Quotes About Observation

The ability to understand something before it's observed is at the heart of scientific thinking.

Science is about reading the world from a gradually widening point of view.

In quantum mechanics no object has a definite position, except when colliding headlong with something else.

What I see, in other words, is not a reproduction of the external world. It is what I expect, corrected by what I can grasp. The relevant input is not that which confirms what we already know, but that which contradicts our expectations.

A moving object therefore experiences a shorter duration than a stationary one: a watch marks fewer seconds, a plant grows more slowly, a young man dreams less. For a moving object, time contracts.

Newton's mechanics, Maxwell's equations, quantum mechanics, and so on, tell us how events happen, not how things are.

When Lemaître defends the idea that the universe is expanding, and Einstein does not believe it, one of the two is wrong; the other, right. All of Einstein's results, his fame, his influence on the scientific world, his immense authority, count for nothing. The observations prove him wrong, and it's game over. An obscure Belgian priest is right. It is for this reason that scientific thinking has power.

Probability does not refer to the evolution of matter in itself. It relates to the evolution of those specific quantities we interact with.

Let's begin with a simple fact: time passes faster in the mountains than it does at sea level.

I want a theory of physics that accounts for the structure of the universe, that clarifies what it is to be an observer in the universe, not a theory that makes the universe depend on me observing it.

Hold on tight, because we are about to take off. "NOW" MEANS NOTHING What is happening "now" in a distant place? Imagine, for example, that your sister has gone to Proxima b, the recently discovered planet that orbits a star at approximately four light-years' distance from us. What is your sister doing now on Proxima b? The only correct answer is that the question makes no sense. It is like asking "What is here, in Beijing?" when we are in Venice.

In un caso e nell'altro, il premio è la bellezza, e occhi nuovi per vedere il mondo.

The present is a localized rather than a global phenomenon.

When we do science, we want to describe the world in the most objective way possible. We try to eliminate distortions and optical illusions deriving from our point of view. Science aspires to objectivity, to a shared point of view about which it is possible to be in agreement.

Carlo Rovelli

We observe the universe from within it, interacting with a minuscule portion of the innumerable variables of the cosmos. What we see is a blurred image. This blurring suggests that the dynamic of the universe with which we interact is governed by entropy, which measures the amount of blurring. It measures something that relates to us more than to the cosmos.

But in physics there is nothing that corresponds to the notion of the "now.

Kuantum mekani?inde, bir ba?ka cisimle çarp??mad??? sürece hiçbir cismin belirli bir konumu yoktur.

In tutti i casi in cui non viene scambiato calore, infatti, oppure quando il calore scambiato è trascurabile, noi vediamo che il futuro si comporta esattamente come il passato.

Physics does not describe how things evolve "in time" but how things evolve in their own times, and how "times" evolve relative to each other.*

Siamo nodi di una rete di scambi, di cui questo libro è un tassello, nella quale ci passiamo immagini, strumenti, informazioni e conoscenza. Ma del mondo che vediamo siamo anche parte integrante, non siamo osservatori esterni. Siamo situati in esso. La nostra prospettiva su di esso è dall'interno. Siamo fatti degli stessi atomi e degli stessi segnali di luce che si scambiano i pini sulle montagne e le stelle nelle galassie.

Looking at the sun going down, the eyes of Copernicus had seen the world turning. Looking at a glass of still water, the eyes of Boltzmann saw atoms and molecules frenziedly moving.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN NOTHING HAPPENS?

What quantum theory describes, then, is the way in which one part of nature manifests itself to any other single part of nature.