Physicists are more like avant-garde composers, willing to bend traditional rules… Mathematicians are more like classical composers.
BRIAN GREENEPhysicists are more like avant-garde composers, willing to bend traditional rules… Mathematicians are more like classical composers.
BRIAN GREENEThe 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.
BRIAN GREENEScience is the greatest of all adventure stories, one that’s been unfolding for thousands of years as we have sought to understand ourselves and our surroundings.
BRIAN GREENECosmology 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?
BRIAN GREENEThat is, you can have nothingness, absolute nothingness for maybe a tiny fraction of a second, if a second can be defined in that arena, but then it falls apart into a something and an anti-something. And that something is then what we call the universe.
BRIAN GREENEI 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.
BRIAN GREENEScience is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding.
BRIAN GREENEA 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.
BRIAN GREENEIn 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.
BRIAN GREENEThe number of e-mails and letters that I get from choreographers, from sculptors, from composers who are being inspired by science is huge.
BRIAN GREENEI can’t stand clutter. I can’t stand piles of stuff. And whenever I see it, I basically just throw the stuff away.
BRIAN GREENEIf 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.
BRIAN GREENEI believe that through its rational evaluation of truth and indifference to personal belief, science transcends religious and political divisions and so does bind us into a greater, more resilient whole.
BRIAN GREENEQuantum 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 GREENETo 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.
BRIAN GREENE…things are the way they are in our universe because if they weren’t, we wouldn’t be here to notice.
BRIAN GREENE