Edward Witten Quotes

We seem gradually to be groping toward an understanding of the world of subatomic particles, but we really do not know how far we have yet to go in this task.

I'd say many features of string theory don't mesh with what we observe in everyday life.

I do not keep up with the details of particle physics.

With the discovery of the Higgs boson, one of the questions has been ticked off the list, but there are many others. We hope that we can find answers or hints for answers to at least some of them. But of course, this is in the hands of nature.

Physicists have yet to understand why the Higgs boson's mass is what it is.

The top quark was discovered in 1995, and since then, the Higgs has become our obsession because the standard model was incomplete without it.

You have that one basic string, but it can vibrate in many ways. But we're trying to get a lot of particles because experimental physicists have discovered a lot of particles.

I spent most of my career doing high-energy physics, quarks, dark matter, string theory and so on.

Not only am I not persuaded by the testimony; I do not even understand it. For me the charm of quarks is well hidden ...

The standard model of particle physics says that the universe consists of a very small number of particles, 12, and a very small number of forces, four. If we're correct about those 12 particles and those four forces and understand how they interact, properly, we have the recipe for baking up a universe.

I had been interested in particle physics, which deals with the fundamental constituents of matter.

I would hope that the publicity around the Higgs boson would increase the public awareness of physics and cosmology.

We had to understand things like why the top quark was so heavy and the electron is so light. The Higgs is a big, important step.

I think the discovery of supersymmetric partners for the known particles would revolutionize our understanding of the universe.

I had a bet with Gordon Kane of Michigan University that the Higgs particle wouldn't be found.

String theory has had a long and wonderful history. It originated as a technique to try to understand the strong force. It was a calculational mechanism, a way of approaching a mathematical problem that was too difficult, and it was a promising way, but it was only a technique. It was a mathematical technique rather than a theory in itself.

We have reached a milestone in our understanding of nature. The discovery of a particle consistent with the Higgs boson opens the way to more detailed studies, requiring larger statistics, which will pin down the new particle's properties, and is likely to shed light on other mysteries of our universe.

I do feel strongly that string theory is our best hope for making progress at unifying gravity and quantum mechanics.

What the string theorists do is arguably physics. It deals with the physical world. They're attempting to make a consistent theory that explains the interactions we see among particles and gravity as well. That's certainly physics, but it's a kind of physics that is not yet testable.

So when you ask me how string theory might be tested, I can tell you what's likely to happen at accelerators or some parts of the theory that are likely to be tested.

To me, the most exciting thing about the discovery of the Higgs particle is that its existence was predicted fifty years before its discovery through experiment.

Physics as we know it will be over in six months.

The aim of particle physics is to understand what everything’s made of, and how everything sticks together. By everything I mean me and you, the Earth, the Sun, the 100 billion suns in our galaxy and the 100 billion galaxies in the observable universe. Absolutely everything.

Among the questions we have in mind: dark matter, antimatter, and matter symmetry.

When I was at Berkeley, the framework of quantum field theory could calculate the dynamics of electromagnetism. It could roughly describe the motion of the weak nuclear force, radiation. But it hit a brick wall with the strong interaction, the binding force.