Brian Greene
I believe we owe our young an education that captures the exhilarating drama of science.Collection: Science
Science is a self-correcting discipline that can, in subsequent generations, show that previous ideas were not correct.Collection: Science
The bottom line is that time travel is allowed by the laws of physics.Collection: Travel
Science is a way of life. Science is a perspective. Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding in a manner that's precise, predictive and reliable - a transformation, for those lucky enough to experience it, that is empowering and emotional.Collection: Experience
When you buy a jacket, you pick the size to ensure it fits. Similarly, we live in a universe in which the amount of dark energy fits our biological make-up. If the amount of dark energy were substantially different from what we've measured, the environmental conditions would be inhospitable to our form of life.Collection: Environmental
Science is the greatest of all adventure stories, one that's been unfolding for thousands of years as we have sought to understand ourselves and our surroundings.Collection: Science
Nature's patterns sometimes reflect two intertwined features: fundamental physical laws and environmental influences. It's nature's version of nature versus nurture.Collection: Environmental
Sometimes nature guards her secrets with the unbreakable grip of physical law. Sometimes the true nature of reality beckons from just beyond the horizon.Collection: Nature
Intelligence is the ability to take in information from the world and to find patterns in that information that allow you to organize your perceptions and understand the external world.Collection: Intelligence
When you drive your car, E = mc2 is at work. As the engine burns gasoline to produce energy in the form of motion, it does so by converting some of the gasoline's mass into energy, in accord with Einstein's formula.Collection: Car
My mom says: 'Why aren't you a doctor?' and I'm like, 'I am a doctor!' and she's all, 'No, I mean a real doctor.' She reads my books, but she says they give her a headache.Collection: Mom
Art makes us human, music makes us human, and I deeply feel that science makes us human.Collection: Science
String theory envisions a multiverse in which our universe is one slice of bread in a big cosmic loaf. The other slices would be displaced from ours in some extra dimension of space.Collection: Space
I wouldn't say that 'The Fabric of the Cosmos' is a book on cosmology. Cosmology certainly plays a big part, but the major theme is our ever-evolving understanding of space and time, and what it all means for our sense of reality.Collection: Space
I may be a Jewish scientist, but I would be tickled silly if one day I were reincarnated as a Baptist preacher.
Exploring the unknown requires tolerating uncertainty.
No matter how hard you try to teach your cat general relativity, you're going to fail.
Our eyes only see the big dimensions, but beyond those there are others that escape detection because they are so small.
We might be the holographic image of a two-dimensional structure.
String theory has the potential to show that all of the wondrous happenings in the universe - from the frantic dance of subatomic quarks to the stately waltz of orbiting binary stars; from the primordial fireball of the big bang to the majestic swirl of heavenly galaxies - are reflections of one, grand physical principle, one master equation.
I do feel strongly that string theory is our best hope for making progress at unifying gravity and quantum mechanics.
The boldness of asking deep questions may require unforeseen flexibility if we are to accept the answers.
In the far, far future, essentially all matter will have returned to energy. But because of the enormous expansion of space, this energy will be spread so thinly that it will hardly ever convert back to even the lightest particles of matter. Instead, a faint mist of light will fall for eternity through an ever colder and quieter cosmos.
One of the wonders of science is that it is completely universal. It crosses national boundaries with total ease.
In any finite region of space, matter can only arrange itself in a finite number of configurations, just as a deck of cards can be arranged in only finitely many different orders. If you shuffle the deck infinitely many times, the card orderings must necessarily repeat.
Einstein's theory of relativity does a fantastic job for explaining big things. Quantum mechanics is fantastic for the other end of the spectrum - for small things.
Supersymmetry is a theory which stipulates that for every known particle there should be a partner particle. For instance, the electron should be paired with a supersymmetric 'selectron,' quarks ought to have 'squark' partners, and so on.
Black holes, we all know, are these regions where if an object falls in, it can't get out, but the puzzle that many struggled with over the decades is, what happens to the information that an object contains when it falls into a black hole. Is it simply lost?
The idea that there could be other universes out there is really one that stretches the mind in a great way.
I would say in one sentence my goal is to at least be part of the journey to find the unified theory that Einstein himself was really the first to look for. He didn't find it, but we think we're hot on the trail.
Physicists are more like avant-garde composers, willing to bend traditional rules... Mathematicians are more like classical composers.
Oftentimes, if you're talking to a seasoned interviewer who asks you a question, they may do a follow-up if they didn't quite get it. It's rare that they'll do a third or fourth or fifth or sixth follow-up, because there's an implicit, agreed-upon decorum that they move on. Kids don't necessarily move on if they don't get it.
How can a speck of a universe be physically identical to the great expanse we view in the heavens above?
The real reason why general relativity is widely accepted is because it made predictions that were borne out by experimental observations.
The tantalizing discomfort of perplexity is what inspires otherwise ordinary men and women to extraordinary feats of ingenuity and creativity; nothing quite focuses the mind like dissonant details awaiting harmonious resolution.
What makes a Beethoven symphony spectacular, what makes a Brahms rhapsody spectacular is that the patterns are wondrous.
I've seen children's eyes light up when I tell them about black holes and the Big Bang.
Quantum mechanics broke the mold of the previous framework, classical mechanics, by establishing that the predictions of science are necessarily probabilistic.
String theory is not the only theory that can accommodate extra dimensions, but it certainly is the one that really demands and requires it.
Sometimes attaining the deepest familiarity with a question is our best substitute for actually having the answer.
I have long thought that anyone who does not regularly - or ever - gaze up and see the wonder and glory of a dark night sky filled with countless stars loses a sense of their fundamental connectedness to the universe.
We can certainly go further than cats, but why should it be that our brains are somehow so suited to the universe that our brains will be able to understand the deepest workings?
If the theory turns out to be right, that will be tremendously thick and tasty icing on the cake.
A unified theory would put us at the doorstep of a vast universe of things that we could finally explore with precision.
My emotional investment is in finding truth. If string theory is wrong, I'd like to have known that yesterday. But if we can show it today or tomorrow, fantastic.
We know that if supersymmetric particles exist, they must be very heavy; otherwise we would have spotted them by now.
Physics grapples with the largest questions the universe presents. 'Where did the totality of reality come from?' 'Did time have a beginning?'
I would say in one sentence my goal is to at least be part of the journey to find the unified theory that Einstein himself was really the first to look for.
We're on this planet for the briefest of moments in cosmic terms, and I want to spend that time thinking about what I consider the deepest questions.
I think it's too fast to say that all sci-fi ultimately winds up having some place in science. On the other hand, imaginative minds working outside of science as storytellers certainly have come upon ideas that, with the passing decades, have either materialized of come close to materializing.