theoretical physicist
This is the rest. Things I wanted to keep on this website but didn’t really fit in other tabs. Here you can find some quotations I like, links to websites I like, et cetera.
I love quotations. I’ve collected the following ones over the last several years. They are ordered according to the author’s last name, year, and title. For quotes by fictional characters, I order them by the name of the actor (for movies or TV) or author (for books).
Therefore, conclusions based on the renormalization group arguments concerning the behavior of the theory summed to all orders are dangerous and must be viewed with due caution.
So is it with all conclusions from local relativistic field theories.
When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images and establishing mental connections.
You have no idea how high I can fly.
“Have you guessed the riddle yet?” the Hatter said, turning to Alice again.
“No, I give it up,” Alice replied. “What’s the answer?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” said the Hatter.
“Nor I,” said the March Hare.
The set of transformations (50.22)–(50.24) is called the renormalization group. Rarely has there been a more pretentious name in the history of physics. It’s like calling classical dynamics “the study of the Hamiltonian group of time translations”. Nevertheless, that’s what it’s called.
Only questions about the results of experiments have a real significance and it is only such questions that theoretical physics has to consider.
One can find thousands of statements in the literature to the effect that ‘general relativity and quantum mechanics are incompatible’. These are completely outdated and no longer relevant.
Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.
It should be clear that there is no real content to these proofs: all one has to do to obtain a proof is keep from getting confused.
Because you may be smart, but I’ve been smart longer.
Would Ovid still had been Ovid if he had lived in America? […] So did Ovid matter because he was Ovid or because he was born in Ancient Rome?
Sometimes it seems the universe wants to be noticed.
It’s an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together.
Although there has been a lot of work in the last fifteen years, I think it would be fair to say that we do not yet have a fully satisfactory and consistent quantum theory of gravity.
If you only do what you can do, you will never be more than you are now.
While I was in school I hated history, but since then I have come to recognize the usefulness of quoting dead people to support my convictions.
It’s a leap of faith. That’s all it is, Miles. A leap of faith.
Before I explain the title and introduce the theme of the lecture I should like to state that my presentation will be more in the nature of a leisurely excursion than of an organized tour. It will not be my purpose to reach a specified destination at a scheduled time. Rather I should like to allow myself on many occasions the luxury of stopping and looking around. So much effort is being spent on streamlining mathematics and in rendering it more efficient, that a solitary transgression against the trend could perhaps be forgiven.
One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it.
Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.
The fix is to learn quantum field theory.
In the 1960s Friedrichs met Heisenberg, and used the occasion to express to him the deep gratitude of the community of mathematicians for having created quantum mechanics, which gave birth to the beautiful theory of operators in Hilbert space. Heisenberg allowed that this was so; Friedrichs then added that the mathematicians have, in some measure, returned the favor. Heisenberg looked noncommittal, so Friedrichs pointed out that it was a mathematician, von Neumann, who clarified the difference between a self-adjoint operator and one that is merely symmetric. “What’s the difference,” said Heisenberg.
Dedicated to the memory of L. D. Landau, who understood the importance of pedagogy.
This life in the stars is all I’ve ever known
Stars and stardust in infinite space is my only home
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
The topic with which I regularly conclude my six-term series of lectures in Munich is the partial differential equations of physics. We do not really deal with mathematical physics, but with physical mathematics; not with the mathematical formulation of physical facts, but with the physical motivation of mathematical methods. The oft-mentioned “prestabilized harmony” between what is mathematically interesting and what is physically important is met at each step and lends an esthetic — I should like to say metaphysical — attraction to our subject.
Stoke’s theorem shares three important attributes with many fully evolved major theorems:
- It is trivial.
- It is trivial because the terms appearing in it have been properly defined.
- It has significant consequences.
Far from an isolated gravitational source one might expect an idealized simple description of spacetime—asymptotic Utopia. However the remark of the British Prime Minister Chamberlain in 1939 on Czechoslovakia is relevant here: “This is a far far away country about which we know very little”.
As usual, all roads lead to black holes.
Isn’t it surprising that we can do physics at all?
Being myself a remarkably stupid fellow, I have had to unteach myself the difficulties, and now beg to present to my fellow fools the parts that are not hard. Master these thoroughly, and the rest will follow. What one fool can do, another can.
It is well known that the exercise of logic never adds to our knowledge: its role is to make a certain aspect of that knowledge clearer or more explicit, while keeping all the rest conveniently out of our sight.
The fundamental issue addressed by weak cosmic censorship can be expressed in graphic terms by posing the following question: Could a mad scientist—with arbitrarily large, but finite, resources—destroy the universe?
Quantum field theory is—as its name suggests—the quantum theory of fields. “Particles” do not play any fundamental role in the formulation of quantum field theory.
Semiclassically, an initial pure state will evolve to a mixed state. For reasons I have not been able to understand during the course of the past 40 years, this is widely viewed as being highly problematic. The conflict between this view and the semiclassical analysis is referred to as the black hole information loss paradox.
The above considerations allow us to answer the following question that has been asked for many centuries: What are electricity and magnetism? Electricity and magnetism are the phenomena arising from the electromagnetic field and its coupling to charged fields. The electromagnetic field itself is a connection on a principal fiber bundle over spacetime with structure group U(1).
Our purpose in theoretical physics is not just to describe the world as we find it, but to explain—in terms of a few fundamental principles—why the world is the way it is.
Louise will forever twit me about all that. When we are having some little disagreement, she will say, “You couldn’t even renormalize your own theory.”
To the wonderful teachers, students, and colleagues who have inspired and guided me over the years; and to the still unknown person(s) who will further illuminate the magic of this strange and beautiful world of ours by discovering How come the quantum? How come existence?
We will first understand how simple the universe is when we recognize how strange it is.
Anyone who has studied physics is aware that although physics—like history—does not precisely repeat itself, it does rhyme, with similar structures appearing in different areas.
Quantum field theory arose out of our need to describe the ephemeral nature of life.
It is also possible that the function is non-analytic and does not admit a perturbative expansion. But these are merely words.
I love musicals, and of course I collect quotations from musicals. Here are some of my favorites. To avoit listing composers, librettists, artists, and so on, I keep only the character and the title. The actor is usually chosen from the most famous recording.
Suddenly there’s nothing in between me and the sky
And suddenly the wheels lift off
The ground is falling backwards
I am suddenly alive
If you wanna go fast, go alone
There’s the road
Off you go
But if you wanna go far
We go together
So good, so far, we go together
How do you write like you’re running out of time?
Memory, turn your face to the moonlight
Let your memory lead you
Open up, enter it
If you find there, the meaning of what happiness is
Then a new life will begin
Look at where you are
Look at where you started
The fact that you’re alive is a miracle
Just stay alive, that would be enough
Hey mama hey mama
Look around
Everybody’s groovin’ to a brand new sound
Hey mama hey mama
Follow me
I know something’s in you
That you wanna set free
So let go, go of the past now
Say hello to the love in your heart
Yes, I know that the world’s spinning fast now
You gotta get yourself a brand new startHey mama, welcome to the 60’s!
I started watching Star Trek: The Next Generation a while ago and I’ve been taking notes of way too many quotes to keep them alongside the other ones. All of the following come from ST:TNG and I organize them by season and episode, instead of following the alphabetical patterns of the previous section.
Things are only impossible until they’re not!
There is still much to do. Still so much to learn.
Captain, the most elementary and valuable statement in science, the beginning of wisdom is “I do not know”. I do not know what that is, sir.
Well, perhaps what we most needed was a kick in our complacency, to prepare us for what lies ahead.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: Did you read that book I gave you?
Ensign Wesley Crusher: Some of it.
Picard: That’s reassuring.
Crusher: I just don’t have much time.
P: There’s no greater challenge than the study of philosophy.
C: But William James won’t be on my Starfleet exams.
P: The important things never will be. Anyone can be trained in the mechanics of piloting a starship.
C: But Starfleet Academy…
P: It takes more. Open your mind to the past—art, history, philosophy—and all this may mean something.
And Commander, it is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life.
Counselor Deanna Troi: One cannot deny human nature. What kind of a man is Commander Riker?
Lt. Commander Data: A fighter?
Troi: Yes.
Data: The weaker his position, the more aggressive will be his posture.
T: And he won’t give up.
D: Then, despite whatever options he is given, he must be…
T: The man that he is. Exactly.
D: Is that a failing in humans?
T: You’ll have to decide that for yourself.
It is at the heart of our nature to feel pain and joy. It is an essential part of what makes us who we are.
To survive is not enough. To simply exist is not enough.
Q: What are you looking at?
Lt. Commander Data: I was considering the possibility that you are telling the truth—that you really are human.
Q: It’s the ghastly truth, Mr. Data. I can now stub my toe with the best of them.
Data: An irony. It means you have achieved in disgrace what I have always aspired to be.
Q: You’re very smart, Jean-Luc. But I know human beings. They’re all sopping over with compassion and forgiveness. They can’t wait to absolve almost any offense. It’s an inherent weakness of the breed.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: On the contrary, it is a strength.
There are creatures in the universe who would consider you the ultimate achievement, android. No feelings, no emotions, no pain—and yet you covet those qualities of humanity. Believe me, you’re missing nothing. But if it means anything to you, you’re a better human than I.
Who am I fooling? Apocryphal quotations can be fun as well! Here are some I like.
I can’t stay up that late.
Les papillons sont le seule chose importante…