Quotes from Brian Greene

in principle this kind of erasure could occur billions of years after the influence it is thwarting, in effect undoing the past, even undoing the ancient past.

how utterly wondrous it is that a small collection of the universe's particles can rise up, examine themselves and the reality they inhabit, determine just how transitory they are, and with a flitting burst of activity create beauty, establish connection, and illuminate mystery.

Schrödinger raised some eyebrows (and lost his first publisher) when he invoked the Hindu Upanishads to suggest that we are all part of an "omnipresent, all-comprehending eternal self," and the freedom of will we each exert reflects our divine powers.

Es ist ungeheuer viel wahrscheinlicher, dass alles, was wir jetzt im Universum erblicken, aus einer seltenen, aber gelegentlich zu erwartenden Abweichung der totalen Unordnung erwuchs, als dass es sich langsam aus dem noch unwahrscheinlicheren, unglaublich stärker geordneten, erstaunlich niederentropischen Ausgangspunkt entwickelte, den der Urknall voraussetzt.

One response, relied upon through the ages to address embryonic versions of such concerns, is that order is hewn from the chaos by a supreme intelligence. Human experience aligns with this anthropomorphically inspired turn.

To date, laboratory attempts to recreate these processes are intriguing but inconclusive. We have yet to create life from scratch.

La cosmología tiene la capacidad de llamar nuestra atención a un nivel profundo y visceral, porque comprender cómo comenzó todo es, al menos para algunos, el punto en el que podemos encontrarnos más cerca de comprender por qué empezó.

To date, laboratory attempts to recreate these processes are intriguing but inconclusive. We have yet to create life from scratch. I have little doubt that one day, perhaps not far off, we will.

The world of the everyday suddenly seemed nothing but an inverted magic act, lulling its audience into believing in the usual, familiar conceptions of space and time, while the astonishing truth of quantum reality lay carefully guarded by nature's sleights of hand.

A calculation—not an assumption, not a hypothesis, not an inspired guess—determines the number of space dimensions according to string theory, and the surprising thing is that the calculated number is not three, but nine. String theory leads us, inevitably, to a universe with six extra space dimensions

life is one more means the universe employs to release the entropy potential locked within matter.

Deep mysteries call for clarity delivered through a collection of nested stories. Whether reductionist or emergent, whether mathematical or figurative, whether scientific or poetic, we piece together the richest understanding by approaching questions from a range of different perspectives.

without intent or design, without forethought or judgment, without planning or deliberation, the cosmos yields meticulously ordered configurations of particles from atoms to stars to life.

Based on the composition of the sun—the quantities of various heavy elements it now contains, determined by spectroscopic measurements—solar physicists believe the sun is a grandchild of the universe's first stars, a third-generation arrival.

For instance, a black hole as light as a small asteroid would emit about as much radiation as a million-megaton hydrogen bomb, with radiation concentrated in the gamma-ray part of the electromagnetic spectrum.

My intent here is to use that insight to grasp how a universe with ever-increasing entropy, destined for ever-greater disorder, creates a wealth of order along the way.

Entropy can decrease. It's just ridiculously unlikely.

thought of as it once was: intervening space

The sheer number of ways that twenty distinct amino acids can be linked in a long chain makes this evident: for a chain with one hundred and fifty amino acids (a small protein), there are about 10195 different arrangements, far larger than the number of particles in the observable universe.

as Stephen Jay Gould summarized it, "A large brain allowed us to learn…the inevitability of our personal mortality"26 and "all religion began with an awareness of death.

If superstring theory is proven correct, we will be forced to accept that the reality we have known is but a delicate chiffon draped over a thick and richly textured cosmic fabric.

If entropy has been steadily increasing since the big bang, then the entropy back at the bang must have been much lower than it is today.

The very existence of galaxies, stars, planets, and life itself derives from microscopic quantum uncertainty amplified by inflationary expansion.

By embracing the nearly ludicrous suggestion that a gloppy grey knot of neurons has consciousness, you've already taken the big step.