Quotes About Physics

Now on Tines World, the Zone physics was still improving. What was it like thirty lightyears higher? Bili

The origin and the operation of the universe do not require any violations of the laws of physics.

The most fundamental laws of physics are not restrictions on the behaviour of matter. Rather, they are restrictions on the way physicists may describe that behaviour.

All great discoveries in experimental physics have been due to the intuition of men who made free use of models, which were for them not products of the imagination but representatives of real things. Max Born (1953)

The diameters of nuclei range from 0.8 femtometers for hydrogen to 15 femtometers for uranium, where 1 femtometer equals 10-15 meter. The diameter of the hydrogen atom is about 0.11 nanometer, while that of the uranium atom is 0.35 nanometer, where 1 nanometer equals 10-9 meter. So, roughly speaking, the nucleus of the atom is a million times smaller than the atom itself. Matter is, indeed, mostly empty space.

Infinity...is used in physics simply as a shorthand for "a very big number.

Rather than being handed down from above, like the Ten Commandments, they [the laws of physics] look exactly as they should look if they were not handed down from anywhere...they follow from the very lack of structure at the earliest moment.

It is more important to have beauty in one's equations than to have them fit experiment.

A physical law must possess mathematical beauty.

The universe is an enormous direct product of representations of symmetry groups.

Relativity applies to physics, not ethics.

The idea of 10 dimensions might sound exciting, but they would cause real problems if you forget where you parked your car.

More important than any one new application is the new 'materials' concept itself. It marks a shift from concern with substances to concern with structures, a shift from artisan to scientist as man's artificer, a shift from chemistry to physics as the basic discipline, and a shift, above all, from the concrete experience of the workshop to abstract mathematics, a shift from starting with what nature provides to what man wants to accomplish. -The Age of Discontinuity, 1969

Aristotle had discovered only half the principle of inertia—that a body at rest remains at rest unless moved by another—but not the other half—that a body in motion remains in motion unless acted on by another.

Plato considered the golden section proportion the most binding of all mathematical relations, making it the key to the physics of the cosmos.

W]hereas we might have been content enough to believe that electrons in a bright beam are wave-like and can be diffracted by the double slits, it is hard to understand how one-by-one passage of what seem to be particles (judging from the discrete bright spots that appear on the screen) can produce wave-like interference. We're forced to conclude that 'wave-like' electrons can interfere with themselves.

La partícula que se mueve de tal forma que nos impide predecir la posición que ocupará en un segundo determinado

I thought physics could be done to the glory of God, till I saw there wasn't any God at all and that physics was more interesting anyway. The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake, that's all.

I thought physics could be done to the glory of God, till I saw there wasn't any God at all

The wave function of this situation is going to collapse quite soon.

Sounds like what we call physics, your experimental theology. You want scientists, not theologians.

The fine structure constant is undoubtedly the most fundamental pure (dimensionless) number in all of physics. It relates the basic constants of electromagnetism (the charge of the electron), relativity (the speed of light), and quantum mechanics (Planck's constant).

Calculate the fine structure constant from first principles.

Quite a few of these know nothing about quantum mechanics; others understand the physics but put a highly tendentious spin on it. A good corrective for these is Victor J. Stenger's The Unconscious Quantum: Metaphysics in Modern Physics and Cosmology (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1995