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.
BRIAN GREENEThere’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.
More Brian Greene Quotes
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I’d say many features of string theory don’t mesh with what we observe in everyday life.
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For most people, the major hurdle in grasping modern insights into the nature of the universe is that these developments are usually phrased using mathematics.
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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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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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Relativity challenges your basic intuitions that you’ve built up from everyday experience. It says your experience of time is not what you think it is, that time is malleable. Your experience of space is not what you think it is; it can stretch and shrink.
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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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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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According to inflation, the more than 100 billion galaxies, sparkling throughout space like heavenly diamonds, are nothing but quantum mechanics writ large across the sky. To me, this realization is one of the greatest wonders of the modern scientific age.
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And putting together the probabilities of quantum mechanics with the certainty of general relativity, that’s been the big challenge and that’s why we have been excited about string theory, as it’s one of the only approaches that can put it together.
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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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Science is a way of life. Science is a perspective. Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding in a manner that’s precise, predictive and reliable – a transformation, for those lucky enough to experience it, that is empowering and emotional.
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But if you think about a practical implication of enriching your life and giving you a sense of being part of a larger cosmos and possibly being able to use this [gravitational waves] as a tool in the future.
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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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Our eyes only see the big dimensions, but beyond those there are others that escape detection because they are so small.
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When I give this talk to a physics audience, I remove the quotes from my ‘Theorem’.
BRIAN GREENE







