Quantum mechanics, that big, new, spectacular remarkable idea is that you only predict probabilities, the likelihood of one outcome or another. That’s the new idea.
BRIAN GREENEIt’s hard to teach passionately about something that you don’t have a passion for.
More Brian Greene Quotes
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When I give this talk to a physics audience, I remove the quotes from my ‘Theorem’.
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How can a speck of a universe be physically identical to the great expanse we view in the heavens above?
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…things are the way they are in our universe because if they weren’t, we wouldn’t be here to notice.
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I love it when real science finds a home in a fictional setting, where you take some real core idea of science and weave it through a fictional narrative in order to bring it to life, the way stories can. That’s my favorite thing.
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So many galaxies, so many planets out there in the universe circling so many stars… it just feels like there’s a very good chance that there is another Earth-like planet out there that is able to support some kind of life similar to what we’re familiar with.
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I like to think that Einstein would look at string theory’s journey and smile, enjoying the theory’s remarkable geometrical features while feeling kinship with fellow travelers on the long and winding road toward unification.
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The absolute worst thing that you ever can do, in my opinion, in bringing science to the general public, is be condescending or judgmental. It is so opposite to the way science needs to be brought forth.
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Gravity is matter’s sugar daddy.
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Cosmology is among the oldest subjects to captivate our species. And it’s no wonder. We’re storytellers, and what could be more grand than the story of creation?
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Every moment is as real as every other. Every ‘now,’ when you say, ‘This is the real moment,’ is as real as every other ‘now’ – and therefore all the moments are just out there. Just as every location in space is out there, I think every moment in time is out there, too.
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The real question is whether all your pondering and analyses will convince you that life is worth living. That’s what it all comes down to.
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I was holding [my four-year-old daughter] and I said, ‘Sophia, I love you more than anything in the universe.’ And she turned to me and said, ‘Daddy, universe or multiverse?’
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To tell you the truth, I’ve never met anybody who can envision more than three dimensions. There are some who claim they can, and maybe they can; it’s hard to say.
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But can we really understand that or put rigorous mathematics or testable experiments against that? Not yet. So one of the big holy grail of physics is to understand why there is something rather than nothing.
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String theory envisions a multiverse in which our universe is one slice of bread in a big cosmic loaf. The other slices would be displaced from ours in some extra dimension of space.
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Instead, a faint mist of light will fall for eternity through an ever colder and quieter cosmos.
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There’s no way that scientists can ever rule out religion, or even have anything significant to say about the abstract idea of a divine creator.
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It’s hard to teach passionately about something that you don’t have a passion for.
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A watch worn by a particle of light would not tick at all. Light realizes the dreams of Ponce de Leon and the cosmetics industry: it doesn’t age.
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In quantum mechanics there is A causing B. The equations do not stand outside that usual paradigm of physics. The real issue is that the kinds of things you predict in quantum mechanics are different from the kinds of things you predict using general relativity.
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If string theory is right, the microscopic fabric of our universe is a richly intertwined multidimensional labyrinth within which the strings of the universe endlessly twist and vibrate, rhythmically beating out the laws of the cosmos.
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You should never be surprised by or feel the need to explain why any physical system is in a high entropy state.
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String theory is the most developed theory with the capacity to unite general relativity and quantum mechanics in a consistent manner.
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When you drive your car, E = mc2 is at work. As the engine burns gasoline to produce energy in the form of motion, it does so by converting some of the gasoline’s mass into energy, in accord with Einstein’s formula.
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Falsifiability for a theory is great, but a theory can still be respectable even if it is not falsifiable, as long as it is verifiable.
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I would say in one sentence my goal is to at least be part of the journey to find the unified theory that Einstein himself was really the first to look for.
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