General Relativity Quotes

“Electrons, when they were first discovered, behaved exactly like particles or bullets, very simply. Further research showed, from electron diffraction experiments for example, that they behaved like waves. As time went on there was a growing confusion about how these things really behaved ---- waves or particles, particles or waves? Everything looked like both.

This growing confusion was resolved in 1925 or 1926 with the advent of the correct equations for quantum mechanics. Now we know how the electrons and light behave. But what can I call it? If I say they behave like particles I give the wrong impression; also if I say they behave like waves. They behave in their own inimitable way, which technically could be called a quantum mechanical way. They behave in a way that is like nothing that you have seen before. Your experience with things that you have seen before is incomplete. The behavior of things on a very tiny scale is simply different. An atom does not behave like a weight hanging on a spring and oscillating. Nor does it behave like a miniature representation of the solar system with little planets going around in orbits. Nor does it appear to be somewhat like a cloud or fog of some sort surrounding the nucleus. It behaves like nothing you have seen before.

There is one simplication at least. Electrons behave in this respect in exactly the same way as photons; they are both screwy, but in exactly in the same way….

The difficulty really is psychological and exists in the perpetual torment that results from your saying to yourself, "But how can it be like that?" which is a reflection of uncontrolled but utterly vain desire to see it in terms of something familiar. I will not describe it in terms of an analogy with something familiar; I will simply describe it. There was a time when the newspapers said that only twelve men understood the theory of relativity. I do not believe there ever was such a time. There might have been a time when only one man did, because he was the only guy who caught on, before he wrote his paper. But after people read the paper a lot of people understood the theory of relativity in some way or other, certainly more than twelve. On the other hand, I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics. So do not take the lecture too seriously, feeling that you really have to understand in terms of some model what I am going to describe, but just relax and enjoy it. I am going to tell you what nature behaves like. If you will simply admit that maybe she does behave like this, you will find her a delightful, entrancing thing. Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possible avoid it, "But how can it be like that?" because you will get 'down the drain', into a blind alley from which nobody has escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.”
― Richard P. Feynman, The Character of Physical Law

“Asked in 1919 whether it was true that only three people in the world understood the theory of general relativity, [Eddington] allegedly replied: 'Who's the third?”
― Arthur Stanley Eddington

“A mathematician says that an electromagnetic wave travels from Andromeda to your eye and that it also extends from Andromeda to your eye.”
― Bill Gaede

“The total number of people who understand relativistic time, even after eighty years since the advent of special relativity, is still much smaller than the number of people who believe in horoscopes.”
― Yuval Ne'eman

“Regardless of one's point of view, it's quite easy to see that Darwinism is not in the same league as the hard sciences. For instance, Darwinists will often compare their theory favorably to Einsteinian physics, claiming that Darwinism is just as well established as general relativity. Yet how many physicists, while arguing for the truth of Einsteinian physics, will claim that general relativity is as well established as Darwin’s theory? Zero.”
― William A. Dembski, Uncommon Dissent: Intellectuals Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing

“A mathematician tells you that the wall of warped space prevents the Moon from flying out of its orbit yet can't tell you why an astronaut can go back and forth across that same space.”
― Bill Gaede

“It is the definition of the word 'object' which destroys all religions.”
― Bill Gaede

“A university student attending lectures on general relativity i the morning and others on quantum mechanics in the afternoon might be forgiven for thinking that his professors are fools, or have neglected to communicate with each other for at least a century.”
― Carlo Rovelli, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

“Einstein, my upset stomach hates your theory [of General Relativity]—it almost hates you yourself! How am I to' provide for my students? What am I to answer to the philosophers?!!”
― Paul Ehrenfest

“This “Hawking temperature” of a black hole and its “Hawking radiation” (as they came to be called) were truly radical—perhaps the most radical theoretical physics discovery in the second half of the twentieth century. They opened our eyes to profound connections between general relativity (black holes), thermodynamics (the physics of heat) and quantum physics (the creation of particles where before there were none). For example, they led Stephen to prove that a black hole has entropy, which means that somewhere inside or around the black hole there is enormous randomness. He deduced that the amount of entropy (the logarithm of the hole’s amount of randomness) is proportional to the hole’s surface area. His formula for the entropy is engraved on Stephen’s memorial stone at Gonville and Caius College in Cambridge, where he worked.
For the past forty-five years, Stephen and hundreds of other physicists have struggled to understand the precise nature of a black hole’s randomness. It is a question that keeps on generating new insights about the marriage of quantum theory with general relativity—that is, about the ill-understood laws of quantum gravity.”
― Stephen Hawking, Brief Answers to the Big Questions

“A mathematician makes plans to travel backwards in time through a wormhole to a parallel universe when he can't even make it to Mars with the fastest rocket on hand today.”
― Bill Gaede

“I thought of Einstein, and his insistence that no particular point of view was more privileged than any other: in other words his ‘general relativity’, and its claim that the answer to the question ‘What is real?” begins with the question ‘Where are you standing?”
― Robert Charles Wilson, Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America

“Movement is an abstraction for, after all, what moves? There is only Oneself. Oneself moving itself out of Love.”
― Wald Wassermann

“One should no more rack one’s brain about the problem of whether something one cannot know anything about exists all the same, than about the ancient problem of how many angels are able to sit on the point of a needle.”
― Wolfgang Pauli

“The meaning of self is love.”
― Wald Wassermann

“There is only oneself which perceives itself as differentiated so not to be by itself; the purpose of self is love. Love is the eigenstate.”
― Wald Wassermann

“Forget about the E=mc2 equation. Why? It's an abstraction. Energy (E) is Oneself. Mass (M) is Oneself. Speed of Light (c2) is Oneself. In fact, everything is Oneself. Oneself upholds itself. "E=I"? Yes, but it remains an abstraction for all there is, is "I". The equation is simply "I". Or, to make it needlessly complicated: "I=I". Oneself is I. Oneself is reality; everything else including energy is an abstraction of sorts.”
― Wald Wassermann

“Self is differentiated so not to be by itself.
The purpose of self companionship.
Love so love.”
― Wald Wassermann

“Some of the science books (not mine!) state that unifying quantum mechanics with general relativity is the ultimate dream — or nightmare — of physics. Absolute bullocks! Truth is simply one's* purpose is companionship otherwise known as friendship and love hence the why of the all-i-nclusive gospel of love. (* uni's)”
― Wald Wassermann

“...the inability to reconcile quantum physics with classical physics is the same ‘red light indicator’ that the world Steve lives in is a construct or a simulation.”
― Peter Clifford Nichols, The Word of Bob: an AI Minecraft Villager