Quotes About Universe

For reasons nobody understands, the universe is deeply mathematical. Maybe God made it that way. Or maybe it's the only way a universe with us in it could be, because nonmathematical universes can't harbor life intelligent enough to ask the question. In any case, it's a mysterious and marvelous fact that our universe obeys laws of nature that always turn out to be expressible in the language of calculus as sentences called differential equations.

Whenever some aspect of nature doesn't care about direction, circles are bound to appear.

If it's right, it means the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything is not 42, with apologies to fans of Douglas Adams and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. But Deep Thought was on the right track: the secret of the universe is indeed mathematical.

that raises a profound mystery: Scientists have long been baffled by the existence of spontaneous order in the universe. The laws of thermodynamics seem to dictate the opposite, that nature should inexorably degenerate toward a state of greater disorder, greater entropy. Yet all around us we see magnificent structures—galaxies, cells, ecosystems, human beings—that have somehow managed to assemble themselves.

With the star up above and the blackness of space, I can't avoid feeling awe. How could we, Homo sapiens, an insignificant species on an insignificant planet adrift in a middleweight galaxy, have managed to predict how space and time would tremble after two black holes collided in the vastness of the universe a billion light-years away? We knew what that wave should sound like before it got here. And, courtesy of calculus, computers, and Einstein, we were right.

Infinity lies at the heart of so many of our dreams and fears and unanswerable questions: How big is the universe? How long is forever? How powerful is God? In every branch of human thought, from religion and philosophy to science and mathematics, infinity has befuddled the world's finest minds for thousands of years. It has been banished, outlawed, and shunned. It's always been a dangerous idea.

Our place in the universe, the universe itself, it all changes faster and faster by the second. Every one of us standing on this planet, we're all moving forwards and we're never ever coming back. The truth is, stillness is an idea, a dream. It's the thought of friendly, welcoming lights still shining in all the places we've been forced to abandon.

My heart was deep space and my head was maths

The increased awareness of the new universe and the possibility of a biological universe largely dashed any remaining hopes for an anthropocentric universe with all that implies for religion and philosophy.

T]he entire universe is evolving, [...] all of its parts are connected and interact, and [...] this evolution applies not only to inert matter, but also to life, intelligence, and culture. Physical, biological, and cultural evolution is the essence of the universe.

A lack of "external" objective meaning may be unsatisfying to many—caught forever in endless cycles of relativism, a morass of unbearable responsibility for our own meaning and purpose, and perhaps ultimately for that of the universe. But it looks like choice is inescapable. And while choice can sometimes be oppressive and debilitating, it is also liberating and empowering[.]

We need not assume our universe is in essence "computational," "alive," or even "hierarchically dissipative," only that these computational, organic, and thermodynamic analogies may serve to advance our understanding of processes far more complex than our models.

Yes, we humans are more than merely biological creatures. We appreciate beauty, we struggle with ethical conflicts, and we strive to make sense of our purpose in the universe, asking questions that science cannot answer. And yet, our sense of aesthetics, our moral sensibilities, and our search for meaning may themselves be intricately connected to the fabric of the cosmos.

The key shortcoming of the multiverse theory, however, is that it appeals to something outside the universe, namely, a vast ensemble of other universes and a set of meta-laws that exist for no reason (e.g., quantum mechanics, string theory). In this respect, the multiverse theory is little better than a direct theistic explanation where an appeal is made to an external creator/designer.

The reasons there are so many clichés about universes inside of dewdrops is because there are universes inside of dewdrops.

I feared the defining point of this Hell was its unrelenting uniformity, its lack of variation from type. If there was a heaven at the end of this, it must be filled with great variety, perhaps a multiplicity of intelligent species spread across universes. Yes, heaven would be as full of difference as Hell was of sameness.

God had created the universe as a way of sorting through the great library, finding those books that were most beautiful and meaningful.

The universe is big, its vast and complicated, and ridiculous. And sometimes, very rarely, impossible things just happen and we call them miracles. And that's the theory. Nine hundred years, never seen one yet, but this would do me.

You don't want to take over the universe. You wouldn't know what to do with it beyond shout at it.

It is very hard to realize that this present universe has evolved from an unspeakably unfamiliar early condition, and faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat. The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.

The appearance of fine-tuning in a scientific theory is like a cry of distress from nature, complaining that something needs to be better explained.

In a famous article,8 the physicist Eugene Wigner has written of "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics.

There is a beauty in these laws that mirrors something that is built into the structure of the universe at a very deep level

energy of any sort generates gravitational fields and is in turn acted on by gravitational fields, so an energy filling all space could have important effects on the expansion of the universe.