Spacetime Quotes

• Spacetime tells matter how to move; matter tells spacetime how to curve.

  John Archibald Wheeler

  Moving, Curves, Matter

  John Archibald Wheeler (2010). “Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam: A Life in Physics”, p.235, W. W. Norton & Company

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• As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Funny, Wisdom

  Address to Prussian Academy of Sciences, Berlin, 27 Jan. 1921

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• What lies north of the North Pole?

  Stephen Hawking

  Lying, North Pole

  Stephen Hawking (2009). “A Brief History Of Time: From Big Bang To Black Holes”, p.161, Random House

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• Our entire universe emerged from a point smaller than a single atom. Space itself exploded in a cosmic fire, launching the expansion of the universe and giving birth to all the energy and all the matter we know today. I know that sounds crazy, but there’s strong observational evidence to support the Big Bang theory. And it includes the amount of helium in the cosmos and the glow of radio waves left over from the explosion.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Strong, Crazy, Space

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• Quantum events have a way of just happening, without any cause, as when a radioactive atom decays at a random time. Even the quantum vacuum is not an inert void, but is boiling with quantum fluctuations. In our macroscopic world, we are used to energy conservation, but in the quantum realm this holds only on average. Energy fluctuations out of nothing create short-lived particle-antiparticle pairs, which is why the vacuum is not emptiness but a sea of transient particles. An uncaused beginning, even out of nothing, for spacetime is no great leap of the imagination.

  Taner Edis

  Average, Sea, Imagination

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• Asking about a time before the beginning of our spherical spacetime is like asking what lies north of the North Pole. There is no such thing.

  Taner Edis

  Lying, Religion, Asking

  Taner Edis (2002). “The Ghost in the Universe: God in Light of Modern Science”, Pyr Books

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• In the popular imagination, the Big Bang is a great explosion; at one time there was nothing, then matter erupted into previously empty space. However, the Big Bang is the beginning of spacetime itself, not an event in time.

  Taner Edis

  Space, Imagination, Religion

  Taner Edis (2002). “The Ghost in the Universe: God in Light of Modern Science”, Pyr Books

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• There was a long history of speculation that in quantum gravity, unlike Einstein's classical theory, it might be possible for the topology of spacetime to change.

  Edward Witten

  Change, Long, Might

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• It is scandalous the way some scientists accept uncritically some of the most ridiculous speculations, such as the plurality of worlds, the opinion that spacetime has more than 4 dimensions, that particles can move faster than light, or that human life can be prolonged indefinitely.

  Mario Bunge

  Moving, Light, World

  Source: deutsche-denker.de

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• Every artist's strictly illimitable country is himself. An artist who plays that country false has committed suicide; and even a good lawyer cannot kill the dead. But a human being who's true to himself - whoever himself may be - is immortal; and all the atomic bombs of all the antiartists in spacetime will never civilize immortality.

  e. e. cummings

  Suicide, Country, Artist

  "I: Six Nonlectures". Book by E. E. Cummings, 1953.

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• Like any place in Reality, the Street is subject to development. Developers can build their own small streets feeding off of the main one. They can build buildings, parks, signs, as well as things that do not exist in Reality, such as vast hovering overhead light shows and special neighborhoods where the rules of three-dimensional spacetime are ignored.

  Neal Stephenson

  Reality, Light, Special

  "Snow Crash". Book by Neal Stephenson, October 27, 1994.

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• Contract law is essentially a defensive scorched-earth battleground where the constant question is, "if my business partner was possessed by a brain-eating monster from beyond spacetime tomorrow, what is the worst thing they could do to me?"

  Charles Stross

  Business, Law, Brain

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• So: if you buy the notion that reality consists of the things in your freeze-frame mental image right now, and if you agree that your now is no more valid than the now of someone located far away in space who can move freely, then reality encompasses all of the events in spacetime.

  Brian Greene

  Moving, Reality, Space

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