Quotes About Physics

Influence and belief," continued Trill, "are the underpinnings of all the worlds, all the realities, as you'd say. Except perhaps this one, which has this physics thing, which I agree is a terrible idea, if I may say so.

The birth of science as we know it arguably began with Isaac Newton's formulation of the laws of gravitation and motion. It is no exaggeration to say that physics was reborn in the early 20th-century with the twin revolutions of quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity.

Traditionally, scientists have treated the laws of physics as simply 'given ' elegant mathematical relationships that were somehow imprinted on the universe at its birth, and fixed thereafter. Inquiry into the origin and nature of the laws was not regarded as a proper part of science.

For me, science is already fantastical enough. Unlocking the secrets of nature with fundamental physics or cosmology or astrobiology leads you into a wonderland compared with which beliefs in things like alien abductions pale into insignificance.

I do not see how a man can work on the frontiers of physics and write poetry at the same time. They are in opposition.

Mathematics is only a tool and one should learn to hold the physical ideas in one's mind without reference to the mathematical form.

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

A physical law must possess mathematical beauty

The underlying physical laws necessary for the mathematical theory of a larger part of physics and the whole of chemistry are thus completely known.

Thanks to those pesky laws of physics, when things aren't sustainable, they stop.

In their later years, each (Einstein and Schrödinger) hoped to find a unified field theory that would fill in the gaps of quantum physics and unite the forces of nature. By extending general relativity to include all of the natural forces, such a theory would replace matter with pure geometry - fulfilling the dream of the Pythagoreans, who believed that "all is number".

The subcomponents were at first called different things, but eventually the physics community settled on the term 'quarks' chosen by Murray Gell-Mann for the way it sounded to him. He spotted the word in a passage from James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake, "Three quarks for Muster Mark's". As there are three quarks each in protons and neutrons (and in all particles in the category called baryons), the moniker seemed appropriate.

Compared with this problem, the original theory of relativity is childish. (Einstein to Sommerfeld on the gravitational problem)

Hence, Einstein's equations beautifully connect the stuff of the universe with the shape of the universe.

Two of the most important relationships in modern physics are Schrodinger's wave equation and Einstein's equation of general relativity. Strikingly, their domains are very different. While Schrodinger's equation describes the distribution and behavior of matter and energy throughout space and time, Einstein's equation shows how the fabric of space and time is itself molded by the distribution of matter and energy.

The relationships (Maxwell's equations) are the epitome of mathematical consieness, compact enough to fit on a T-shirt yet powerful enough to describe all manner of electromagnetism.

By introducing non-Euclidean geometry to theoretical physics, Einstein would transform the field in extraordinary ways. The twelve-year-old clutching the geometry book would have no ways of knowing that his very hands would someday rewrite physical laws in a way that made the book obsolete.

This parallel between physics and psychology should come as no big surprise, for it is the human mind that has created quantum physics in the first place.

It's amazing that something only an atom thick can be an impenetrable barrier. You can have gas on one side and vacuum or liquid on the other, and with a wall only one atom thick, nothing would go through it.

Biological systems are influenced by the laws of physics, and it may be that mycelium exploits the natural momentum of matter, just like salmon take advantage of the tides.

In 1981 the American physicist Murray Gell-Mann, inspired by Mendeleyev's example, came up with a classification table for subatomic particles, which he named the eightfold way.

One of my inside sources opened the window on that one for me when he said: "Gravity travels faster than light." Evidence of a kind of physics we are not taught in school was provided by an exchange program, when in July 1965 twelve courageous U.S. astronauts boarded an Eben (Grey) craft on an exchange visit to the planet Serpo. The trip took 10 months to reach its destination 37 light years distant.

The one-arm snatch is the Tsar of kettlebell lifts, fluid and vicious. It will quickly humble even studly powerlifters. The forces generated by this drill are awesome. "How can it be if the weight is so light?" you might ask. –Through great acceleration and deceleration. F=ma, force equals mass multiplied by acceleration. Would you rather roll a 500 pound barbell over your toes or drop a 72 pounder from seven feet? I rest my case.

You don't get rich from doing physics, but you do get an opportunity to go to all the places the rich would go to if they had the time.