Words matter. These are the best Quantum Mechanics Quotes from famous people such as Francis Collins, James Lovelock, Jeff Vandermeer, David Gross, Murray Gell-Mann, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
I finished up my graduate degree in quantum mechanics, but underwent a bit of a personal crisis, recognizing that I didn’t want to do that for the rest of my life. It was too abstract, too far removed from human concerns.
If you start any large theory, such as quantum mechanics, plate tectonics, evolution, it takes about 40 years for mainstream science to come around. Gaia has been going for only 30 years or so.
When you think about the complexity of our natural world – plants using quantum mechanics for photosynthesis, for example – a smartphone begins to look like a pretty dumb object.
Quantum field theory was originally developed for the treatment of electrodynamics, immediately after the completion of quantum mechanics and the discovery of the Dirac equation.
Now, what that means is that there is fundamental indeterminacy from quantum mechanics, but besides that there are other sources of effective indeterminacy.
I’m not looking to be a trophy. When not acting, I spend my time studying metaphysics and quantum mechanics to keep my life as grounded as I can.
The scientists often have more unfettered imaginations than current philosophers do. Relativity theory came as a complete surprise to philosophers, and so did quantum mechanics, and so did other things.
The more you study quantum mechanics, the more crazy and incomprehensible it becomes. You truly do need a Ph.D. in very high level math and science to understand it at a high, high level.
The most important single thing about string theory is that it’s a highly mathematical theory, and the mathematics holds together in a very tight and consistent way. It contains in its basic structure both quantum mechanics and the theory of gravity. That’s big news.
Since the founding of quantum mechanics in the 1920s, theoretical physics had nurtured an extremely radical tradition.
For the record: Quantum mechanics does not deny the existence of objective reality. Nor does it imply that mere thoughts can change external events. Effects still require causes, so if you want to change the universe, you need to act on it.
One of the main successes of string theory is that it has been able to unify the general theory of relativity, which describes gravity, and quantum mechanics.
String theory is the most developed theory with the capacity to unite general relativity and quantum mechanics in a consistent manner. I do believe the universe is consistent, and therefore I do believe that general relativity and quantum mechanics should be put together in a manner that makes sense.
Quantum mechanics brought an unexpected fuzziness into physics because of quantum uncertainty, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. String theory does so again because a point particle is replaced by a string, which is more spread out.
Most of what Einstein said and did has no direct impact on what anybody reads in the Bible. Special relativity, his work in quantum mechanics, nobody even knows or cares. Where Einstein really affects the Bible is the fact that general relativity is the organizing principle for the Big Bang.
The development of quantum mechanics early in the twentieth century obliged physicists to change radically the concepts they used to describe the world.
The birth of science as we know it arguably began with Isaac Newton’s formulation of the laws of gravitation and motion. It is no exaggeration to say that physics was reborn in the early 20th-century with the twin revolutions of quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity.
Before the discovery of quantum mechanics, the framework of physics was this: If you tell me how things are now, I can then use the laws of physics to calculate, and hence predict, how things will be later.
I’ve been a big astrophysics nut since I was 12. I have always had a real soft spot for the bizarreness of quantum mechanics. But I gave up on being a scientist in high school – I’m just not that good at math.
Because the theory of quantum mechanics could explain all of chemistry and the various properties of substances, it was a tremendous success. But still there was the problem of the interaction of light and matter.
The problem is that replacement of Quantum Mechanics by Quantum Field Theory is still very demanding.
Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity are both accepted as scientific fact even though they’re mutually exclusive. Albert Einstein spent the second half of his life searching for a unifying truth that would reconcile the two.
While classical mechanics correctly predicts the behavior of large objects such as tennis balls, to predict the behavior of small objects such as electrons, we must use quantum mechanics.
One of the most exciting things about dark energy is that it seems to live at the very nexus of two of our most successful theories of physics: quantum mechanics, which explains the physics of the small, and Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, which explains the physics of the large, including gravity.
If I realize that actually there’s quantum mechanics happening around us all the time in some macroscopic, interconnected way, then that doesn’t change my perception of it, that doesn’t change my interaction with it; it just changes how I view my interaction.
Quantum mechanics brought an unexpected fuzziness into physics because of quantum uncertainty, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
In 1924, I became a Dozent in Gottingen and worked out the quantum mechanics during a holiday stay on Heligoland.
I do feel strongly that string theory is our best hope for making progress at unifying gravity and quantum mechanics.
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.
The mathematics of quantum mechanics very accurately describes how our universe works.
In the future, maybe quantum mechanics will teach us something equally chilling about exactly how we exist from moment to moment of what we like to think of as time.
Typically in science, individual scientists make up their minds about scientific fact or theory one at a time. We don’t take votes. We just don’t vote on quantum mechanics, the theory of relativity, why the sky is blue, or anything else.
What you can show using physics, forces this universe to continue to exist. As long as you’re using general relativity and quantum mechanics you are forced to conclude that God exists.
