Brian Greene Quotes & Sayings

But if you think about a practical implication of enriching your life and giving you a sense of being part of a larger cosmos and possibly being able to use this [gravitational waves] as a tool in the future maybe to listen not just to black holes colliding, but maybe listen to the big bang itself, those kind of applications may happen in the not too distant future. — Brian Greene

String theorists have found special pairs of geometrical shapes for space that have completely different features when each is probed by unwrapped strings. They also have completely different features when each is probed by wrapped strings. But-and this is the punch line-when probed both ways, with wrapped and unwrapped strings, the shapes become indistinguishable. what the unwrapped strings see on one space, the wrapped strings see on the other, and vice versa, rendering identical the collective picture gleaned from the full physics of string theory. — Brian Greene

General relativity is in the old Newtonian framework where you predict what will happen, not the probability of what will happen. And putting together the probabilities of quantum mechanics with the certainty of general relativity, that's been the big challenge and that's why we have been excited about string theory, as it's one of the only approaches that can put it together. — Brian Greene

If the theory turns out to be right, that will be tremendously thick and tasty icing on the cake. — Brian Greene

When you know the answer you want, it is often all too easy to figure out a way of getting it. — Brian Greene

The studies concluded that the graviton must be massless and chargeless, and must have the quantum mechanical property known as spin-2. (Very roughly, the graviton should spin like a top, twice as fast as the spin of a photon.) — Brian Greene

I've spent something like 17 years working on a theory for which there is essentially no direct experimental support. — Brian Greene

String theory is not the only theory that can accommodate extra dimensions, but it certainly is the one that really demands and requires it. — Brian Greene

The full name of string theory is really superstring theory. The 'super' stands for this feature called supersymmetry, which, without getting into any details, predicts that for every known particle in the world, there should be a partner particle, the so-called supersymmetric partner. — Brian Greene

When kids look up to great scientists the way they do to great musicians and actors, civilization will jump to the next level — Brian Greene

Within the modified equations, Kaluza found the ones Einstein had already used successfully to describe gravity in the familiar three dimensions of space and one of time. But because his new formulation included an additional dimension of space, Kaluza found an additional equation. Lo and behold, when Kaluza derived this equation he recognized it as the very one Maxwell had discovered half a century earlier to describe the electromagnetic field. — Brian Greene

I enjoy reading blogs, but am not interested in having my spurious thoughts out there. — Brian Greene

Gravity is matter's sugar daddy. — Brian Greene

My view is that science only has something to say about a very particular notion of God, which goes by the name of 'god of the gaps'. — Brian Greene

Our eyes only see the big dimensions, but beyond those there are others that escape detection because they are so small. — Brian Greene

I've had various experiences where I've been called by Hollywood studios to look at a script or comment on various scientific ideas that they're trying to inject into a story. — Brian Greene

Special relativity declares a similar law for all motion: the combined speed of any object's motion through space and its motion through time is always precisely equal to the speed of light. — Brian Greene

The fact that I don't have any particular need for religion doesn't mean that I have a need to cast religion aside the way some of my colleagues do. — Brian Greene

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. — Brian Greene

General relativity then establishes that objects move toward regions where time elapses more slowly; in a sense, all objects "want" to age as slowly as possible. From an Einsteinian perspective, that explains why an object falls when you let go of it. — Brian Greene

Since the familiar particles and the objects they compose - stars, planets, people, etc. - amount to less than 5 percent of the mass of the universe, such a disruption would not affect the vast majority of the universe, at least as measured by mass. — Brian Greene

An exciting feature of string theory is that the particles emerge from the theory itself: a distinct species of particle arises from each distinct string vibrational pattern. And since the vibrational pattern determines the properties of the corresponding particle, if you understood the theory well enough to delineate all vibrational patterns, you'd be able to explaine all properties of all particles. The potential and the promies, then, is that string theory will transcent quantum field theory by deriving all particle properties mathematically. Not only would this unify everything under the umbrella of vibrating strings, it would establish that future "surprises"-such as the discovery of currently unknown particle species-are built into string theory from the outset and so would be accessible, in principle, to sufficiently industrious calculation. String theory doesn't build piecemeal toward an ever more complete description of nature. It seeks a complete description from the get-go. — Brian Greene

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? — Brian Greene

Nature's patterns sometimes reflect two intertwined features: fundamental physical laws and environmental influences. It's nature's version of nature versus nurture. — Brian Greene

Physics grapples with the largest questions the universe presents. 'Where did the totality of reality come from?' 'Did time have a beginning?' — Brian Greene

The number of e-mails and letters that I get from choreographers, from sculptors, from composers who are being inspired by science is huge. — Brian Greene

String theory is the most developed theory with the capacity to unite general relativity and quantum mechanics in a consistent manner. I do believe the universe is consistent, and therefore I do believe that general relativity and quantum mechanics should be put together in a manner that makes sense. — Brian Greene

According to inflation, the more than 100 billion galaxies, sparkling throughout space like heavenly diamonds, are nothing but quantum mechanics writ large across the sky. To me, this realization is one of the greatest wonders of the modern scientific age. — Brian Greene

Experimental evidence is the final arbiter of right and wrong. — Brian Greene

They imply that a region of space the size of a pea would be stretched larger than the observable universe in a time interval so short that the blink of an eye would overestimate it by a factor larger than a million billion billion billion. — Brian Greene

they are beyond each other's cosmic horizon. — Brian Greene

Sometimes attaining the deepest familiarity with a question is our best substitute for actually having the answer. — Brian Greene

For string theory to make sense, the universe should have nine spacial dimensions and one time dimension, for a total of ten dimensions. — Brian Greene

Quantum mechanics challenges this view by revealing, at least in certain circumstances, a capacity to transcend space; long-range quantum connections can bypass spatial separation. Two objects can be far apart in space, but as far as quantum mechanics is concerned, it's as if they're a single entity. — Brian Greene

Far from being accidental details, the properties of nature's basic building blocks are deeply entwined with the fabric of space and time. — Brian Greene

But, as Einstein once said, "For we convinced physicists, the distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion, however persistent."5 — Brian Greene

If string theory is right, the microscopic fabric of our universe is a richly intertwined multidimensional labyrinth within which the strings of the universe endlessly twist and vibrate, rhythmically beating out the laws of the cosmos. — Brian Greene

Sometimes nature guards her secrets with the unbreakable grip of physical law. Sometimes the true nature of reality beckons from just beyond the horizon. — Brian Greene

String theory envisions a multiverse in which our universe is one slice of bread in a big cosmic loaf. The other slices would be displaced from ours in some extra dimension of space. — Brian Greene

So, in one slightly technical line, here's the mathematical skinny. There's an equation in string theory that has a contribution of the form (D-10) times (Trouble), where D represents the number of spacetime dimensions and Trouble is a mathematical expression resulting in troublesome physical phenomena, such as the violation of energy conservation mentioned above. As to why the equation takes this precise form, I can't offer any intuitive, nontechnical explanation. But if you do the calculation, that's where the math leads. Now, this simple but key observation is that if the number of spacetime dimensions is ten, not the four we expect, the contribution becomes 0 times Trouble. And since 0 times anything is 0, in a universe with ten spacetime dimensions the trouble gets wiped away. That's how the math plays out. Really. And that's why string theorists argue for a universe with more than four spacetime dimensions. — Brian Greene

I've seen children's eyes light up when I tell them about black holes and the Big Bang. — Brian Greene

Of the many strange things Einstein's work revealed, the fluidity of time is the hardest to grasp. Whereas everyday experience convinces us that there is an objective concept of time's passage, relativity shows this to be an artifact of life at slow speeds and weak gravity. Move near light speed, or immerse yourself in a powerful gravitational field, and the familiar, universal conception of time will evaporate. If you're rushing past me, things I insist happened at the same moment will appear to you to have occurred at different moments. If you're hanging out near the edge of a black hole, an hour's passage on your watch will be monumentally longer on mine. — Brian Greene

Before the discovery of quantum mechanics, the framework of physics was this: If you tell me how things are now, I can then use the laws of physics to calculate, and hence predict, how things will be later. — Brian Greene

Over the centuries, monumental upheavals in science have emerged time and again from following the leads set out by mathematics. — Brian Greene

When you realize that quantum mechanics underlies all physical processes, from the fusing of atoms in the sun to the neural firings that constitutes the stuff of thought, the far-reaching implications of the proposal become apparent. It says that there's no such thing as a road untraveled. Yet each such road - each reality - is hidden from all others. — Brian Greene

You should never be surprised by or feel the need to explain why any physical system is in a high entropy state. — Brian Greene

I believe the process of going from confusion to understanding is a precious, even emotional, experience that can be the foundation of self-confidence. — Brian Greene

Intelligence is the ability to take in information from the world and to find patterns in that information that allow you to organize your perceptions and understand the external world. — Brian Greene

I believe that through its rational evaluation of truth and indifference to personal belief, science transcends religious and political divisions and so does bind us into a greater, more resilient whole. — Brian Greene

Most scientists like to operate in the context of economy. If you don't need an explanatory principle, don't invoke it. — Brian Greene

I think math is a hugely creative field, because there are some very well-defined operations that you have to work within. You are, in a sense, straightjacketed by the rules of the mathematics. But within that constrained environment, it's up to you what you do with the symbols. — Brian Greene

There may have been many big bangs, one of which created our universe. The other bangs created other universes. — Brian Greene

One of the wonders of science is that it is completely universal. It crosses national boundaries with total ease. — Brian Greene

There may be many Big Bangs that happened at various and far-flung locations, each creating its own swelling, spatial expanse, each creating a universe - our universe being the result of only one of those Big Bangs. — Brian Greene

How, in looser language, does the part of the probability wave in Andromeda, and everywhere else, "know" to drop to zero simultaneously?19 — Brian Greene

In the far, far future, essentially all matter will have returned to energy. But because of the enormous expansion of space, this energy will be spread so thinly that it will hardly ever convert back to even the lightest particles of matter. Instead, a faint mist of light will fall for eternity through an ever colder and quieter cosmos. — Brian Greene

Art makes us human, music makes us human, and I deeply feel that science makes us human. — Brian Greene

Science is a way of life. Science is a perspective. Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding in a manner that's precise, predictive and reliable - a transformation, for those lucky enough to experience it, that is empowering and emotional. — Brian Greene

I think the appropriate response for a physicist is: 'I do not find the concept of God very interesting, because I cannot test it.' — Brian Greene

Even if we choose to use the nonstandard notion of distance and thereby describe the radius as being shorter than the Planck length, the physics we encounter - as discussed in previous sections - will be identical to that of a universe in which the radius, in the conventional sense of distance, is larger than the Planck length — Brian Greene

A watch worn by a particle of light would not tick at all. Light realizes the dreams of Ponce de Leon and the cosmetics industry: it doesn't age. — Brian Greene

Very much, string theory is simply a work in progress. What we are inching toward every day are predictions that within the realm of current technology we hope to test. It's not like we're working on a theory that is permanently beyond experiment. That would be philosophy. — Brian Greene

All mathematics is is a language that is well tuned, finely honed, to describe patterns; be it patterns in a star, which has five points that are regularly arranged, be it patterns in numbers like 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 that follow very regular progression. — Brian Greene

If there is a lot of matter, gravity will cause space to curve back on itself, yielding the spherical shape. If there is little matter, space is free to flare outward in the Pringles shape. And if there is just the right amount of matter, space will have zero curvature.* — Brian Greene

Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding ... — Brian Greene

Many different planets are many different distances from their host star; we find ourselves at this distance because if we were closer or farther away, the temperature would be hotter or colder, eliminating liquid water, an essential ingredient for our survival. — Brian Greene

And so, whereas Bohr and the Copenhagen gang would argue that only one of these universes would exist (because the act of measurement, which they claim lies outside of Schrodinger's purview, would collapse away all the others), and whereas a first-pass attempt to go beyond Bohr and extend Schrodinger's math to all particles, including those constituting equipment and brains, yielded dizzying confusion (because a given machine or mind seemed to internalize all possible outcomes simultaneously), Everett found that a more careful reading of Schrodinger's math leads somewhere else: to a plentiful reality populated by an ever-growing collection of universes. — Brian Greene

We all love a good story. We all love a tantalizing mystery. We all love the underdog pressing onward against seemingly insurmountable odds. We all, in one form or another, are trying to make sense of the world around us. And all of these elements lie at the core of modern physics. The story is among the grandest
the unfolding of the entire universe; the mystery is among the toughest
finding out how the cosmos came to be; the odds are among the most daunting
bipeds, newly arrived by cosmic time scales trying to reveal the secrets of the ages; and the quest is among the deepest
the search for fundamental laws to explain all we see and beyond, from the tiniest particles to the most distant galaxies. — Brian Greene

My emotional investment is in finding truth. If string theory is wrong, I'd like to have known that yesterday. But if we can show it today or tomorrow, fantastic. — Brian Greene

Energy is the ultimate convertable currency. — Brian Greene

We know that if supersymmetric particles exist, they must be very heavy; otherwise we would have spotted them by now. — Brian Greene

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

I would say in one sentence my goal is to at least be part of the journey to find the unified theory that Einstein himself was really the first to look for. He didn't find it, but we think we're hot on the trail. — Brian Greene

I can assure you that no string theorist would be interested in working on string theory if it were somehow permanently beyond testability. That would no longer be doing science. — Brian Greene

blissful as ignorance, — Brian Greene

It's hard to teach passionately about something that you don't have a passion for. — Brian Greene

Just as we envision all of space as really being out there, as really existing,
we should also envision all of time as really being out there, as really
existing too. — Brian Greene

For most people, the major hurdle in grasping modern insights into the nature of the universe is that these developments are usually phrased using mathematics. — Brian Greene

A unified theory would put us at the doorstep of a vast universe of things that we could finally explore with precision. — Brian Greene

My mom says: 'Why aren't you a doctor?' and I'm like, 'I am a doctor!' and she's all, 'No, I mean a real doctor.' She reads my books, but she says they give her a headache. — Brian Greene

Supersymmetry is a theory which stipulates that for every known particle there should be a partner particle. For instance, the electron should be paired with a supersymmetric 'selectron,' quarks ought to have 'squark' partners, and so on. — Brian Greene

So many galaxies, so many planets out there in the universe circling so many stars ... it just feels like there's a very good chance that there is another Earth-like planet out there that is able to support some kind of life similar to what we're familiar with. — Brian Greene

The universe, according to quantum mechanics, participates in a game of chance. — Brian Greene

To tell you the truth, I've never met anybody who can envision more than three dimensions. There are some who claim they can, and maybe they can; it's hard to say. — Brian Greene

For me it's been very exciting to contribute to the public's understanding of how rich and wondrous science is. — Brian Greene

When we benefit from CT scanners, M.R.I. devices, pacemakers and arterial stents, we can immediately appreciate how science affects the quality of our lives. — Brian Greene

Free will is the sensation of making a choice. The sensation is real, but the choice seems illusory. Laws of physics determine the future. — Brian Greene

The real question is whether all your pondering and analyses will convince you that life is worth living. That's what it all comes down to. — Brian Greene

The entropy of a system is related to the number of indistinguishable rearrangements of its constituents, but properly speaking is not equal to the number itself. The relationship is expressed by a mathematical operation called a logarithm; don't be put off if this brings back bad memories of high school math class. In our coin example, it simply means that you pick out the exponent in the number of rearrangements-that is, the entropy is defined as 1,000 rather than 2^1000. — Brian Greene

In any finite region of space, matter can only arrange itself in a finite number of configurations, just as a deck of cards can be arranged in only finitely many different orders. If you shuffle the deck infinitely many times, the card orderings must necessarily repeat. — Brian Greene

The pinpoints of starlight we see with the naked eye are photons that have been streaming toward us for a few years or a few thousand. — Brian Greene

The extreme disparity between the outsider's and insider's perspectives arises because they have vastly different conceptions of time. Although the point is far from obvious, we'll now see what appears as endless time to an outsider appears as endless space, at each moment of time, to an insider. — Brian Greene

Einstein comes along and says, space and time can warp and curve, that's what gravity is. Now string theory comes along and says, yes, gravity, quantum mechanics, electromagnetism - all together in one package, but only if the universe has more dimensions than the ones that we see. — Brian Greene

The real reason why general relativity is widely accepted is because it made predictions that were borne out by experimental observations. — Brian Greene

From this perspective, the universe can be thought of as an information processor. It takes information regarding how things are now and produces information delineating how things will be at the next now, and the now after that. Our senses become aware of such processing by detecting how the physical environment changes over time. But the physical environment itself is emergent; it arises from the fundamental ingredient, information, and evolves according to the fundamental rules, the laws of physics. — Brian Greene

The world of the everyday suddenly seemed nothing but an inverted magic act, lulling its audience into believing in the usual, familiar conceptions of space and time, while the astonishing truth of quantum reality lay carefully guarded by nature's sleights of hand. — Brian Greene

Einstein's theory of relativity does a fantastic job for explaining big things. Quantum mechanics is fantastic for the other end of the spectrum - for small things. — Brian Greene

I can't stand clutter. I can't stand piles of stuff. And whenever I see it, I basically just throw the stuff away. — Brian Greene

As every parent knows, children begin life as uninhibited, unabashed explorers of the unknown. From the time we can walk and talk, we want to know what things are and how they work - we begin life as little scientists. — Brian Greene

In essence, we string theorists have been trying to work out the score of the universe, the harmonies of the universe, the mathematical vibrations that the strings would play. So musical metaphors have been with us in science since the beginning. — Brian Greene