“Problem 1: Combine general relativity and quantum theory into a single theory that can claim to be the complete theory of nature.… — Lee Smolin Copy Share Image
“The subject of this chapter is string theory, and I begin it with these reflections for two reasons. First, because the main… — Lee Smolin Copy Share Image
“The Five Great Problems in Theoretical Physics: Problem 1: Combine general relativity and quantum theory into a single theory that can claim… — Lee Smolin Copy Share Image
“Besides the argument based on the unity of nature, there are problems specific to each theory that call for unification with the… — Lee Smolin Copy Share Image
“The dark-matter hypothesis is preferred mostly because the only other possibility-that we are wrong about Newton's laws, and by extension general relativity-is… — Lee Smolin Copy Share Image
General relativity predicts that time ends inside black holes because the gravitational collapse squeezes matter to infinite density. — Lee Smolin Copy Share Image
“Things have becone even more mysterious. We have recently discovered that when we make observations at still larger scales, corresponding to billions… — Lee Smolin Copy Share Image
“Albert Einstein was certainly the most important physicist of the twentieth century. Perhaps his greatest work was his discovery of general relativity,… — Lee Smolin Copy Share Image
“Most kinds of matter are under pressure, but the dark energy is under tension-that is, it pulls things together rather than pushes… — Lee Smolin Copy Share Image
“General relativity has a problem with infinities because inside a black hole the density of matter and the strength of the gravitational… — Lee Smolin Copy Share Image
“This unification of forces and motion has a simple consequence. In a particle theory, you can freely add all kinds of forces, so there… — Lee Smolin Copy Share Image
“One field Faraday studied was the electric field. This is not a number but a vector, which we may visualize as an arrow and… — Lee Smolin Copy Share Image
“It is interesting to note that the quantum-mechanical revolution was made by a virtually orphaned generation of scientists. Many members of the generation above… — Lee Smolin Copy Share Image
“In fact, the particle-antiparticle annihilation and the closing of the string is necessary, if the theory is to be consistent with relativity, meaning the… — Lee Smolin Copy Share Image
Every string theory that's been written down says the speed of light is universal. But other ideas about quantum gravity predict the speed of… — Lee Smolin Copy Share Image
“Unfortunately, no one has ever successfully postulated a super-symmetry holding between two known particles. Instead, in all the supersymmetric theories the numbers of particles… — Lee Smolin Copy Share Image
Those who do good science do so because they choose problems that are suited to them. — Lee Smolin Copy Share Image
“Here's a simplified version of what the Stanford group did. They started with a much-studied kind of string theory-a flat four-dimensional spacetime with a… — Lee Smolin Copy Share Image
“The current crisis in particle physics springs from the fact that the theories have gone beyond the standard model in the last thirty years… — Lee Smolin Copy Share Image
“By the time I began my study of physics in the early 1970s, the idea of unifying gravity with the other forces was as… — Lee Smolin Copy Share Image
“These two discoveries, of relativity and of the quantum, each required us to break definitively with Newtonian physics. However, in spite of great progress… — Lee Smolin Copy Share Image
“So the challenge for any quantum theory of gravity is to give us a deeper understanding of Bekenstein's entropy and Hawking's temperature.” — Lee Smolin Copy Share Image
