Spacetime Geometry Quotes

It is theoretically possible to warp spacetime itself, so you're not actually moving faster than the speed of light, but it's actually space that's moving.

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

I wouldn't say that 'The Fabric of the Cosmos' is a book on cosmology. Cosmology certainly plays a big part, but the major theme is our ever-evolving understanding of space and time, and what it all means for our sense of reality.

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.

Relativity challenges your basic intuitions that you've built up from everyday experience. It says your experience of time is not what you think it is, that time is malleable. Your experience of space is not what you think it is; it can stretch and shrink.

Gravity must be caused by an Agent acting constantly according to certain laws, but whether this Agent be material or immaterial I have left to the consideration of my readers.

My work indicated that if we consider smaller and smaller black holes, at some stage, the properties of black holes become indistinguishable from those of elementary particles.

My work on black holes was on the connection between black holes and elementary particles.

Black holes, we all know, are these regions where if an object falls in, it can't get out, but the puzzle that many struggled with over the decades is, what happens to the information that an object contains when it falls into a black hole. Is it simply lost?

What we observe as material bodies and forces are nothing but shapes and variations in the structure of space.

Ultimately, my Ph.D. is in mathematical physics, focusing on quantum field theory and curved space-time, and I worked with Stephen Hawking.

Great moments in science: Einstein discovers that time is actually money.

When we see the shadow on our images, are we seeing the time 11 minutes ago on Mars? Or are we seeing the time on Mars as observed from Earth now? It's like time travel problems in science fiction. When is now; when was then?

It was quite a surprise when I realized that with a single wormhole you could have time hook up towards the future or towards the past and that you can actually manipulate the wormhole and change how time hooked up.

In the context of general relativity, space almost is a substance. It can bend and twist and stretch, and probably the best way to think about space is to just kind of imagine a big piece of rubber that you can pull and twist and bend.

The jury is not in, so we just don't know. But there are very strong indications that wormholes that a human could travel through are forbidden by the laws of physics. That's sad, that's unfortunate, but that's the direction in which things are pointing.

In order to achieve a true understanding of string theory, some new idea will be required, and most likely, some break with the concepts on which we've traditionally based physical theory.

Time travel used to be thought of as just science fiction, but Einstein's general theory of relativity allows for the possibility that we could warp space-time so much that you could go off in a rocket and return before you set out.

When you're falling through space time has no meaning.

On the other hand, we don't understand the theory too completely, and because of this fuzziness of spacetime, the very concept of spacetime and spacetime dimensions isn't precisely defined.

One of the great challenges of modern cosmology is to discover what the geometry of the universe really is.

In the book, I make the point that here we have string theory and here we have twistor theory and we don't know if either one of them is the right approach to nature.

Even in empty space, time and space still exist.

Wormholes don't exist because the only way they would exist is if they were seeded with exotic material created by an intelligence far beyond our own. Something would have to make one.

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.