General Relativity And Time Quotes & Sayings

In the one real, time-drenched universe, everything has a particular history precisely because it is finite, and not part of an infinite array. Moreover, the cosmological use of the infinite serves to mask the failure of a physical theory taken beyond the boundaries of its proper domain of application. The most notable instance is the inference in contemporary cosmology of an infinite initial singularity from the field equations of general relativity. Finally, the admission of the mathematical infinite into natural science effaces the difference, which we emphasize, between nature and mathematics. Nature works in time, with which mathematics has trouble. Mathematics offers, among other things, the infinite, which nature abhors. — Lee Smolin

The mind of man works with strangeness upon the body of time. An hour, once it lodges in the queer element of the human spirit, may be stretched to fifty or a hundred times its clock length; on the other hand, an hour may be accurately represented by the timepiece of the mind by one second. This extraordinary discrepancy between time on the clock and time in the mind is less known than it should be, and deserves fuller investigation. — Virginia Woolf

General relativity predicts that time ends inside black holes because the gravitational collapse squeezes matter to infinite density. — Lee Smolin

Banishing zero also solves the infinity problems in general relativity. If you imagine a black hole as a string, no longer do objects fall through a rip in the fabric of space-time. Instead, a particle loop approaching a black-hole loop stretches out and touches the black hole. The two loops tremble, tear, and form one loop: a slightly more massive black hole. (Some theorists believe that the act of merging a particle to a black hole creates bizarre particles such as tachyons: particles with imaginary mass that travel backward in time and move faster than light. Such particles might be admissable in certain versions of string theory.) — Charles Seife

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. — Kip Thorne

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

Grace cannot forgive unconfessed sin. — Rod Parsley

You can invoke neither time nor space nor matter not energy nor the laws of nature to explain the origin of the universe. General relativity points to the need for a cause that transcends those domains. ~Stephen C. Meyer, PHD~ — Lee Strobel

I became interested in this question of whether you can build wormholes for interstellar travel. I realized that if you had a wormhole, the theory of general relativity by itself would permit you to go backward in time. — Kip Thorne

In the early universe - when the universe was small enough to be governed by both general relativity and quantum theory - there were effectively four dimensions of space and none of time. That means that when we speak of the "beginning" of the universe, we are skirting the subtle issue that as we look backward toward the very early universe, time as we know it does not exist! We must accept that our usual ideas of space and time do not apply to the very early universe. That is beyond our experience, but not beyond our imagination, or our mathematics. — Stephen Hawking

The media thinks that only the cutting edge of science, the very latest controversies, are worth reporting on. How often do you see headlines like 'General Relativity still governing planetary orbits' or 'Phlogiston theory remains false'? By the time anything is solid science, it is no longer a breaking headline. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

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

There is no higher life form than a librarian. — Terry Pratchett

So the only environment the artist needs is whatever peace, whatever solitude, and whatever pleasure he can get at not too high a cost. All the wrong environment will do is run his blood pressure up; he will spend more time being frustrated or outraged. My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whiskey. — William Faulkner

When forced to summarize the general theory of relativity in one sentence: Time and space and gravitation have no separate existence from matter. — Albert Einstein

With general relativity, we know that before gravity can act, spacetime has to deform. This process does not happen instantaneously. It takes time. Gravity waves travel at the speed of light. Gravitational effects can kick in at a given position only after the time it takes for a signal to travel there and distort spacetime. — Lisa Randall

Gravitational waves will bring us exquisitely accurate maps of black holes - maps of their space-time. Those maps will make it crystal clear whether or not what we're dealing with are black holes as described by general relativity. — Kip Thorne

The fashion industry is no more able to preserve a style that men and women have decided to abandon than to introduce one they do not choose to accept. — Alison Lurie

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. — Stephen Hawking

Time is described only in terms of change in the network of relationships that describes space. This means that it is absurd in general relativity to speak of a universe in which nothing happens. Time is nothing but a measure of change-it has no other meaning. Neither space nor time has any existence outside the system of evolving relationships that comprises the universe. Physicists refer to this feature of general relativity as background independence. By this we mean that there is no fixed background, or stage, that remains fixed for all time. In contrast, a theory such as Newtonian mechanics or electromagmetism is background dependent because it assumes that there exists a fixed, unchanging background that provides the ultimate answer to all questions about where and when. — Lee Smolin

Another prediction of general relativity is that time should appear to run slower near a massive body like the earth. — Stephen Hawking

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

Does general relativity predict that our universe should have had a big bang, a beginning of time? — Stephen Hawking