Quotes About Physics

The more I learn of physics, the more I am drawn to metaphysics.

A multitude of aspects of the natural world that were considered miraculous only a few generations ago are now thoroughly understood in terms of physics and chemistry.

One does not have to appeal to God to set the initial conditions for the creation of the universe, but if one does He would have to act through the laws of physics.

Photons have mass? I didn't even know they were Catholic.

Man cannot influence in this respect the atomic forces of Nature.

Physicists define the Big Bang as a singularity. It is a point at which all the known laws of nature did not exist. Time too did not exist. It is thus meaningless to say that anything existed 'before' the Big Bang.

We are more powerful than ever before, but have very little idea what to do with all that power. Worse still, humans seem to be more irresponsible than ever. Self-made gods with only the laws of physics to keep us company, we are accountable to no one. We are consequently wreaking havoc on our fellow animals and on the surrounding ecosystem, seeking little more than our own comfort and amusement, yet never finding satisfaction.

For a growing number of physicists, the fine-tuning problem can be solved only by accepting that the entire cosmos is a single, continuous entity, working in seamless harmony like the human body.

Physicist's wife asked him to read 'The Cat in the Hat' by Dr. Seuss to their child. The Physicist said that he had never heard of 'The Cat in the Hat' by Dr. Seuss, but he's very familiar with 'The Cat in the Box' by Dr. Schrodinger, which he would be happy to read to their child.

It is important to realize that in physics today, we have no knowledge of what energy is

Our knowledge of physics only takes us back so far. Before this instant of cosmic time, all the laws of physics or chemistry are as evanescent as rings of smoke.

Neutrino physics is largely an art of learning a great deal by observing nothing.

In a world described by quantum physics, an insistence on causal closure of the physical world amounts to a quasi-religious faith in the absolute powers of matter, a belief that is no more than a commitment to brute, and outmoded, materialism.

In principle, time would come to a halt for an object moving at the speed of light.

This was Einstein's explanation for the phenomenon of entangled particles, which he termed "spooky action at a distance.")

Quantum physics presents a new and exciting worldview that challenges old concepts, such as deterministic trajectories of motion and causal continuity. If initial conditions do not forever determine an object's motion, if instead, every time we observe, there is a new beginning, then the world is creative at the base level.

Moreover, it seems absurd that an epiphenomenon of matter can affect matter: If consciousness is an epiphenomenon, how can it collapse the spread-out wave of a quantum object to a localized particle when it takes a quantum measurement?

The very word 'disappears' implies that the universe is, so to speak, finite, and that it is possible to leave it. But no-o-othing" (he deliberately drew the word out) "can ever leave the universe. And nothing can enter it. Not a single speck of dust can appear or disappear. Matter is transformed into energy, and energy into matter

It was mindless, it was mechanical, it was Emily Dickinson's poetry, where the secrets of the universe were encapsulated in body and motion, sweat and breath, physicality and physics,

your mind becomes a supercomputer capable of calculating the gyrations of your car, multiplying that by the speed of the fall over the angle of descent, factoring in Newton's laws of motion and, in a split second, coming to the panicked conclusion that this is gonna hurt like hell.

The separation between any two events in the history of a particle shall be a maximum or minimum when measured along its world line.

Another mode of accumulating power arises from lifting a weight and then allowing it to fall.

Is it a surprise that into the vessel, in which the mercury has no inclination and no repugnance, not even the slightest, to being there, it should enter and should rise in a column high enough to make equilibrium with the weight of the external air which forces it up?

A raised weight can produce work, but in doing so it must necessarily sink from its height, and, when it has fallen as deep as it can fall, its gravity remains as before, but it can no longer do work.