Quotes from Carlo Rovelli

T]he elementary form of the mechanics of the world...does not need to mention 'time.' The world without a time variable is not a complicated one. It's a net of interconnected events, where the variables in play adhere to probabilistic rules that, incredibly, we know for a good part how to write. And it's a clear world, windswept and full of beauty as the crests of mountains; aridly beautiful as the cracked lips of the adolescent you loved.

There is not one single time; there is a vast multitude of them.

La capacidad de comprender antes de ver constituye el corazón del pensamiento científico.

In tutti i casi in cui non viene scambiato calore, infatti, oppure quando il calore scambiato è trascurabile, noi vediamo che il futuro si comporta esattamente come il passato.

The time indicated by a particular clock measuring a particular phenomenon is called "proper time" in physics.

Un mondo è un pullulare continuo e irrequieto di cose, un venire alla luce e uno sparire continuo di effimere entità

Perhaps on closer inspection it is not the [Standard Model] that lacks elegance. Perhaps it is we who have not yet learned to look at it from just the right point of view, one that would reveal its hidden simplicity.

Çok h?zl? hareket eden dalgac?klard?r. Kuantum mekani?inin garip kurallar?na göre yok olup yeniden ortaya ç?karlar, var olan ?eyler hiçbir zaman kararl? bir durumda olmaz; bir etkile?imden di?erine gerçekle?en bir s?çramadan ba?ka bir ?ey de?ildirler.

This is how time is depicted in Einstein's general theory of relativity. His equations do not have a single "time"; they have innumerable times.

Se il mondo è un un pullulare di effimeri quanti di spazio e di materia, un immenso gioco a incastri di spazio e particelle elementari, noi cosa siamo? [...] Nel grande quadro della scienza contemporanea ci sono molte cose che non capiamo, e una di quelle che capiamo meno siamo noi stessi

Harsh fate, but its burden becomes lighter to bear, since everything that attempts to turn back is impossible. (I, 24)

Myths nourish science, and science nourishes myth. But the value of knowledge remains.

Physics does not describe how things evolve "in time" but how things evolve in their own times, and how "times" evolve relative to each other.*

Time has lost its first aspect or layer: its unity. It has a different rhythm in every different place and passes here differently from there.

We think that our minds are all powerful but in reality they've evolved to do what we need to do, like hunt, eat and talk to one another. So the concepts in our head are designed to deal with animals, trees, rivers and people. There's no reason why they should be able to deal with atoms or galaxies. But I believe we're flexible and our minds are curious, so we can change our thinking.

We see the world around us in color. What is color? Put simply, it is the frequency (the speed of oscillation) of the electromagnetic wave light is. If the wave vibrates more rapidly, the light is bluer. If it vibrates a little more slowly, the light is redder. Color as we perceive it is our psychophysical reaction of the nerve signal generated by the receptors of our eyes, which distinguish electromagnetic waves of different frequencies.

Nel mare immenso di galassie e di stelle, siamo un infinitesimo angolo sperduto; fra gli arabeschi infiniti di forme che compongono il reale, noi non siamo che un ghirigoro fra tanti

Anche le parole che ora diciamo il tempo nella sua rapina ha già portato via e nulla torna (I, 11)

It's a moment of enlightenment. A momentous simplification of the world: space is no longer something distinct from matter—it is one of the "material" components of the world. An entity that undulates, flexes, curves, twists.

C'è così tanto spazio lassù, è puerile pensare che in quest'angolo periferico di una galassia delle più banali ci sia qualcosa di speciale. La vita sulla Terra non è che un assaggio di cosa può succedere nell'universo.

Quantum mechanics and experiments with particles have taught us that the world is a continuous, restless swarming of things, a continuous coming to light and disappearance of ephemeral entities. A set of vibrations, as in the switched-on hippie world of the 1960s. A world of happenings, not of things.

It was not the applications that motivated them but the natural desire to know.

Some behavior is more probable, other behavior more improbable.

To a wise man, the whole earth is open, because the true country of a virtuous soul is the entire universe.