Best 538 quotes in «physics quotes» category

You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got. And at one point you'd hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever. And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives. And you'll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they'll be comforted to know your energy's still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you're just less orderly. Amen.

A careful analysis of the process of observation in atomic physics has shown that the subatomic particles have no meaning as isolated entities, but can only be understood as interconnections between the preparation of an experiment and the subsequent measurement.

A consistent pursuit of classical physics forces a transformation in the very heart of that physics.

After Montesquieu, the next great addition to Sociology (which is the term I may be allowed to invent to designate Social Physics) was made by Condorcet, proceeding on the views suggested by his illustrious friend Turgot.

All the standard equations of mathematical physics can be separated and solved in Kerr geometry.

All of science can be divided into physics and stamp-collecting.

As an undergraduate, I did maths and physics. That doesn't make me a scientist. So I try to read and understand and talk to scientists.

A lot of my theories were not applicable as a closer

A scenario is suggested by which the universe and its laws could have arisen naturally from nothing. Current cosmology suggests that no laws of physics were violated in bringing the universe into existence. The laws of physics themselves are shown to correspond to what one would expect if the universe appeared from nothing. There is something rather than nothing because something is more stable.

But even physics cannot be defined from an atomic topography.

As physics is a mental reconstruction of material processes, perhaps a physical reconstruction of psychic processes is possible in nature itself.

Cambridge was the place for someone from the Colonies or the Dominions to go on to, and it was to the Cavendish Laboratory that one went to do physics.

Don't be surprised if in the 21st century lectures on meditation appear in university catalogues for physics.

Digital mechanics predicts that for every continuous symmetry of physics there will be some microscopic process that violates that symmetry.

Classical physics has been superseded by quantum theory: quantum theory is verified by experiments. Experiments must be described in terms of classical physics.

[Computer science] is not really about computers and it's not about computers in the same sense that physics is not really about particle accelerators, and biology is not about microscopes and Petri dishes... and geometry isn't really about using surveying instruments.

Don't waste your time on beaming people up or down. Instead, consider gravity waves as advanced physics of the universe that could be used to travel interstellar distances.

Engineering is merely the slow younger brother of physics.

Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.

Even before string theory, especially as physics developed in the 20th century, it turned out that the equations that really work in describing nature with the most generality and the greatest simplicity are very elegant and subtle.

Ever since I was a kid, I've had an enormous interest in the sciences - everything from quantum physics to anthropology.

Everything is energy. It's physics. So I find the science of it all interesting; how 90% of stuff that's in our universe is made of stuff that we can't even measure. I find that fascinating.

I do find that Western medicine is more and more open to proving energetic concepts. Why not, because modern physics is 100 percent based on it.

Going to the moon is not a matter of physics but of economics.

I am now convinced that theoretical physics is actually philosophy.

For me, [John Wheeler] was the last Titan, the only physics superhero still standing.

Hard to be a physics major at Rice University if you have flunked calculus.

[Heisenberg's seminal 1925 paper initiating quantum mechanics marked] one of the great jumps—perhaps the greatest—in the development of twentieth century physics.

How can you be a physics major and be shocked when you get pregnant from having sex?

I am fascinated by quantum physics.

I began peering into the corners of the room, making sure all the shadows were cast by objects and obeying known laws of physics.

I don't. We've had three technological revolutions that have changed the course of human history, all driven by physics. In the first, the industrial revolution, physicists developed Newtonian mechanics and thermodynamics, which gave us the steam engine and machine power. The second technological revolution was the electricity revolution. That gave us radio, television, and telecommunications. Then, physicists developed the laser and the transistor.

If someone says that he can think or talk about quantum physics without becoming dizzy, that shows only that he has not understood anything whatever about it.

I entered the Physics Department in 1950, receiving a Master's degree in 1953 and a Ph.D. in 1956. It is difficult to convey the sense of excitement that pervaded the Department at that time.

If I can't picture it, I can't understand it.

If the laws of physics be for us, who can be against us?!

If it weren’t for physics and law enforcement, I’d be unstoppable.

I have sold more books on physics than Madonna has on sex. [Hawking adopted this statement from a remark made to him by his former post-doc, Nathan Myhrvold.]

I have always believed that astrophysics should be the extrapolation of laboratory physics, that we must begin from the present universe and work our way backward to progressively more remote and uncertain epochs.

I got into physics through pop science and quantum science and ended up being such a quantum groupie.

I had no new ideas on the physics we might learn, and I could not compete with the younger generation.

I just really like ants, and I really like science. I was interested and curious about the quantum world and the physics behind how it all works.

I like to think the moon is there even if I am not looking at it.

In 1948 I was appointed to a Lectureship in Physics and in 1949 elected to a Fellowship at Trinity College.

I'm a bit of a layman physics junkie. I don't really understand it, but I love trying to understand it.

I make figurative portraits as a way to explore theories of quantum physics.

I may have made a straight A in physics, but I was panic-struck. Physics made me sick the whole time I learned it.

I'm fascinated with quantum physics.

In physics, your solution should convince a reasonable person. In math, you have to convince a person who's trying to make trouble. Ultimately, in physics, you're hoping to convince Nature. And I've found Nature to be pretty reasonable.

In a previous life I wrote the software that controlled my physics experiments. That software had to deal with all kinds of possible failures in equipment. That is probably where I learned to rely on multiple safety nets inside and around my systems.