Fermi Quotes

I hope it won't take long. ~ Enrico Fermi

Experimental confirmation of a prediction is merely a measurement. An experiment disproving a prediction is a discovery. ~ Enrico Fermi

During World War II, there had been a project to sabotage the Nazi nuclear weapons program. Years earlier, Leo Szilard, the first person to realize the possibility of a fission chain reaction, had convinced Fermi not to publish the discovery that purified graphite was a cheap and effective neutron moderator. Fermi had wanted to publish, for the sake of the great international project of science, which was above nationalism. But Szilard had persuaded Rabi, and Fermi had abided by the majority vote of their tiny three-person conspiracy. And so, years later, the only neutron moderator the Nazis had known about was deuterium.

The only deuterium source under Nazi control had been a captured facility in occupied Norway, which had been knocked out by bombs and sabotage, causing a total of twenty-four civilian deaths.

The Nazis had tried to ship the deuterium already refined to Germany, aboard a civilian Norwegian ferry, the SS Hydro.

Knut Haukelid and his assistants had been discovered by the night watchman of the civilian ferry while they were sneaking on board to sabotage it. Haukelid had told the watchman that they were escaping the Gestapo, and the watchman had let them go. Haukelid had considered warning the night watchman, but that would have endangered the mission, so Haukelid had only shaken his hand. And the civilian ship had sunk in the deepest part of the lake, with eight dead Germans, seven dead crew, and three dead civilian bystanders. S ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

The universe is a dark forest. Every civilization is an armed hunter stalking through the trees like a ghost, gently pushing aside branches that block the path and trying to tread without sound. Even breathing is done with care. The hunter has to be careful, because everywhere in the forest are stealthy hunters like him. If he finds other life - another hunter, an angel or a demon, a delicate infant or a tottering old man, a fairy or a demigod - there's only one thing he can do: open fire and eliminate them. In this forest, hell is other people. An eternal threat that any life that exposes its own existence will be swiftly wiped out. This is the picture of cosmic civilization. It's the explanation for the Fermi Paradox. ~ Liu Cixin

I had become a bit annoyed with Fermi . . . when he suddenly offered to take wagers from his fellow scientists on whether or not the bomb would ignite the atmosphere, and if so, whether it would merely destroy New Mexico or destroy the world. ~ Richard Rhodes

The most striking impression was that of an overwhelming bright light. I had seen under similar conditions the explosion of a large amount - 100 tons - of normal explosives in the April test, and I was flabbergasted by the new spectacle. We saw the whole sky flash with unbelievable brightness in spite of the very dark glasses we wore. Our eyes were accommodated to darkness, and thus even if the sudden light had been only normal daylight it would have appeared to us much brighter than usual, but we know from measurements that the flash of the bomb was many times brighter than the sun. In a fraction of a second, at our distance, one received enough light to produce a sunburn. I was near Fermi at the time of the explosion, but I do not remember what we said, if anything. I believe that for a moment I thought the explosion might set fire to the atmosphere and thus finish the earth, even though I knew that this was not possible. ~ Emilio Segre

The hush of the night sky is the silence of a graveyard. ~ Ted Chiang

Whatever Nature has in store for mankind, unpleasant as it may be, men must accept, for ignorance is never better than knowledge. ~ Enrico Fermi

The word meltdown had not yet entered the reactor engineer's vocabulary - Fermi was only then inventing that specialty - but that is what Compton was risking, a small Chernobyl in the midst of a crowded city. ~ Richard Rhodes

Such a weapon goes far beyond any military objective and enters the range of very great natural catastrophes. By its very nature it cannot be confined to a military objective but becomes a weapon which in practical effect is almost one of genocide ~ Enrico Fermi

In desperation I asked Fermi whether he was not impressed by the agreement between our calculated numbers and his measured numbers. He replied, "How many arbitrary parameters did you use for your calculations?" I thought for a moment about our cut-off procedures and said, "Four." He said, "I remember my friend Johnny von Neumann used to say, with four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk." With that, the conversation was over. ~ Freeman Dyson

The apparent size and age of the universe suggests that many technologically advanced extra-terrestrial civilizations ought to exist. However, this hypothesis seems inconsistent with the lack of observational evidence to support it." Or "Where is everybody?" The Fermi Paradox Enrico Fermi, Los Alamos, 1950 ~ Ralph Kern

Fermi, superb experimentalist that he was, contributed valuably to the program of experimental studies, defining with clarity problems that needed to be examined. For him the war work was duty, however, and the eager conviction he found on the Hill puzzled him. "After he had sat in on one of his first conferences here," Oppenheimer recalls, "he turned to me and said, 'I believe your people actually want to make a bomb.' I remember his voice sounded surprised. ~ Richard Rhodes

When Enrico Fermi built the first nuclear reactor, he suspended the control rods from a rope tied to a balcony railing. In case something went wrong, next to the railing was stationed a distinguished physicist with an axe. This led to the probably apocryphal story that SCRAM stands for "Safety Control Rod Axe Man. ~ Anonymous

An experiment disproving a prediction is discovery. ~ Enrico Fermi

During the Trinity test of the very first atom bomb, Fermi wondered if the detonation would ignite the Earth's atmosphere. They just didn't know, you see. We think the quantum disruption won't propagate. If it does, then the whole universe gets converted into energy. ~ Peter F. Hamilton

There are two possible outcomes: if the result confirms the hypothesis, then you've made a measurement. If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then you've made a discovery ~ Enrico Fermi

The apparent incompatibility between the abundance of habitable planets in our Galaxy and the lack of extraterrestrial visitors, known as the Fermi paradox, suggest the existence of what Hanson calls a "Great Filter," an evolutionary/technological roadblock somewhere along the developmental path from nonliving matter to space-colonizing life. If we discover independently evolved primitive life in our Solar System, this would suggest that primitive life is not rare, and that the roadblock lies after our current human stage of development-perhaps because assumption 1 is false, or because almost all advanced civilizations self-destruct before they are able to colonize. I'm therefore crossing my fingers that all searches for life on Mars and elsewhere find nothing: this is consistent with the scenario where primitive life is rare but we humans got lucky, so that we have the roadblock behind us and have extraordinary future potential. ~ Max Tegmark

Never underestimate the joy people derive from hearing something they already know. ~ Enrico Fermi

Where is everybody? Humans could theoretically colonize the galaxy in a million years or so, and if they could, astronauts from older civilizations could do the same. So why haven't they come to Earth? ~ Enrico Fermi

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

Although the problem of transmuting chemical elements into each other is much older than a satisfactory definition of the very concept of chemical element, it is well known that the first and most important step towards its solution was made only nineteen years ago by the late Lord Rutherford, who started the method of the nuclear bombardments. ~ Enrico Fermi

When asked what he meant by a miracle: Oh, anything with a probability of less than 20%. ~ Enrico Fermi

If I could remember the names of all these particles, I'd be a botanist ~ Enrico Fermi

Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilárd, which has been communicated to me in manuscript, leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future. Certain aspects of the situation seem to call for watchfulness and, if necessary, quick action on the part of the Administration. ...

This new phenomenon would also lead to the construction of bombs, and it is conceivable - though much less certain - that extremely powerful bombs of a new type may thus be constructed. A single bomb of this type, carried by boat or exploded in a port, might well destroy the whole port altogether with some of the surrounding territory. However, such bombs might well prove to be too heavy for transportation by air. ~ Albert Einstein

When asked what characteristics Nobel prize winning physicists had in common ؛ I cannot think of a single one, not even intelligence ~ Enrico Fermi

Fermi turned to Bohr with weary eyes and a slanted smile, and shrugged. "So we thought we had discovered new elements. We even named them - hesperium, ausonium. Wrong! Mythical! They were ordinary old barium and iodine. We were careful - too careful. ~ Gregory Benford

Fermi started to calculate on his own, saying nothing, and in a direct, simple way found the essential point. The ability of a centrifuge to separate U-235 from U-238 was proportional to its length and to the fourth power of the peripheral speed of its rotor. Karl ~ Gregory Benford