Particles Quotes - Page 5

• In the 1920s the young English physicist Paul Dirac began trying to understand and describe the space-time evolution of the electron, the first elementary particle discovered by J.J. Thomson in 1897. Dirac was puzzled by an unprecedented property of space-time, discovered by Lorentz in his studies of electromagnetic forces, whereby if space was real, time had to be imaginary, and vice versa. In other words, space and time had to be a ‘complex’ mixture of two quantities, one real and the other imaginary.

  Antonino Zichichi

  Real, Two, Space

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• Straight up from this road
  Away from the fitted particles of frost
  Coating the hull of each chick pea,
  And the stiff archer bug making its way
  In the morning dark, toe hair by toe hair,
  Up the stem of the trillim,
  Straight up through the sky above this road right now,
  The galaxies of the Cygnus A cluster
  Are colliding with each other in a massive swarm
  Of interpenetrating and exploding catastrophes.
  I try to remember that.

  Pattiann Rogers

  Morning, Archer, Dark

  Pattiann Rogers (2014). “The Expectations of Light”, p.35, Princeton University Press

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• I think going into space would be like going deep into the ocean, like 5,000 meters down. When you go down that far, it's just awfully black. There's not much there except mud and some particles. I imagine space would be a similar thing. The only difference is you're hoping to bump into some sort of intelligent extraterritorial being.

  Ridley Scott

  Ocean, Intelligent, Thinking

  Source: www.esquire.com

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• In this case, the particle formed has correspondingly less energy, whereas the product nucleus passes into the ground state with emission of the quantity of energy saved as gamma radiation.

  Walther Bothe

  Energy, Nucleus, Radiation

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• Let me repeat: Observe a particle as a wave, and it is a wave. Observe it as matter, and it is matter. ... Thus it is our point of view, the way we look at reality that makes reality the way it is.

  Joachim-Ernst Berendt

  Reality, Views, Matter

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• A theorist today is hardly considered respectable if he or she has not introduced at least one new particle for which there is no experimental evidence.

  Steven Weinberg

  Today, Programming, Evidence

  "Particle physics, from Rutherford to the LHC". Physics Today, August 2011.

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• Subatomic particles exist in all possible states until they are observed - at which point something definite emerges from the soup of possibilities.

  Robert Moss

  Soup, Possibility, States

  Robert Moss (2010). “The Three "Only" Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence, and Imagination”, p.111, New World Library

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• Society is an illusion to the young citizen. It lies before him in rigid repose, with certain names, men, and institutions, rootedlike oak-trees to the centre, round which all arrange themselves the best they can. But the old statesman knows that society is fluid; there are no such roots and centres; but any particle may suddenly become the centre of the movement, and compel the system to gyrate round it, as every man of strong will, like Pisistratus, or Cromwell, does for a time, and every man of truth, like Plato, or Paul, does forever.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Strong, Plato, Lying

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.161, Graphic Arts Books

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• Facts are the mere dross of history. It is from the abstract truth which interpenetrates them, and lies latent among them, like gold in the ore, that the mass derives its whole value; and the precious particles are generally combined with the baser in such a manner that the separation is a task of the utmost difficulty.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Lying, History, Gold

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• Marriage is rarely bliss
  But, surely it would be worse
  As particles to pelt
  At thousands of miles per sec
  About a universe
  In which a lover's kiss
  Would either not be felt
  Or break the loved one's neck.

  W. H. Auden

  Kissing, Would Be, Necks

  "After Reading a Child's Guide to Modern Physics". Poem by W. H. Auden, 1961.

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• There is not one grain in the universe, either too much or too little, nothing to be added, nothing to be spared; nor so much as any one particle of it, that mankind may not be either the better or the worse for, according as it is applied.

  Roger L'Estrange

  May, Littles, Too Much

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• So far Unitarian realism claiming to possess positive knowledge about Ultimate Reality has succeeded only by excluding large areas of phenomena or by declaring, without proof, that they could be reduced to basic theory, which, in this connection, means elementary particle physics.

  Paul Feyerabend

  Mean, Reality, Connections

  Paul Feyerabend (2001). “Conquest of Abundance: A Tale of Abstraction Versus the Richness of Being”, p.215, University of Chicago Press

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• The dividing line between the wave or particle nature of matter and radiation is the moment “Now.” As this moment steadily advances through time it coagulates a wavy future into a particle past.

  William Lawrence Bragg

  Past, Lines, Radiation

  Sir William Lawrence Bragg (1975). “The Development of X-ray Analysis”, Macmillan Publishing Company

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• As the cathode rays carry a charge of negative electricity, are deflected by an electrostatic force as if they were negatively electrified, and are acted on by a magnetic force in just the way in which this force would act on a negatively electrified body moving along the path of these rays, I can see no escape from the conclusion that they are charges of negative electricity carried by particles of matter.

  Joseph John Thomson

  Moving, Rays, Negative

  "Cathode Rays". Philosophical Magazine, (44, 293), 1897.

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• It is conceivable that animal life might have the attribute of using the heat of surrounding matter, at its natural temperature, as a source of energy for mechanical effect . . . .The influence of animal or vegetable life on matter is infinitely beyond the range of any scientific enquiry hitherto entered on. Its power of directing the motions of moving particles, in the demonstrated daily miracle of our human free-will, and in the growth of generation after generation of plants from a single seed, are infinitely different from any possible result of the fortuitous concurrence of atoms.

  Lord Kelvin

  Moving, Animal, Vegetables

  "The Life of Lord Kelvin, Volume 2" by Silvanus Phillips, (2005 edition, p. 1093), 1910.

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• Those who have a why to live for can bear almost any how. The necessary premise is that a person is somehow more than his or her "characteristics," all the emotions, strivings, tastes, and constructions which it pleases us to call "My Life." We have grounds to hope that a Life is something more than a cloud of particles, mere facticity. Go through what is comprehensible and you conclude that only the incomprehensible gives any light.

  Saul Bellow

  Life, Clouds, Light

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• Daylight, full of small dancing particles and the one great turning, our souls are dancing with you, without feet, they dance. Can you see them when I whisper in your ear? All day and night, music, a quiet, bright reedsong. If it fades, we fade.

  Rumi

  Sleep, Night, Feet

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• The electrical matter consists of particles extremely subtile, since it can permeate common matter, even the densest metals, with such ease and freedom as not to receive any perceptible resistance.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Ease, Matter, Resistance

  Benjamin Franklin, William Temple Franklin, William Duane (1834). “Memoirs of Benjamin Franklin”, p.258

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• The only difference between causation and the value is that the word "cause" implies absolute certainty whereas the implied meaning of "value" is one of preference. In classical science it was supposed that the world always works in terms of absolute certainty and that "cause" is the more appropriate word to describe it. But in modern quantum physics all that is changed. Particles "prefer" to do what they do. An individual particle is not absolutely committed to one predictable behavior. What appears to be an absolute cause is just a very consistent pattern of preferences.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Differences, World, Patterns

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• In spite of the fact that religion looks backward to revealed truth while science looks forward to new vistas and discoveries, both activities produce a sense of awe and a curious mixture of humility and arrogance in their practitioners. All great scientists are inspired by the subtlety and beauty of the natural world that they are seeking to understand. Each new subatomic particle, every unexpected object, produces delight and wonderment. In constructing their theories, physicists are frequently guided by arcane concepts of elegance in the belief that the universe is intrinsically beautiful.

  Paul Davies

  Beautiful, Humility, Science

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• If everything is made up of little particles and all the little particles follow quantum mechanics, then shouldn't everything just follow quantum mechanics?

  Aaron D. O'Connell

  Motivation, Inspiration, Littles

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• But do not look down on even the most minute of things; for with the coming of daybreak, even the tiniest particles of dust in this world sing and dance in the sunlight.

  Wang Anyi

  Dust, Looks, World

  Wang Anyi (2008). “The Song of Everlasting Sorrow: A Novel of Shanghai”, p.199, Columbia University Press

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• So many of the properties of matter, especially when in the gaseous form, can be deduced from the hypothesis that their minute parts are in rapid motion, the velocity increasing with the temperature, that the precise nature of this motion becomes a subject of rational curiosity. Daniel Bernoulli, Herapath, Joule, Kronig, Clausius, &c., have shewn that the relations between pressure, temperature and density in a perfect gas can be explained by supposing the particles move with uniform velocity in straight lines, striking against the sides of the containing vessel and thus producing pressure.

  James Clerk Maxwell

  Moving, Perfect, Curiosity

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• Don’t bring the ocean if I feel thirsty, nor heaven if I ask for a light; but bring a hint, some dew, a particle, as birds carry only drops away from water, and the wind a grain of salt.

  Olav H. Hauge

  Ocean, Light, Wind

  Olav H. Hauge (1987). “Trusting Your Life to Water and Eternity: Twenty Poems of Olav H. Hauge”

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• Which is to say that culture is not a reflex of political economy, but
  that society is now a reflex of key shifts in music theory and practice....
  [Sampladelia is] the sound made by those early-twentieth-century discoveries
  in particle physics and relativiity theory, the projection of the minds of
  Einstein, Heisenbery, and Bohr, their fateful explorations of liquid time,
  curving space, uncertainty fields and relativity theorems, into densely
  configured and fully ambivalent android music tracks

  Arthur Kroker

  Discovery, Practice, Space

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