Quotes About Existence

Since the familiar particles and the objects they compose—stars, planets, people, etc.—amount to less than 5 percent of the mass of the universe, such a disruption would not affect the vast majority of the universe, at least as measured by mass.

they are beyond each other's cosmic horizon.

En un universo infinito hay infinitas copias. En algunas, su doble está leyendo ahora esta frase, a la par que usted. En otras, se la ha saltado, o siente que necesita tomar algo y ha dejado el libro. Y en otras ..., bien, no tiene un carácter muy agradable y es alguien al que usted no gustaría encontrar en un callejón oscuro

If you time-travel to the past, you can't change it any more than you can change the value of pi. If you travel to the past, you are, will be, and always were part of the past, the very same past that leads to your traveling to it.

Then, just as two trees are the same age if they have the same number of tree rings, and just as two samples of glacial sediment are the same age if they have the same percentage of radioactive carbon, two locations in space are passing through the same moment in time when they have the same value of the inflaton field. That's how we set and synchronize clocks in our bubble universe.

each of the bubble universes appears to have finite spatial extent when examined from the outside, but infinite spatial extent when examined from the inside.

The examined life examines death.

Impermanence underlies experience.

Not only is mind our tether to reality, perhaps it is our tether to eternity.

The most extreme of those who hold this opinion would go as far as declaring that, indeed, when no one and no thing is "looking" at or interacting with the moon in any way, it is not there.

At the ultramicroscopic level, the universe would be akin to a string symphony vibrating matter into existence.

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.

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.

thought of as it once was: intervening space

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.

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

The big bang is a theory, partly described in the last two chapters, that delineates cosmic evolution from a split second after whatever happened to bring the universe into existence, but it says nothing at all about time zero itself.

In this scenario, the universe as we know it would merely be the latest in a temporal series, some of which may have contained intelligent life and the culture they created, but are now long ago extinguished. In due course, all of our contributions and those of any other life-forms our universe supports would be similarly erased.

In every collection of 10^10^122 cosmic patches, we thus expect there to be, on average, one patch that looks just like ours. That is, in every region of space that's roughly 10^10^122 meters across, there should be a cosmic patch that replicates ours-one that contains you, the earth, the galaxy, and everything else that inhabits our cosmic horizon.

I think I thought, therefore I think I was.

Many find it fatuous and downright repugnant to claim that the wonders of life and the universe are mere reflections of microscopic particles engaged in a pointless dance fully choreographed by the laws of physics.

Each moment—each event or happening—exists, just as each point in space exists. Moments don't momentarily come to life when illuminated by the "spotlight" of an observer's present; that image aligns well with our intuition but fails to stand up to logical analysis. Instead, once illuminated, always illuminated. Moments don't change. Moments are. Being illuminated is simply one of the many unchanging features that constitute a moment.

With few ambitions, most people allowed efficient machines to perform everyday tasks for them. Gradually, humans ceased to think, or dream... or truly live.