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.
Relativity challenges your basic intuitions that you’ve built up from everyday experience. It says your experience of time is not what you think it is, that time is malleable. Your experience of space is not what you think it is; it can stretch and shrink.
Nature’s patterns sometimes reflect two intertwined features: fundamental physical laws and environmental influences. It’s nature’s version of nature versus nurture.
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.
Many different planets are many different distances from their host star; we find ourselves at this distance because if we were closer or farther away, the temperature would be hotter or colder, eliminating liquid water, an essential ingredient for our survival.
Over the centuries, monumental upheavals in science have emerged time and again from following the leads set out by mathematics.
The bottom line is that time travel is allowed by the laws of physics.
The fact that I don’t have any particular need for religion doesn’t mean that I have a need to cast religion aside the way some of my colleagues do.
The idea that there could be other universes out there is really one that stretches the mind in a great way.