We Are the Fish | Michio Kaku

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]When I was a child, growing up in San Francisco area, I used to visit a Japanese tea garden and visit the carp swimming just beneath the lily pads in a two-dimensional pond. I used to spend hours looking at them. They would swim forward, backward, left, and right.

[00:00:15]Their eyes were to the side and they couldn't see me. I was in the third dimension. I was in hyperspace. They were totally unaware that there was a universe beyond their pond. And then I thought, well, what happens if I reach down and grab one of the fish, lift the fish up? Maybe that fish was a scientist. And the scientist would say, "Bah, humbug. Science fiction. There's no world of up. Up does not exist."

[00:00:38]Well, I would grab the scientist, lift them up in the world of up, hyperspace, the third dimension. What would he see?

[00:00:44]He would see beings breathing without water, a new law of biology. Beings moving without fins, a new law of physics. And then I would put the fish back into the pond. What kind of stories would he tell? Today, we physicists believe, we cannot prove it yet, but we are the fish.