Physics Quotes - Page 3

...quantum mechanics - the physics of our world - requires that you hold such pedestrian complaints in abeyance.

Order is heaven's first law.

The people who actually make the advances in theoretical physics don't think in these categories that the philosophers and the historians of science subsequently invent for them

The time has come to realise that an interpretation of the universe - even a positivist one - remains unsatisfying unless it covers the interior as well as the exterior of things; mind as well as matter. The true physics is that which will, one day, achieve the inclusion of man in his wholeness in a coherent picture of the world.

It took less than an hour to make the atoms, a few hundred million years to make the stars and planets, but five billion years to make man!

Mathematics is the cheapest science. Unlike physics or chemistry, it does not require any expensive equipment. All one needs for mathematics is a pencil and paper.

The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space.

It’s hard to build models of inflation that don't lead to a multiverse. It’s not impossible, so I think there’s still certainly research that needs to be done. But most models of inflation do lead to a multiverse, and evidence for inflation will be pushing us in the direction of taking [the idea of a] multiverse seriously.

We have a closed circle of consistency here: the laws of physics produce complex systems, and these complex systems lead to consciousness, which then produces mathematics, which can then encode in a succinct and inspiring way the very underlying laws of physics that gave rise to it.

Both the old and new physics were dealing with shadow-symbols, but the new physics was forced to be aware of that fact - forced to be aware that it was dealing with shadows and illusions, not reality.

A mathematician is an individual who calls himself a 'physicist' and does 'physics' and physical experiments with abstract concepts.

Many physicists these days sound like the Delphic oracle - with equations.

We know that energy can not be created nor destroyed but can be changed in it's form. If it can not be formed then it can not exist. We may not exist.

What is especially striking and remarkable is that in fundamental physics a beautiful or elegant theory is more likely to be right than a theory that is inelegant.

[The fine structure constant] ... defines how firmly atomic nuclei bind together and how all the atoms on Earth were made. Its value controls the power from the Sun and, more sensitively, how stars transmute hydrogen into all the atoms of the periodic table.

Matter tells space how to curve, space tells matter how to move.

Time becomes meaningless without memory.

The measured magnetic moment, together with fine structure constant determined by a different method, is the most stringent test of QED and the Standard Model of particle physics. The measured magnetic moment and QED theory together yield the most precise measured value of the fine structure constant.

Alpha, known as the fine-structure constant, characterizes the interactions between matter and light. It has been very accurately measured in the laboratory. It is indeed the most precisely measured of all physical constants ... best memorized in the form ~ 1/137.

Alpha sets the scale of nature - the size of atoms and all things made of them, the intensity and colors of light, the strength of magnetism, and the metabolic rate of life itself. It controls everything that we see. ... In 137, apparently, science had found Nature's PIN Code.