So many of the properties of matter, especially when in the gaseous form, can be deduced from the hypothesis that their minute parts are in rapid motion, the velocity increasing with the temperature, that the...

The reason Dick’s physics was so hard for ordinary people to grasp was that he did not use equations. The usual theoretical physics was done since the time of Newton was to begin by writing...

Abstract mathematics combined with physics can discover and see more than any eye ever could.

We have sought for firm ground and found none. The deeper we penetrate, the more restless becomes the universe; all is rushing about and vibrating in a wild dance.

While the Copernican principle comes with no guarantees that it will forever guide us to cosmic truths, it’s worked quite well so far: not only is Earth not in the center of the solar system,...

The simple process of eating and breathing weave all of us together into a vast four-dimensional array. No matter how isolated you may sometimes feel, no matter how lonely, you are never really cut off...

From a philosophical point of view, Leibniz’s most interesting argument was that absolute space conflicted with what he called the principle of the identity of indiscernibles (PII). PII says that if two objects are indiscernible,...

What I am going to tell you about is what we teach our physics students in the third or fourth year of graduate school… It is my task to convince you not to turn away...

Instead, I opened my eyes to find the thing in front of my face, wafting dead horse breath across my chin and up my nose, its mouth like a gaping maw; its eyes, two giant...

Assessing existence while failing to embrace the insights of modern physics would be like wrestling in the dark with an unknown opponent.

Give me a place to stand, a lever long enough and a fulcrum. and I can move the Earth

Everything in life is a metaphor for everything in life.” Bonnie Marlewski-Probert

Same as you, Arthur. I hitched a ride. After all, with a degree in maths and another in astrophysics it was either that or back to the dole queue on Monday. Sorry I missed the...

Mathematics is the cheapest science. Unlike physics or chemistry, it does not require any expensive equipment. All one needs for mathematics is a pencil and paper.

Ideas that require people to reorganize their picture of the world provoke hostility.

The particles that are the very building blocks of all things, are in all possible locations until observation/measurement causes them to choose a specific position.

The language of the universe is not math, but physics.

There is no democracy in physics. We can’t say that some second-rate guy has as much right to opinion as Fermi.

I don’t know what laws of physics are involved, but if you fill a gym with teenagersand tell them to stare at one object, heat is actually produced. I half expected tospontaneously combust.Katrina

Tapestries are made by many artisans working together. The contributions of separate workers cannot be discerned in the completed work, and the loose and false threads have been covered over. So it is in our...

Today will still yearn to know why we are here and where we came from. Humanity’s deepest desire for knowledge is justification enough for our continuing quest. And our goal is nothing less than a...

That name was a kind of joke, and not a very good one. An author, Leon Lederman, wanted to call it ‘that goddamn particle’ because it was clear it was going to be a tough...

The difficulty lay with the mind accommodating itself to the notion of the plane, with all its weight, defying gravity, staying aloft. She understood the aerodynamics of flight, could comprehend the laws of physics that...

Realizing its fundamental importance in understanding spectral lines, in atomic physics and in the theory of how light and electrons interact, quantum electrodynamics, Pauli and Heisenberg were determined to derive it from quantum theory rather...

There is something stunningly narrow about how the Anthropic Principle is phrased. Yes, only certain laws and constants of nature are consistent with our kind of life. But essentially the same laws and constants are...

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

As to your Newton, I confess I do not understand his void and his gravity; I admit he has demonstrated the movement of the heavenly bodies with more exactitude than his forerunners; but you will...

Sometimes I wonder if my heart is like a black hole–it’s so dense that there’s no room for light, but that doesn’t mean it can’t still suck me in.

I like writing about what to me are like questions that I have about myself and the human condition. I find quantum physics fascinating, so I like to write about that, and I like things...

Creativity is essential to particle physics, cosmology, and to mathematics, and to other fields of science, just as it is to its more widely acknowledged beneficiaries – the arts and humanities.

Matter is stranger than physics textbooks.

Life is a manifestation of the fundamental laws of physics, and in its highest form, life manifests the fundamental laws of physics as a human organism endowed with a capacity for moral judgement.

Surely, the gods’ judgment is certain. But as for us, we must be satisfied to ‘come close’ to those things, for we are men, who speak according to what is likely, and whose lectures resemble...

I was a young impressionable 13 year old hearing the pro-left and pro-right argument. So one day I would be convinced that one side was right. the other day I would be convinced the other...

If a book were written all in numbers, it would be true. It would be just. Nothing said in words ever came out quite even. Things in words got twisted and ran together, instead of...

… our ‘Physick’ and ‘Anatomy’ have embraced such infinite varieties of being, have laid open such new worlds in time and space, have grappled, not unsuccessfully, with such complex problems, that the eyes of Vesalius...

Light is the only connection we have with the Universe beyond our solar system, and the only connection our ancestors had with anything beyond Earth. Follow the light and we can journey from the confines...

Indubitably, Magick is one of the subtlest and most difficult of the sciences and arts. There is more opportunity for errors of comprehension, judgement and practice than in any other branch of physics.

Our light will be their death.

String theory is an attempt at a deeper description of nature by thinking of an elementary particle not as a little point but as a little loop of vibrating string.

One may characterize physics as the doctrine of the repeatable, be it a succession in time or the co-existence in space. The validity of physical theorems is founded on this repeatability.

An attempt to study the evolution of living organisms without reference to cytology would be as futile as an account of stellar evolution which ignored spectroscopy.

For decades, new-energy researchers talked about the possibility of treating a magnet so that its magnetic field would continuously shake or vibrate. On rare occasions, Sweet saw this effect, called self-oscillation, occur in electric transformers....

Government is like physics, you know – for every action, there’s a reaction.

Unlike what you may be told in other sectors of life, when observing the universe, size does matter, which often leads to polite ‘telescope envy’ at gatherings of amateur astronomers.

This change in the conception of reality is the most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton.{Referring to James Clerk Maxwell’s contributions to physics}

She discovered in a series of beautifully executed researches the fundamental distinction between carbons that turned on heating into graphite and those that did not. Further she related this difference to the chemical constitution of...

Physicists like to think that all you have to do is say, these are the conditions, now what happens next?

If a problem is clearly stated, it has no further interest to the physicist.

…quantum mechanics—the physics of our world—requires that you hold such pedestrian complaints in abeyance.