Quotes About Physics

Photons are accurately and legitimately described as waves and particles at the same time. They are genuine wavicles.

One thing I've learned over time is, if you hit a golf ball into water, it won't float.

In physics, to be in two places at the same time would be a miracle; in politics it seems not merely normal, but natural.

I am almost certain that space and time are illusions. These are primitive notions that will be replaced by something more sophisticated.

The entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium.

The abstract analysis of the world by mathematics and physics rests on the concepts of space and time.

A time will however come (as I believe) when physiology will invade and destroy mathematical physics, as the latter has destroyed geometry.

Empty space is a boiling, bubbling brew of virtual particles that pop in and out of existence in a time scale so short that you can't even measure them.

I was very good in math and physics. In the Soviet time, we had a lot of Olympic-style competitions for different disciplines: I was always winning in my region.

The speed of time is 1 hour per hour, no matter what else is going on in the universe.

There's no verbs before time itself exists, right? There's no popping into existence, there's no fluctuating, there's no quantum mechanical craziness, there is literally nothing.

Disorder increases with time because we measure time in the direction in which disorder increases.

Physicists don't believe in wizards—a fact that I, being a wizard, find highly insulting. I have taken my revenge, therefore, by refusing to believe in physicists.

Those sages of the ancient world, unbound by dogma of any kind, thought as we do in terms of physics, or rather, physiology, as applied to the whole universe: they envisaged the end of man and the dying out of this sphere.

Old Newtonian physics claimed that things have an objective reality separate from our perception of them. Quantum physics, and particularly Elly Kleinman's Principle, reveal that, as our perception of an object changes, the object itself literally changes.

The difference between theism and new atheist science is the difference between mystery and certainty. Certainty is a relic, an atavism, a husk we ought to have outgrown. Mystery is openness to possibility, even at the scale now implied by physics and cosmology. The primordial human tropism toward mystery may well have provided the impetus for all that we have learned.

Noether's theorem fused together symmetries and conservation laws-these two giant pillars of physics are actually nothing but different facets of the same fundamental property.

You may begin to realize that groups will pop up wherever symmetries exist. In fact, the collection of all the symmetry transformations of any system always from a group.

The importance of mirror-reflection symmetry to our perception and aesthetic appreciation, to the mathematical theory of symmetries, to the laws of physics, and to science in general, cannot be overemphasized, and I will return to it several times. Other symmetries do exist, however, and they are equally relevant.

Supersymmetry is a subtle symmetry based on the quantum mechanical property spin.

The strength of the familiar electromagnetic force between two electrons, for example, is expressed in physics in terms of a constant known as the fine structure constant. The value of this constant, almost exactly 1/137, has puzzled many generations of physicists. A joke made about the famous English physicist Paul Dirac (1902-1984), one of the founders of quantum mechanics, says that upon arrival to heaven he was allowed to ask God one question. His question was: Why 1/137?

this marvelous graceful thing, this joy of physics, this perfect balance between rebellion and obedience, is God's own signature on earth.

I knew about that like I knew about the physical forces at play in the kitchen: gravity, decay, coagulation, fermentation, emulsification, oxidization, reduction, caramelization.

VERBLUEFFENDE ENTDECKUNG. HIMMEL PHYSIKALISCH VERNICHTET. ERDE NUR EINE MINUTE VON SIRIUS ENTFERNT! KEIN FIRMAMENT MEHR.