“The use of spontaneous symmetry breaking in a fundamental theory was to have profound consequences, not just for the laws of nature but for the larger question of what a law of nature is. Before this, it was thought that… — 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
“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
“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
“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
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
“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
Those who do good science do so because they choose problems that are suited to them. — Lee Smolin Copy Share
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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
“Problem 1: Combine general relativity and quantum theory into a single theory that can claim to be the complete theory of nature. This is… — Lee Smolin Copy Share
“The loop approach to quantum gravity is now a thriving field of research. Many of the older ideas, such as supergravity and the study… — Lee Smolin Copy Share
“During the life of a black hole, it will pull in huge amounts of matter, carrying huge amounts of intrinsic information. At the end,… — Lee Smolin Copy Share
