“In 1914, a Finnish physicist named Gunnar Nordstrom found that all you had to do to unify gravity with electromagnetism was increase… — Lee Smolin Copy Share Image
“if physics is much simpler to describe under the assumption that space is discrete, rather than continuous, is not this fact itself… — Lee Smolin Copy Share Image
“Space and time emerge from the laws rather than providing an arena in which things happen.” — Lee Smolin Copy Share Image
“To understand what we mean when we say that space is discrete, we must put our minds completely into the relational way… — Lee Smolin Copy Share Image
“Both loop quantum gravity and string theory assert that there is an atomic structure to space. In the next two chapters we… — Lee Smolin Copy Share Image
“So, in the end, the most improbable and hence the most puzzling aspect of space is its very existence. The simple fact… — Lee Smolin Copy Share Image
“Extending Polyakov's argument, he found evidence that the string theory describing those emergent strings is actually a ten-dimensional supersymmetric string theory. Of… — Lee Smolin Copy Share Image
“In the end, what is most satisfying about the picture of space given by loop quantum gravity is that it is completely… — Lee Smolin Copy Share Image
A successful unification of quantum theory and relativity would necessarily be a theory of the universe as a whole. It would tell… — 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
