Gregory Benford Quotes

We have to have a combination of general relativity that describes the warping of space and time, and quantum physics, which describes the uncertainties in that warping and how they change.

Quantum mechanics brought an unexpected fuzziness into physics because of quantum uncertainty, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. String theory does so again because a point particle is replaced by a string, which is more spread out.

All kinds of physical considerations become senseless when we try to apply them to distances smaller than 10 -13 centimeter.

I got into physics through pop science and quantum science and ended up being such a quantum groupie.

So what I'm saying is why don't we think about changing Schrodinger's equation at some level when masses become too big at the level that you might have to worry about Einstein's general relativity.

It is impossible to trap modern physics into predicting anything with perfect determinism because it deals with probabilities from the outset.

The math of quantum mechanics and the math of general relativity, when they confront one another, they are ferocious antagonists and the equations don't work.

Now, what that means is that there is fundamental indeterminacy from quantum mechanics, but besides that there are other sources of effective indeterminacy.

We might be the holographic image of a two-dimensional structure.

The chaos can act as a magnifier of quantum fluctuations so that they can produce sizable effects in the world around us. But we know that that can happen often.

If we have an atom that is in an excited state and so is going to emit a photon, we cannot say when it will emit the photon. It has a certain amplitude to emit the photon at any time, and we can predict only a probability for emission; we cannot predict the future exactly.

It is true that in quantum theory we cannot rely on strict causality. But by repeating the experiments many times, we can finally derive from the observations statistical distributions, and by repeating such series of experiments, we can arrive at objective statements concerning these distributions.

Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that this is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not bring us any closer to the secrets of the "Old One." I, at any rate, am convinced that He is not playing at dice.

Time, matter, space - all, it may be, are no more than a point.

The uncertainty relation does not refer to the past; if the velocity of the electron is at first known and the position then exactly measured, the position for times previous to the measurement may be calculated.

From a theoretical point of view, it is very hard to imagine how gravity could avoid being quantized.

If we do get a quantum theory of spacetime, it should answer some of the deepest philosophical questions that we have, like what happened before the big bang?

We appear to have form, but we are like a whirlpool. We appear to have form, but we are just whirling electrons.

I am not aware of any sensible theory of how classical gravity could interact with quantum matter, and I can't imagine how such a theory might work.

During my years at the synchrotron laboratory, I had become interested in the theory of quantum electrodynamics and had decided that what I would most like to do after completing my dissertation work was to probe the short-distance behavior of the electromagnetic interaction.

Einstein had looked at the numbers and dimensions that went into his equations for gravitational waves and said, essentially, 'This is so tiny that it will never have any influence on anything, and nobody can measure it.' And when you think about the times and the technology in 1916, he was probably right.

I work in string theory. This is a branch of physics which assumes that the elementary objects in the universe are not particles but one-dimensional objects, that is, strings.

You know the Einstein waves can be thought of as a distortion of space and time. But the way we see it, we see it as a distortion of space. And space is enormously stiff. You can't squish it; you can't change its dimensions so easily.

So Einstein was wrong when he said, "God does not play dice." Consideration of black holes suggests, not only that God does play dice, but that he sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen.

My main professional interest during the 1970s has been in the dramatic change of concepts and ideas that has occurred in physics during the first three decades of the century, and that is still being elaborated in our current theories of matter. The new concepts in physics have brought about a profound change in our world view; from the mechanistic conception of Descartes and Newton to a holistic and ecological view, a view which I have found to be similar to the views of mystics of all ages and traditions.