One Has Been Able To Create An Experiment To Do This For The Soul. Efforts Have Been Made To Weigh The Body After Death, But Each Time We Find No Evidence Of A Soul. So A Soul May Very Well Exist, But It Is Not A Testable Theory.

In The Future, You'll Simply Jump Into Your Car, Turn On The Internet, Turn On A Movie And Sit Back And Relax And Turn On The Automatic Pilot, And The Car Will Drive Itself.

Being A Physicist, Not A Philosopher, I Have Devised An Entirely New Theory Of Consciousness, Allowing One To Numerically Calculate The Level Of Consciounsess Of Humans And Even Animals.

The Idea That Excites Me The Most Concerns The Two Greatest Puzzles In Science: The Origin Of The Universe, And The Origin Of Consciousness. The Origin Of The Universe Is What I Do For A Living, Working On String Theory. But I Am Also Fascinated By Consciousness.

It's Risky To Allow Radiation To Constantly Go Up Into The Atmosphere. The Main Criticism Of This Approach Of Entombing It Is That It Would Cost Too Much, Involve Too Many Resources And People. But Think Of The Cost Of Having All The Crops Impounded By The Government, All The Milk Being Thrown Into The River, People's Livelihoods Destroyed.

I Often Think That We Are Like The Carp Swimming Contentedly In That Pond. We Live Out Our Lives In Our Own "pond," Confident That Our Universe Consists Of Only The Familiar And The Visible. We Smugly Refuse To Admit That Parallel Universes Or Dimensions Can Exist Next To Ours, Just Beyond Our Grasp. If Our Scientists Invent Concepts Like Forces, It Is Only Because They Cannot Visualize The Invisible Vibrations That Fill The Empty Space Around Us. Some Scientists Sneer At The Mention Of Higher Dimensions Because They Cannot Be Conveniently Measured In The Laboratory.

You Can Mass-produce Hardware; You Cannot Mass-produce Software - You Cannot Mass-produce The Human Mind.

Combining Quantum Entanglement With Wormholes Yields Mind Boggling Results About Black Holes. But I Don't Trust Them Until We Have A Theory Of Everything Which Can Combine Quantum Effects With General Relativity. I.e. We Need To Have A Full Blown String Theory Resolve This Sticky Question.

No One Knows Who Wrote The Laws Of Physics Or Where They Come From. Science Is Based On Testable, Reproducible Evidence, And So Far We Cannot Test The Universe Before The Big Bang.

For Relaxation, I Like To Figure Skate. Being On The Ice And Spinning And Jumping, I Feel Very Close To Nature. In Particular, I Feel Very Close To Newton's Laws Of Motion. On The Ice, You Can Experience Newton's Laws Of Motion In Their Purest, Most Elegant Form.

It's Humbling To Realise That The Developmental Gulf Between A Miniscule Ant Colony And Our Modern Human Civilisation Is Only A Tiny Fraction Of The Distance Between A Type 0 And A Type Iii Civilisation - A Factor Of 100 Billion Billion, In Fact. Yet We Have Such A Highly Regarded View Of Ourselves, We Believe A Type Iii Civilisation Would Find Us Irresistible And Would Rush To Make Contact With Us. The Truth Is, However, They May Be As Interested In Communicating With Humans As We Are Keen To Communicate With Ants.

Srinivasa Ramanujan Was The Strangest Man In All Of Mathematics, Probably In The Entire History Of Science. He Has Been Compared To A Bursting Supernova, Illuminating The Darkest, Most Profound Corners Of Mathematics, Before Being Tragically Struck Down By Tuberculosis At The Age Of 33, Like Riemann Before Him. Working In Total Isolation From The Main Currents Of His Field, He Was Able To Rederive 100 Years' Worth Of Western Mathematics On His Own. The Tragedy Of His Life Is That Much Of His Work Was Wasted Rediscovering Known Mathematics.

I Hope We Find Evidence Of Dark Matter In The Lab And In Outer Space. This Would Go A Long Way To Proving The Correctness Of String Theory, Which Is What I Do For A Living. That Is My Day Job. So String Theory Is A Potentially Experimentally Verifiable Theory.

If You Could Meet Your Grandkids As Elderly Citizens In The Year 2100 … You Would View Them As Being, Basically, Greek Gods… That's Where We're Headed.

A Related Aspect Of Intelligent Consciousness Is Delay Of Gratification: The Wisdom To Accurately Predict Whether Delay Rather Than Acting On Impulse Will Yield Greater Benefit.

One Problem With Politics Is That It Is A Zero Sum Game, I.e. Politicians Argue How To Cut The Pie Smaller And Smaller, By Reshuffling Pieces Of The Pie. I Think This Is Destructive. Instead, We Should Be Creating A Bigger Pie, I.e. Funding The Science That Is The Source Of All Our Prosperity. Science Is Not A Zero Sum Game.

Math Is Discovered. To Be Invented Requires An Inventor, But Math Exists Outside Of Humanity. But Ultimately, The Laws Of The Universe Will Be Reduced Down To A Single Equation, Perhaps No More Than One Inch Long. But Leaves The Final Question, Where Did That One Inch Equation Come From?

Music Is The Voice Of God Traveling Through Ten-dimensional Hyperspace.

Science Is The Engine Of Prosperity. But You'd Never Know It, Listening To Some Of The Politicians. They're Lawyers And Businessmen, Not Scientists. Lawyers And Businessmen Massage Wealth; They Don't Create It.

Robots May Gradually Attain A Degree Of 'self-awareness' And Consciousness Of Their Own.

The Human Mind Has A Desire To Know Its Place In The Universe And The Role We Play In The Tapestry Of Life. This Is Actually Hardwired Into Our Brains, The Desire The Know Our Relationship To The Universe. This Was Good For Our Evolution, Since It Enabled Us To See Our Relationship To Others And To Nature Which Was Good For Our Survival. And It Is Also What Drives Our Curiosity To Understand The Universe.

I Think A Colony In Space Will Take Much Longer Than Sci Fiction Writers Think. It Costs $10,000 To Put A Pound Of Anything Into Near Earth Orbit. That Is Your Weight In Gold. It Costs About $100,000 A Pound To Put You On The Moon. And It Costs $1,000,000 A Pound To Put You On Mars.

I Would Like To Believe That Crop Circles Are Evidence Of Visitation. But There Have Been Too Many People Who Have Admitted To Creating These Crop Circles, And Too Many People Who Have Shown How To Make One On Tv Programs, So I Have My Doubts.

I Believe That Science Is The Engine Of Prosperity, That If You Look Around At The Wealth Of Civilization Today, It's The Wealth That Comes From Science.

There Are Many Examples Of Old, Incorrect Theories That Stubbornly Persisted, Sustained Only By The Prestige Of Foolish But Well-connected Scientists... Many Of These Theories Have Been Killed Off Only When Some Decisive Experiment Exposed Their Incorrectness... Thus The Yeoman Work In Any Science, And Especially Physics, Is Done By The Experimentalist, Who Must Keep The Theoreticians Honest.

There Are So Many Wonders Awaiting Us. If We Can Upload Memories, Then We Might Be Able To Combat Alzheimers, As Well As Create A Brain-net Of Memories And Emotions To Replace The Internet, Which Would Revolutionize Entertainment, The Economy, And Our Way Of Life. Maybe Even To Help Us Live Forever, And Send Consciousness Into Outer Space.

We Should Explore New Ways To Drive Down The Cost Of Space Travel. Instead Of Costly Booster Rockets, Maybe We Should Think Of Laser/microwave Driven Rockets, Or Space Elevators. Until Then, The Cost Of Space Exploration Will Limit Our Ability To Explore The Universe.

We Believe That Black Holes Collapse To Rings Hitting Very Fast. If You Follow Through The Ring You Don't Die. The Mathematics Says You Fall Straight Through, Perhaps To Another Universe.

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