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77b11fe
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The boldness of asking deep questions may require unforeseen flexibility if we are to accept the answers.
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Brian Greene |
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978b648
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Cosmology 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?
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Brian Greene |
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55a16b6
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Understanding requires insight. Insight must be anchored.
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understanding
science
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Brian Greene |
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4d36e05
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Physicists have come to realize that mathematics, when used with sufficient care, is a proven pathway to truth.
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truth
physics
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Brian Greene |
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aae6299
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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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universe
science
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Brian Greene |
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039e568
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quantum mechanics--the physics of our world--requires that you hold such pedestrian complaints in abeyance.
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science
quantum-mechanics
physics
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Brian Greene |
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0ab5bbf
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We all love a good story. We all love a tantalizing mystery. We all love the underdog pressing onward against seemingly insurmountable odds. We all, in one form or another, are trying to make sense of the world around us. And all of these elements lie at the core of modern physics. The story is among the grandest -- the unfolding of the entire universe; the mystery is among the toughest -- finding out how the cosmos came to be; the odds are..
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science
the-universe
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Brian Greene |
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97b1f6a
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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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messiness
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Brian Greene |
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9ff30db
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Sometimes attaining the deepest familiarity with a question is our best substitute for actually having the answer.
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Brian Greene |
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9781072
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But, as Einstein once said, "For we convinced physicists, the distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion, however persistent."5"
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Brian Greene |
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9fa25a5
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When you realize that quantum mechanics underlies all physical processes, from the fusing of atoms in the sun to the neural firings that constitutes the stuff of thought, the far-reaching implications of the proposal become apparent. It says that there's no such thing as a road untraveled. Yet each such road--each reality--is hidden from all others.
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Brian Greene |
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2058d7d
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Experience informs intuition. But it does more than that: Experience sets the frame within which we analyze and interpret what we perceive. You would no doubt expect, for instance, that the "wild child" raised by a pack of wolves would interpret the world from a perspective that differs substantially from your own. Even less extreme comparisons, such as those between people raised in very different cultural traditions, serve to underscore t..
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Brian Greene |
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f90009a
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If there is a lot of matter, gravity will cause space to curve back on itself, yielding the spherical shape. If there is little matter, space is free to flare outward in the Pringles shape. And if there is just the right amount of matter, space will have zero curvature.*
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Brian Greene |
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277057b
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For string theory to make sense, the universe should have nine spacial dimensions and one time dimension, for a total of ten dimensions.
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Brian Greene |
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8d1279d
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There is but one truly philosophical problem, and that is suicide," the text began. I winced. "Whether or not the world has three dimensions or the mind nine or twelve categories," it continued, "comes afterward"; such questions, the text explained, were part of the game humanity played, but they deserved attention only after the one true issue had been settled. The book was The Myth of Sisyphus and was written by the Algerian-born philosop..
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Brian Greene |
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62c5e3f
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The world of the everyday suddenly seemed nothing but an inverted magic act, lulling its audience into believing in the usual, familiar conceptions of space and time, while the astonishing truth of quantum reality lay carefully guarded by nature's sleights of hand.
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science
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Brian Greene |
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a924d7d
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As Feynman once wrote, "[Quantum mechanics] describes nature as absurd from the point of view of common sense. And it fully agrees with experiment. So I hope you can accept nature as She is--absurd."
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Brian Greene |
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92aa311
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blissful as ignorance,
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Brian Greene |
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f29b988
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But Einstein refused to be mathematics' pawn. He bucked the equations in favor of his intuition about how the cosmos should be, his deep-seated belief that the universe was eternal and, on the largest of scales, fixed and unchanging. The universe, Einstein admonished Lemaitre, is not now expanding and never was.
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Brian Greene |
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d7c67e2
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catoptric
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Brian Greene |
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1b5c6b5
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Since the familiar particles and the objects they compose--stars, planets, people, etc.--amount to less than 5 percent of the mass of the universe, such a disruption would not affect the vast majority of the universe, at least as measured by mass.
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Brian Greene |
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48ca392
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Just as we envision all of space as really being out there, as really existing,
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Brian Greene |
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d0129ef
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Even if we choose to use the nonstandard notion of distance and thereby describe the radius as being shorter than the Planck length, the physics we encounter--as discussed in previous sections--will be identical to that of a universe in which the radius, in the conventional sense of distance, is larger than the Planck length
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Brian Greene |
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c8b6212
|
The wonders of life and the universe are mere reflections of microscopic particles engaged in a pointless dance fully choreographed by the laws of physics.
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science
string-theory
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Brian Greene |
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ec3c617
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Far from being accidental details, the properties of nature's basic building blocks are deeply entwined with the fabric of space and time.
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Brian Greene |
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6f200c1
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Quantum mechanics challenges this view by revealing, at least in certain circumstances, a capacity to transcend space; long-range quantum connections can bypass spatial separation. Two objects can be far apart in space, but as far as quantum mechanics is concerned, it's as if they're a single entity.
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Brian Greene |
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3314781
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In this language, we've found that the cosmic cheese acquires more and more holes because quantum processes knock the inflaton's value downward at a random assortment of locations. At the same time, the cheesy parts stretch ever larger because they're subject to inflationary expansion driven by the high inflaton field value they harbor. Taken together, the two processes yield an ever-expanding block of cosmic cheese riddled with an ever-gro..
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Brian Greene |
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226bf9f
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Science is a way of life.
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Brian Greene |
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3a71c45
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Evidence in support of general relativity came quickly. Astronomers had long known that Mercury's orbital motion around the sun deviated slightly from what Newton's mathematics predicted. In 1915, Einstein used his new equations to recalculate Mercury's trajectory and was able to explain the discrepancy, a realization he later described to his colleague Adrian Fokker as so thrilling that for some hours it gave him heart palpitations.
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Brian Greene |
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de334e5
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they are beyond each other's cosmic horizon.
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Brian Greene |