Sean Carroll Quotes

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The strength of the electromagnetic interaction, for example, is fixed by a number called the "fine-structure constant," a famous quantity in physics that is numerically close to 1/137.
Sean Carroll Quotes: The strength of the electromagnetic
An elegant mechanism emerges: a broken symmetry, hidden from our view by a field pervading space.
Sean Carroll Quotes: An elegant mechanism emerges: a
Is time real? ... In one sense, it's a silly question. The "reality" of something is only an interesting issue if its a well-defined concept whose actual existence is in question, like Bigfoot or supersymmetry. For concepts like "time," which are unambiguously part of a useful vocabulary we have for describing the world, talking about "reality" is just a bit of harmless gassing. They may be emergent or fundamental, but they're definitely there.
Sean Carroll Quotes: Is time real? ... In
Lederman is also a charismatic personality, famous among his colleagues for his humor and storytelling ability. One of his favorite anecdotes relates the time when, as a graduate student, he arranged to bump into Albert Einstein while walking the grounds at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. The great man listened patiently as the eager youngster explained the particle-physics research he was doing at Columbia, and then said with a smile, That is not interesting.
Sean Carroll Quotes: Lederman is also a charismatic
The interaction of gravity with other forces seems to be able to create order while still making the entropy go up - temporarily, anyway. That is a deep clue to something important about how the universe works; sadly, we aren't yet sure what that clue is telling us.
Sean Carroll Quotes: The interaction of gravity with
We are part of the universe that has developed a remarkable ability: We can hold an image of the world in our minds. We are matter contemplating itself.
Sean Carroll Quotes: We are part of the
When society puts some small fraction of its wealth into asking and answering big questions, it reminds us all of the curiosity we have about our universe. And that leads to all sorts of good places.
Sean Carroll Quotes: When society puts some small
The world is not magic - and that's the most magical thing about it.
Sean Carroll Quotes: The world is not magic
It's possible that we are being watched and judged by a race of super-intelligent aliens, who will think badly of us and destroy the Earth if we allow ourselves to be cowed by frivolous lawsuits and don't turn on the LHC. When possibilities become as remote as what we're speaking about here, it's time to take the risks and get on with our lives.
Sean Carroll Quotes: It's possible that we are
The result is a complete fiasco. Our simple estimate of what the vacuum energy should be comes out to about 10105 joules per cubic centimeter. That's a lot of vacuum energy. What we actually observe is about 10-15 joules per cubic centimeter. So our estimate is larger than the experimental value by a factor of 10120 - a 1 followed by 120 zeroes. Not something we can attribute to experimental error. This has been called the biggest disagreement between theoretical expectation and experimental reality in all of science.
Sean Carroll Quotes: The result is a complete
Where misunderstanding dwells, misuse will not be far behind. No theory in the history of science has been more misused and abused by cranks and charlatans - and misunderstood by people struggling in good faith with difficult ideas - than quantum mechanics.
Sean Carroll Quotes: Where misunderstanding dwells, misuse will
The physical notion of determinism is different from destiny or fate in a subtle but crucial way: because Laplace's Demon doesn't actually exist, the future may be determined by the present, but literally nobody knows what it will be.
Sean Carroll Quotes: The physical notion of determinism
Each day, the moon's gravitational field tugs at the earth as it rotates underneath. At CERN, this tiny stress caused the total length of the LEP tunnel to stretch and contract by about a millimeter (one-twenty-fifth of an inch) every day. Not such a big deal in a seventeen-mile-long beam pipe, but enough to cause a tiny fluctuation in the energy of the electrons and positrons - one that was easily detectable by the high-precision instruments. After some initial puzzlement at the daily energy variations, the CERN physicists quickly figured out what was going on.
Sean Carroll Quotes: Each day, the moon's gravitational
The trick is to think of life as a process rather than a substance. When a candle is burning, there is a flame that clearly carries energy. When we put the candle out, the energy doesn't "go" anywhere. The candle still contains energy in its atoms and molecules. What happens, instead, is that the process of combustion has ceased. Life is like that: it's not "stuff"; it's a set of things happening. When that process stops, life ends.
Sean Carroll Quotes: The trick is to think
Albert Szent-Györgyi, a Hungarian physiologist who won the Nobel Prize in 1937 for the discovery of vitamin C, once offered the opinion that "life is nothing but an electron looking for a place to rest.
Sean Carroll Quotes: Albert Szent-Györgyi, a Hungarian physiologist
If you believe that the atoms that are inside your brain and your body act differently because they are in a living person than if they were in a rock or a crystal, then what you're saying is that the laws of physics are wrong.
Sean Carroll Quotes: If you believe that the
The construction of meaning is a fundamentally individual, subjective, creative enterprise, and an intimidating responsibility.
Sean Carroll Quotes: The construction of meaning is
If an ontology predicts almost nothing it ends up explaining almost nothing, and there's no reason to believe it.
Sean Carroll Quotes: If an ontology predicts almost
If everything in the universe evolves toward increasing disorder, it must have started out in an exquisitely ordered arrangement. This whole chain of logic, purporting to explain why you can't turn an omelet into an egg, apparently rests on a deep assumption about the very beginning of the universe. It was in a state of very low entropy, very high order. Why did our part of the universe pass though a period of such low entropy?
Sean Carroll Quotes: If everything in the universe
Human beings are not nearly as coolly rational as we like to think we are. Having set up comfortable planets of belief, we become resistant to altering them, and develop cognitive biases that prevent us from seeing the world with perfect clarity. We aspire to be perfect Bayesian abductors, impartially reasoning to the best explanation - but most often we take new data and squeeze it to fit with our preconceptions.
Sean Carroll Quotes: Human beings are not nearly
The idea of "Ten Commandments" is a deeply compelling one. It combines two impulses that are ingrained in our nature as human beings: making lists of ten things, and telling other people how to behave.
Sean Carroll Quotes: The idea of
Historically, nature has been very good at surprising us.
Sean Carroll Quotes: Historically, nature has been very
The most famous story about gravity involves Isaac Newton and an apple that supposedly fell on his head, inspiring him to concoct his theory of universal gravitation. (It's mostly famous because Newton himself couldn't stop telling it later in life, in an unnecessary attempt to add some extra juice to his reputation as a genius.)
Sean Carroll Quotes: The most famous story about
Science and religion both make claims about the fundamental workings of the universe. Although these claims are not a priori incompatible (we could imagine being brought to religious belief through scientific investigation), I will argue that in practice they diverge. If we believe that the methods of science can be used to discriminate between fundamental pictures of reality, we are led to a strictly materialist conception of the universe. While the details of modern cosmology are not a necessary part of this argument, they provide interesting clues as to how an ultimate picture may be constructed.
Sean Carroll Quotes: Science and religion both make
(A substantial fraction of the atoms in the body of a typical physicist were once in the form of pizza.)
Sean Carroll Quotes: (A substantial fraction of the
STUDYING TIME MACHINES IN FLATLAND
Sean Carroll Quotes: STUDYING TIME MACHINES IN FLATLAND
Life is not a substance, like water or rock; it's a process, like fire or a wave crashing on the shore. It's a process that begins, lasts for a while, and ultimately ends. Long or short, our moments are brief against the expanse of eternity.
Sean Carroll Quotes: Life is not a substance,
As we understand the world better, the idea that it has a transcendent purpose seems increasingly untenable.
Sean Carroll Quotes: As we understand the world
The world keeps happening, in accordance with its rules; it's up to us to make sense of it and give it value.
Sean Carroll Quotes: The world keeps happening, in
This is not a universe that is advancing toward a goal; it is one that is caught in the grip of an unbreakable pattern.
Sean Carroll Quotes: This is not a universe
One is our tendency to give higher credences to propositions that we want to be true. This can show up at a very personal level, as what's known as self-serving bias:
Sean Carroll Quotes: One is our tendency to
Our actual universe evolves to empty space.
Sean Carroll Quotes: Our actual universe evolves to
The behavior of temperature and heat and so forth can certainly be understood in terms of atoms: That's the subject known as "statistical mechanics." But it can equally well be understood without knowing anything whatsoever about atoms: That's the phenomenological approach we've been discussing, known as "thermodynamics." It is a common occurrence in physics that in complex, macroscopic systems, regular patterns emerge dynamically from underlying microscopic rules. Despite the way it is sometimes portrayed, there is no competition between fundamental physics and the study of emergent phenomena; both are fascinating and crucially important to our understanding of nature.
Sean Carroll Quotes: The behavior of temperature and
In 1965, physicist Richard Feynman opined, "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics," and the sentiment is equally applicable today.
Sean Carroll Quotes: In 1965, physicist Richard Feynman
Part of the sting was taken away when the American Physical Society awarded its 2010 Sakurai Prize in theoretical physics to Hagen, Englert, Guralnik, Higgs, Brout, and Kibble - in that order, which seems to have been chosen specifically to make it impossible for anyone to complain. (Anderson might have reasonably complained.)
Sean Carroll Quotes: Part of the sting was
Life ends, and that's part of what makes it special. What exists is here, in front of us, what we can see and touch and affect. Our lives are not dress rehearsals in which we plan and are tested in anticipation of the real show to come. This is it, the only performance we're going to get to give, and it is what we make of it.
Sean Carroll Quotes: Life ends, and that's part
Those swirls in the cream mixing into the coffee? That's us. Ephemeral patterns of complexity, riding a wave of increasing entropy from simple beginnings to a simple end. We should enjoy the ride.
Sean Carroll Quotes: Those swirls in the cream
Einstein's paper on the photoelectric effect was the work for which he ultimately won the Nobel Prize. It was published in 1905, and Einstein has another paper in the very same journal where it appeared - his other paper was the one that formulated the special theory of relativity. That's what it was like to be Einstein in 1905; you publish a groundbreaking paper that helps lay the foundation of quantum mechanics, and for which you later win the Nobel Prize, but it's only the second most important paper that you publish in that issue of the journal.
Sean Carroll Quotes: Einstein's paper on the photoelectric
Walter Wagner, the man who had gone to court to stop the Large Hadron Collider from beginning operations. A serious charge had been leveled: the LHC was a hazard to the very existence of life on earth. JO: So, roughly speaking, what are the chances the world is going to be destroyed? Is it one in a million, one in a billion? WW: Well, the best we can say right now is about a one-in-two chance. JO: Hold on a second. It's ... fifty-fifty? WW: Yeah, fifty-fifty ... If you have something that can happen, and something that won't necessarily happen, it's going to either happen, or it's going to not happen, and, so, the best guess is one in two. JO: I'm not sure that's how probability works, Walter.
Sean Carroll Quotes: Walter Wagner, the man who
A hundred quintillion googols!
Sean Carroll Quotes: A hundred quintillion googols!
The universe is not a miracle. It simply is, unguided and unsustained, manifesting the patterns of nature with scrupulous regularity. Over billions of years it has evolved naturally, from a state of low entropy toward increasing complexity, and it will eventually wind down to a featureless equilibrium. We are the miracle, we human beings. Not a break-the-laws-of-physics kind of miracle; a miracle in that it is wondrous and amazing how such complex, aware, creative, caring creatures could have arisen in perfect accordance with those laws. Our lives are finite, unpredictable, and immeasurably precious. Our emergence has brought meaning and mattering into the world.
Sean Carroll Quotes: The universe is not a
Christopher Savage have calculated that in reasonable models, we expect about ten dark-matter particles to interact with the atoms in a typical human body every year. The effects of every individual interaction are pretty negligible, so don't worry about getting a dark matter stomachache.
Sean Carroll Quotes: Christopher Savage have calculated that
(The neutron is a bit of a drama queen.)
Sean Carroll Quotes: (The neutron is a bit
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