Quotes About Theory

Some branes are "slices" inside the space, but others are "slices" that bound space, like slices of bread in a sandwich. Either way, a brane is a domain that has fewer dimensions than the full higher-dimensional space that surrounds or borders it.

calculations

When a field takes a nonzero value, the best way to think about it is to imagine space manifesting the charge that the field carries, but not containing any actual particles.

Nothing about our world is inconsistent with the existence of a multiverse.

But the Universe is by definition a single entity and in principle its components interact. This book explores

The problem is that string theory is defined at an energy scale that is about ten million billion times larger than those we can experimentally explore with our current instruments.

you can't simply compare a hypothesis to a single competing model and treat that one alternative suggestion as a substitute for all the remaining options.

How can a four-dimensional and a five-(or ten-)dimensional theory have the same physical implications? What is the analog of an object traveling through the fifth dimension, for example? The answer is that an object moving through the fifth dimension would appear in the dual four-dimensional theory as an object that grows or shrinks.

That's what's "special" in special relativity: the "special" inertial frames are only a small subset of all possible reference frames.

If an extra dimension is rolled up into a circle, the mass of the lightest such particle would differ from the electron's mass by an amount inversely proportional to the extra dimension's size. That means that, the larger the extra dimension, the smaller the particle's mass.

They tell us remarkable things, such as that extra dimensions can be infinite in size yet remain unseen, or that we can be living in a three-spatial-dimensional sinkhole in a higher-dimensional universe.

If large extra dimensions solve the hierarchy problem, higher-dimensional gravity would become strong at about a TeV.

But speculation is the only way to make progress in our understanding.

If particles had mass from the get-go, the theory would have been inconsistent and made nonsensical predictions such as probabilities of energetic particles interacting that were greater than one. Some new ingredient was required to allow for those masses. That

I have a theory about pink pastry boxes. So much joy comes from those boxes. When someone walks into a room with a pink pastry box, joy immediately fills the room. World peace? Three words. Pink pastry box. I get a big cup of coffee and finalize my plans for world domination.

In science there is only physics all the rest is stamp collecting.

He had an elaborate, to me, theory that even the simplest of us could raise the quality of our lives by vastly increasing our level of attention.

his theory that all of the world's problems were caused by notions of ethnic virtue and that if marriages were limited to interracial lovers there would be peace on earth. There

They tend to prefer the theoretical to the observable, and to dismiss that which might be learned empirically as "anecdotal".

It is sometimes said that we should never believe a scientific theory until it is verified by experiment. But a famous astronomer has also stated that we should never believe an observation until it is confirmed by a theory.

Marx made theory... Lenin applied it with his sense of large-scale social organization... And Henry Ford made the work of the socialist state possible.

Leo Hurwicz is the father of mechanism design theory and has inspired much of my work, and Roger Myerson is an old friend and collaborator and a tremendous economist.

The great tragedy of Science: the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact

The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage.