Best 538 quotes in «physics quotes» category

[..] when we get down to the subatomic level, the solid world we live in also consists, again rather worryingly, of almost nothing and that wherever we do find something it turns out not to actually something, but only the probability that there may something there.

When you look deeply into yourself you may be able to see that there is, in this moment, a quality of aliveness that is animating you that is not philosophical and is not abstract. It's independent of what you think about it, what you believe about it and what you feel about it. It's always there! it is animating your breath, It is coursing the spirit, it is what makes it possible for you to think and speak and see and hear. This is the Invisible Touch.

Whether we like it or not, modern ways are going to alter and in part destroy traditional customs and values.

Which do you think is more valuable to humanity? a. Finding ways to tell humans that they have free will despite the incontrovertible fact that their actions are completely dictated by the laws of physics as instantiated in our bodies, brains and environments? That is, engaging in the honored philosophical practice of showing that our notion of "free will" can be compatible with determinism? or b. Telling people, based on our scientific knowledge of physics, neurology, and behavior, that our actions are predetermined rather than dictated by some ghost in our brains, and then sussing out the consequences of that conclusion and applying them to society? Of course my answer is b).

With only one proton in its nucleus, hydrogen is the lightest and simplest element, made entirely during the big bang. Out of the ninety-four naturally occurring elements, hydrogen lays claim to more than two-thirds of all the atoms in the human body, and more than ninety percent of all atoms in the cosmos, on all scales, right on down to the solar system. Hydrogen in the core of the massive planet Jupiter is under so much pressure that it behaves more like a conductive metal than a gas, creating the strongest magnetic field among the planets.

Why is it so difficult for us to think in relative terms? Well, for the good reason that human nature loves absoluteness, and erroneously considers it as a state of higher knowledge.

Why are black holes so different from all other objects in the macroscopic Universe? Why are they, and they alone, so elegantly simple? If I knew the answer, it would probably tell me something very deep about the nature of physical laws. But I don’t know.

...Why is it, that from the moment you enter medical school to the moment you retire, that the only disorder you will ever diagnosis with a physics book - is obesity? This is biology folks, it's endocrinology, it's physiology - physics has nothing to do with it. The law of thermodynamics is always true, [but] the energy balance equation is irrelevant...

...Why is it that from the moment you enter medical school to the moment you retire, the only disorder that you will ever diagnose with a physics textbook is obesity? This is biology folks, it's endocrinology, it's physiology - physics has nothing to do with it. The laws of thermodynamics are always true, the energy balance equation is irrelevant...

Within the immense ocean of galaxies and stars we are in a remote corner; amidst the infinite arabesques of forms which constitute reality we are merely a flourish among innumerably many such flourishes.

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

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.

Wolfgang Pauli, in the months before Heisenberg's paper on matrix mechanics pointed the way to a new quantum theory, wrote to a friend, "At the moment physics is again terribly confused. In any case, it is too difficult for me, and I wish I had been a movie comedian or something of the sort and had never heard of physics." That testimony is particularly impressive if contrasted with Pauli's words less than five months later: "Heisenberg's type of mechanics has again given me hope and joy in life. To be sure it does not supply the solution to the riddle, but I believe it is again possible to march forward.

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.

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

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

A lot of my theories were not applicable as a closer

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

But even physics cannot be defined from an atomic topography.

[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.

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.

Engineering is merely the slow younger brother of physics.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am now convinced that theoretical physics is actually philosophy.

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

I am fascinated by quantum physics.

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

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 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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