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.
I believe that through its rational evaluation of truth and indifference to personal belief, science transcends religious and political divisions and so does bind us into a greater, more resilient whole.
When you know the answer you want, it is often all too easy to figure out a way of getting it.
Gravity is matter’s sugar daddy.
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?
I believe the process of going from confusion to understanding is a precious, even emotional, experience that can be the foundation of self-confidence.
Far from being accidental details, the properties of nature’s basic building blocks are deeply entwined with the fabric of space and time.
There may be many Big Bangs that happened at various and far-flung locations, each creating its own swelling, spatial expanse, each creating a universe – our universe being the result of only one of those Big Bangs.
One of the wonders of science is that it is completely universal. It crosses national boundaries with total ease.
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.
My best teachers were not the ones who knew all the answers, but those who were deeply excited by questions they couldn’t answer.
Our eyes only see the big dimensions, but beyond those there are others that escape detection because they are so small.
Energy is the ultimate convertable currency.
For me it’s been very exciting to contribute to the public’s understanding of how rich and wondrous science is.
Einstein comes along and says, space and time can warp and curve, that’s what gravity is. Now string theory comes along and says, yes, gravity, quantum mechanics, electromagnetism – all together in one package, but only if the universe has more dimensions than the ones that we see.
Experimental evidence is the final arbiter of right and wrong.
I enjoy reading blogs, but am not interested in having my spurious thoughts out there.
Assessing existence while failing to embrace the insights of modern physics would be like wrestling in the dark with an unknown opponent.
I’ve seen children’s eyes light up when I tell them about black holes and the Big Bang.
It’s hard to teach passionately about something that you don’t have a passion for.