The universe is very large, and its boundaries are not known very well, but it is still possible to define some kind of a radius to be associated with it.
The original reason to start the project, which was that the Germans were a danger, started me off on a process of action, which was to try to develop this first system at Princeton and then at Los Alamos, to try to make the bomb work.
Physics has a history of synthesizing many phenomena into a few theories.
We do not know what the rules of the game are; all we are allowed to do is to watch the playing. Of course, if we watch long enough, we may eventually catch on to a few of the rules. The rules of the game are what we mean by fundamental physics.
In talking about the impact of ideas in one field on ideas in another field, one is always apt to make a fool of oneself.
With the exception of gravitation and radioactivity, all of the phenomena known to physicists and chemists in 1911 have their ultimate explanation in the laws of quantum electrodynamics.
I practiced drawing all the time and became very interested in it. If I was at a meeting that wasn’t getting anywhere – like the one where Carl Rogers came to Caltech to discuss with us whether Caltech should develop a psychology department – I would draw the other people.
Once you have a computer that can do a few things – strictly speaking, one that has a certain ‘sufficient set’ of basic procedures – it can do basically anything any other computer can do. This, loosely, is the basis of the great principle of ‘Universality’.
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.
There were several possible solutions of the difficulty of classical electrodynamics, any one of which might serve as a good starting point to the solution of the difficulties of quantum electrodynamics.
If we have an atom that is in an excited state and so is going to emit a photon, we cannot say when it will emit the photon. It has a certain amplitude to emit the photon at any time, and we can predict only a probability for emission; we cannot predict the future exactly.
Einstein’s gravitational theory, which is said to be the greatest single achievement of theoretical physics, resulted in beautiful relations connecting gravitational phenomena with the geometry of space; this was an exciting idea.
Until I began to learn to draw, I was never much interested in looking at art.
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