Quotes About Physics

He saw that, ultimately, only possibilities for events and their probabilities of occurring, with intrinsic uncertainties, exist. This was the emerging new reality of quantum physics.

The physicists defer only to mathematicians, and the mathematicians defer only to God.

Aristotle is generally credited (probably unreasonably) with holding up the progress of physics for about 2,000 years—until Galileo had the courage and the conviction to call him out.

topic: Symmetry and the Beautiful Universe [Amherst, NY: Prometheus

My ambition is to live to see all of physics reduced to a formula so elegant and simple that it will fit easily on the front of a T-shirt.

The electrons seem eerily to take both paths at once if nothing is watching, but a definite path if someone or something is watching! These are not particles and not waves-they are both and neither-they are something new: They are quantum states.6

The physicists defer only to the mathematicians, and the mathematicians defer only to God.

The speed of light is about 300,000 kilometers per second.

Not believing in force is the same as not believing in gravitation.

the three-dimensional world of ordinary experience—the universe filled with galaxies, stars, planets, houses, boulders, and people—is a hologram, an image of reality coded on a distant two-dimensional surface. This new law of physics, known as the Holographic Principle, asserts that everything inside a region of space can be described by bits of information restricted to the boundary.

The units that we use reflect our own size. The origin of the meter seems to be that it was used to measure rope or cloth: it's about the distance from a person's nose to his or her outstretched fingers. A second is about as long as a heartbeat. And a kilogram is a nice weight to carry around. We use these units because they are convenient, but fundamental physics doesn't care that much about us. The

world seems filled with people who are genuinely, deeply interested in physics but whose lives have taken them in different directions. This book is for all of us.

Between successive measurements along the z axis, we turn through 90 degrees, make an intermediate measurement, and turn it back to its original direction. Will a subsequent measurement along the z axis confirm the original measurement? The answer is no. The

The three-dimensional world of ordinary experience––the universe filled with galaxies, stars, planets, houses, boulders, and people––is a hologram, an image of reality coded on a distant two-dimensional surface

Quantum mechanics can be appreciated, to some degree, on a purely qualitative level. But mathematics is what brings its beauty into sharp focus. We have tried to make this amazing body of work fully accessible to mathematically literate nonphysicists.

Mechanics is the paradise of the mathematical sciences because by means of it one comes to the fruits of mathematics.

Schwarzschild radius,

The development of quantum mechanics early in the twentieth century obliged physicists to change radically the concepts they used to describe the world.

Semiconductor research and the Nobel Prize in physics seem to be contradictory since one may come to the conclusion that such a complicated system like a semiconductor is not useful for very fundamental discoveries.

Science Fiction is not just about the future of space ships travelling to other planets, it is fiction based on science and I am using science as my basis for my fiction, but it's the science of prehistory - palaeontology and archaeology - rather than astronomy or physics.

It now appears that the way the universe began can indeed be determined, using imaginary time.

I always wanted to be an experimental physicist and was attracted to the idea of using continuing advances in technology to carry out fundamental science experiments that could not be done otherwise.

Is the universe 'elegant,' as Brian Greene tells us? Not as far as I can tell, not the usual laws of particle physics, anyway. I think I might find the universal principles of String Theory most elegant - if I only knew what they were.

Laser cooling opened a new route to ultralow temperature physics. Laser cooling experiments, with room temperature vacuum chambers and easy optical access, look very different from cryogenic cells with multi-layer thermal shielding around them.