Astro Physics Quotes

We were all around for the big bang, but not as what we look like today. ~ Anthony T. Hincks

The various approximations that constitute our current physics theories are successful because simple mathematical structures can provide good approximations of how a self-aware substructure will perceive more complex mathematical structures. In other words, our successful theories are not mathematics approximating physics, but mathematics approximating mathematics! ~ Max Tegmark

Brian and I were both science students. You know science sort of math and physics side, you know. ~ John Deacon

The cycling helmet can save your life, but it doesn't look good and tends to ruin your hair. ~ Astro Teller

We the undersigned, intend to establish an instruction and training institution which differs from the common elementary schools principally in that it will embrace, outside of (in addition to) the general and elementary curriculum, all branches of the classical high school, which are necessary for a true Christian and scientific education, such as: Religion, the Latin, Greek, Hebrew, German, French and English languages; History, Geography, Mathematics, Physics, natural history, Introduction to Philosophy, Music, and Drawing. ~ C.F.W. Walther

It is shameful that there are so few women in science ... In China there are many, many women in physics. There is a misconception in America that women scientists are all dowdy spinsters. This is the fault of men. In Chinese society, a woman is valued for what she is, and men encourage her to accomplishments yet she remains eternally feminine. ~ Chien-Shiung Wu

The terrifying physics of going up-mast in heavy seas are inescapable. ~ Abby Sunderland

The human mind is woven into the energy fabric of the universe.
John A. Wheeler ~ Katherine Ramsland

Our clever friend Feynman demonstrated how to write down the Equation of the Universe in a single line. Here it is:

U = 0

U is a definite mathematical function, the total unworldliness. It's the sum of contributions from all the piddling partial laws of physics. To be precise, U = Unewton + Ueinstein +.... Here, for instance, the Newtonian mechanical unworldiness Unewton is defined by Unewton = (F - ma)^2; the Einstein mass-energy Unworldliness is definedby Ueinstein = (E - mc^2) ^2; and so forth. Because every contribution is positive or zero, the only way that the total U can vanish is for every contribution to vanish, so U = 0 implies F=ma, E=mc^2, and any other past or future law you care to include!

Thus we can capture all the laws of physics we know, and accommodate all the laws yet to be discovered, in one unified equation. The Theory of Everything!!! But it's a complete cheat, of course, because there is no way to use (or even define) U, other than to deconstruct it into its separate pieces and then use those. ~ Frank Wilczek

Think of all the nonsense you had to learn in psychology courses. None of which was testable. None of which was measurable. We had behaviorism, Freudian psychology, all of these theories that you learn in psychology. Totally untestable. Now, we can test it, because physics allows us to calculate energy flows in the brain. ~ Michio Kaku

Ultimately, a timeless story has to be about the human condition. ~ Astro Teller

As a boy I had liked both drawing and physics, and I always abhorred the role of being a spectator. In 1908, when I was 15, I designed, built and flew a toy model airplane which won the then-famous James Gordon Bennett Cup. By 16 I had discovered that design could be fun and profitable, and this lesson has never been lost on me. ~ Raymond Loewy

Relativity must replace absolutism in the realm of morals as well as in the spheres of physics and biology. ~ Thomas Cochrane

Let's make health care a meritocracy. Access to the best care goes to people who did what they could to avoid becoming ill. ~ Astro Teller

So far as we know, all the fundamental laws of physics, like Newton's equations, are reversible. ~ Richard P. Feynman

At one point I wanted to work for NASA and be an astrophysicist, so I did physics, math, and chemistry before realizing I probably wasn't quite smart enough to do that. But I am still hugely interested in cosmology and astrophysics. That is my geeky subject area. ~ Gemma Chan

17th century philosophers were not in a position to understand the mind as well as we can today, since the advent of experimental methods in psychology. It shows no disrespect for the brilliance of Descartes or Kant to acknowledge that the psychology which they worked with was primitive by comparison with what is available today in the cognitive sciences, any more than it shows disrespect for the brilliance of Aristotle to acknowledge that the physics he worked with does not compare with that of Newton or Einstein. ~ Hilary Kornblith

Modern science cannot explain why the laws of physics are exactly balanced for animal life to exist. ~ Robert Lanza

Liv sighed. "There's plenty of oxygen going to all the logs. I used a classic tepee structure. Unless the laws of physics have changed, I don't know why - "
"Do we have to do this the Mortal way?" Ethan looked at Lena.
She nodded. "More fun."
John struck another match. "For who?"
Ridley held up her hand. "Hold on. That sounds like camping. Is this camping? Am I camping? ~ Dangerous Creatures Kami Garcia Margaret Stohl

PROCESS PHILOSOPHY, a school greatly influenced by Alfred North Whitehead, holds that mind and brain are manifestations of a single reality, one that is in constant flux. It thus is compatible with classical Buddhist philosophy, which views clear and penetrating awareness of change and impermanence (anicca in Pali) as the essence of insight. Thus, as Whitehead put it, "The reality is the process," and it is a process made up of vital transient "drops of experience, complex, and interdependent." This view is strikingly consistent with recent developments in quantum physics. ~ Jeffrey M. Schwartz

If physics leads us today to a world view which is essentially mystical, it returns, in a way, to its beginning, 2,500 years ago ... This time, however, it is not only based on intuition, but also on experiments of great precision and sophistication, and on a rigorous and consistent mathematical formalism. ~ Fritjof Capra

Physics does not change the nature of the world it studies, and no science of behavior can change the essential nature of man, even though both sciences yield technologies with a vast power to manipulate the subject matters. ~ Pope Paul VI

Now I know what the atom looks like. ~ Ernest Rutherford

We may as well cut out group theory. That is a subject that will never be of any use in physics. ~ James Jeans

Quantum mechanics has explained all of chemistry and most of physics. ~ Paul Dirac

What one man calls God, another calls the laws of physics. ~ Nikola Tesla

Quantum physics has found that there is no empty space in the human cell, but it is a teeming, electric-magnet ic field of possibility or potential ~ Deepak Chopra

The laws of physics is the canvas God laid down on which to paint his masterpiece ~ Dan Brown

Neutrinos, they are very small.
They have no charge and have no mass
And do not interact at all.
The earth is just a silly ball
To them, through which they simply pass,
Like dustmaids down a drafty hall
Or photons through a sheet of glass.
They snub the most exquisite gas,
Ignore the most substantial wall,
Cold shoulder steel and sounding brass,
Insult the stallion in his stall,
And, scorning barriers of class,
Infiltrate you and me. Like tall
And painless guillotines they fall
Down through our heads into the grass.
At night, they enter at Nepal
And pierce the lover and his lass
From underneath the bed - you call
It wonderful; I call it crass. ~ John Updike

Any account of science which does not explicitly describe it as something we believe in is essentially incomplete and a false pretense. It amounts to a claim that science is essentially different from and superior to all human beliefs that are not scientific statements
and this is untrue. ~ Richard Rhodes

All of modern physics is governed by that magnificent and thoroughly confusing discipline called quantum mechanics ... It has survived all tests and there is no reason to believe that there is any flaw in it. We all know how to use it and how to apply it to problems; and so we have learned to live with the fact that nobody can understand it. ~ Murray Gell-Mann

A mathematician tells you that the wall of warped space prevents the Moon from flying out of its orbit yet can't tell you why an astronaut can go back and forth across that same space. ~ Bill Gaede

Can you name a single one of the great fundamental and original intellectual achievements which have raise man in the scale of civilization that may be credited to the Anglo-Saxon? The art of letters, of poetry, of music, of sculpture, of painting, of the drama, of architecture; the science of mathematics, of astronomy, of philosophy, of logic, of physics, of chemistry, the use of the metals and principles of mechanics, were all invented or discovered by darker and what we now call inferior races and nations. ~ James Weldon Johnson

The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics. ~ Bertrand Russell

In the following pages I argue that we have both philosophical and scientific reasons to doubt the adequacy of this widely accepted doctrine of materialism. In the history of Western philosophy, as we will see, it has turned out to be notoriously difficult to formulate a viable concept of matter. And physics in the twentieth century has produced weighty reasons to think that some of the core tenets of materialism were mistaken. These results, when combined with the new theories of information, complexity, and emergence summarized elsewhere in this volume, point toward alternative accounts of the natural world that deserve careful attention and critical evaluation. ~ Paul Davies

God abhors a naked singularity. ~ Stephen Hawking

It's hardly a secret that I'm skeptical of declarations that the aliens are out and about on our planet. Still, I try to answer every one of these mails and phone calls because, after all, it's not a violation of physics to travel from one star system to another. ~ Seth Shostak