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Physics
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★ Physics

The [Maxwell’s] demon seemed to suggest that you could put things back together without using any energy at all – just by using information you could create order.  ibid.

 

Alan Turing was the first person to conceive of the modern computer.  ibid.

 

The power of information was revealing itself.  ibid.

 

A Mathematical Theory of Communication: Claude Shannon.  ibid.

 

Information is actually an inseparable part of the physical world.  ibid.

 

Information can never be divorced from the physical world.  ibid.

 

 

Two of the most extraordinary men in the history of science worked here in the Physics Department of Manchester University between 1911 and 1916: they were Ernest Rutherford and Niels Bohr.  Jim Al-Khalili, Atom: The Clash of the Titans, BBC 2007

 

 

The laws of physics we know have been fine-tuned in order to keep the cosmos fertile for its own reproduction.  Though the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman s3e3: Is the Universe Alive? Science 2012

 

 

The fundamental problem of cosmology is that the laws of physics as we know them break down at the instant of the Big Bang.  Well, some people say, What’s wrong with that?  What’s wrong with having the laws of physics collapse?  For a physicist this is a disaster!  All our lives we’ve dedicated to the proposition that the universe obeys noble laws.  Laws that can be written down in the language of mathematics.  And here we have the centrepiece of the universe itself – a centrepiece – beyond physical law.  Professor Michio Kaku  

 

 

What we usually consider as impossible are simply engineering problems ... there’s no law of physics preventing them.  Michio Kaku

 

 

It is often stated that of all the theories proposed in this century, the silliest is quantum theory.  In fact, some say that the only thing that quantum theory has going for it is that it is unquestionably correct.  Michio Kaku, Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey

 

 

The Laws of Physics allow that to happen.  And it means that our whole universe, everything we see, everything that matters to us today, could have arisen out of precisely nothing.  Lawrence Krauss

 

 

It’s clear that the universe is full of powerful black holes.  The densities are so great that the laws of physics break down as we know them.  Lawrence Krauss

 

 

I think that physics is the most important – indeed the only – means we have of finding out the origins and fundamentals of our universe, and this is what interests me most about it.  I believe that as science advances, religion necessarily recedes, and this is a process I wish to encourage, because I consider that, on the whole, the influence of religion is malign.  William Bowen Bonner 

 

 

It’s becoming clear that in a sense the cosmos provides the only laboratory where sufficiently extreme conditions are ever achieved to test new ideas on particle physics.  The energies in the Big Bang were far higher than we can ever achieve on Earth.  So by looking at evidence for the Big Bang, and by studying things like neutron stars, we are in effect learning something about fundamental physics. Martin Rees, cited Wolpert & Richards, A Passion for Science, 1988 

 

 

Evolution doesn’t have a free hand: it is constrained by the universal laws of Physics.  Brian Cox, Wonders of Life IV: Size Matters, BBC 2013

 

 

Agriculture creates a technology from which all physics, all science, takes off.  Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man 2/13: The Harvest of the Seasons, BBC 1973

 

 

Physics is the knife that cuts into the grain of Nature.  Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man 4/13: The Hidden Structure

 

 

E=MC2: that comes from a profound insight into the processes of Nature herself, but particularly into the relations between Men, Knowledge, Nature.  Physics is not events but observations; relativity is the understanding of the world not as events but relations.  Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man 7/13: The Majestic Clockwork  

 

 

Physics in the twentieth century is an immortal work.  Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man 10/13: World Within World

 

 

One aim of the physical sciences has been to give an exact picture of the material world.  Once achievement of physics in the twentieth century has been to prove that aim is unattainable.  Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man 11/13: Knowledge or Certainty *****

 

There is no absolute knowledge ... All information is imperfect.  ibid.

 

The errors can’t be taken out of the observations.  ibid.

 

Histories has many ironies ... The errors are inextricably bound up with the nature of human knowledge.  ibid.

 

There is no way of exchanging information that does not demand an act of judgment.  ibid.

 

All those woodland walks and conversations came to a brilliant climax in 1927.  Early that year Werner Heisenberg gave a new characterisation of the electron: yes, it is a particle, he said, but a particle which yields only limited information.  That is, you can specify where it is at this instant, but then you cannot impose on it a specific speed and direction of setting off.  Or conversely, if you insist that you’re going to fire it at a certain speed and a certain direction then you cannot specify exactly what its starting point is, or its end point.  ibid.

 

Heisenberg called this the Principle of Uncertainty.  ibid.

 

We should call it the Principle of Tolerance.  ibid.

 

All knowledge, all information, between human beings can only be exchanged within a play of tolerance.  ibid.

 

 

I could well have had a Physics teacher who took the view that girls couldn’t do Physics and whats the point of trying that kind of thing.  I’m not sure where I’d have gone then, what I’d have done.  But Mr Tillet was quite the opposite.  Beautiful Minds: Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, BBC 2010    

 

I went to Glasgow and I was the only woman doing Physics.  And every time I entered the lecture theatre, as was the tradition, the guys whistled, stamped, cat-called, banged their desks.  And I had to learn not to blush.  Because if you blush they do it more noisily.  It also had an isolating effect – it was them and me.  I was rather on my own the whole time.  ibid.

 

 

I can’t change the laws of physics.  Star Trek s1e4: The Naked Time, Scotty to Kirk

 

 

Geordi: Everything was normal and then suddenly it’s like the Laws of Physics went right out the window.

 

Q: And why shouldn’t they?  They’re so inconvenient.  Star Trek: The Next Generation s6e6: True Q

 

 

Julian, I can’t break the laws of physics.  Nobody can.  Star Trek: Deep Space Nine s7e5: Chrysalis, OBrien

 

 

There was no room for dust devils in the laws of physics, as least in the rigid form in which they were usually taught.  There is a kind of unspoken collusion going on in mainstream science education: you get your competent but bored, insecure and hence stodgy teacher talking to an audience divided between engineering students, who are going to be responsible for making bridges that won’t fall down or airplanes that won’t suddenly plunge vertically into the ground at six hundred miles an hour, and who by definition get sweaty palms and vindictive attitudes when their teacher suddenly veers off track and begins raving about wild and completely non-intuitive phenomena; and physics students, who derive much of their self-esteem from knowing that they are smarter and morally purer than the engineering students, and who by definition don’t want to hear about anything that makes no fucking sense.  This collusion results in the professor saying: (something along the lines of) dust is heavier than air, therefore it falls until it hits the ground.  That’s all there is to know about dust.  The engineers love it because they like their issues dead and crucified like butterflies under glass.  The physicists love it because they want to think they understand everything.  No one asks difficult questions.  And outside the windows, the dust devils continue to gambol across the campus.  Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon

 

 

Energy: it led to the formulation of a new law of physics, one that is absolutely fundamental.  It is called the first law of thermodynamics ... A mathematical description of energy known as Conservation of Energy.  It states that energy cannot be created or destroyed.  So you can never get more out than is contained in the fuel you put in.  Michael Mosley, The Story of Science: Power, Proof and Passion, BBC 2010

 

 

As things get colder, they also get stranger ... It’s like a different world ... Everything is in a low energy state.  Ben Miller, Horizon: What is One Degree?  BBC 2011

 

As the helium atoms turn into a super-fluid at that critical temperature their fundamental nature asserts itself.  Instead of individual atoms bouncing around, the atoms move together as if they were of one mind.  ibid.

 

As a super-fluid the liquid helium has no viscosity.  ibid.

 

I’ve gone through the rabbit hole ... As temperature decreases, as we get closer and closer to absolute zero, we pass into a completely new world, the quantum world, and it’s baffling, and it’s weird.  Temperature – the random thermal motion of molecules.  ibid.    

 

 

And Coleridge, too, has lately taken wing,

But, like a hawk encumbered with his hood,

Explaining metaphysics to the nation –

I wish he would explain his explanation.  Lord Byron, Don Juan

  

 

It was absolutely marvellous working for [Wolfgang] Pauli.  You could ask him anything.  There was no worry that he would think a particular question was stupid, since he thought all questions were stupid.  Victor Weisskopf 

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