Edward Witten Quotes

31 quotes in 437 categories

• You enter a completely new world where things aren't at all what you're used to.
• String theory is an attempt at a deeper description of nature by thinking of an elementary particle not as a little point but as a…
• We know a lot of things, but what we don't know is a lot more.
• I have a much easier time imagining how we would understand the big bang, even though we can't do it yet, than I can imagine…
• M stands for Magic, Mystery, or Matrixaccording to taste
• As far as extra dimensions are concerned, very tiny extra dimensions wouldn't be perceived in everyday life, just as atoms aren't: we see many atoms…
• So when you ask me how string theory might be tested, I can tell you what's likely to happen at accelerators or some parts of…
• There was a long history of speculation that in quantum gravity, unlike Einstein's classical theory, it might be possible for the topology of spacetime to…
• I wouldn't have thought that a wrong theory should lead us to understand better the ordinary quantum field theories or to have new insights about…
• One of the basic things about a string is that it can vibrate in many different shapes or forms, which gives music its beauty.
• It's indeed surprising that replacing the elementary particle with a string leads to such a big change in things. I'm tempted to say that it…
• In Einstein's general relativity the structure of space can change but not its topology. Topology is the property of something that doesn't change when you…
• If I take the theory as we have it now, literally, I would conclude that extra dimensions really exist. They're part of nature. We don't…
• The theory has to be interpreted that extra dimensions beyond the ordinary four dimensions the three spatial dimensions plus time are sufficiently small that they…
• As of now, string theorists have no explanation of why there are three large dimensions as well as time, and the other dimensions are microscopic.…
• 1/r^2 has a nasty singularity at r=0, but it did not bother Newton-the Moon is far enough.
• There is a difference between knowing what is true and knowing why it is true
• As for the forces, electromagnetism and gravity we experience in everyday life. But the weak and strong forces are beyond our ordinary experience. So in…
• Even before string theory, especially as physics developed in the 20th century, it turned out that the equations that really work in describing nature with…
• One very important aspect of string theory is definitely testable. That was the prediction of supersymmetry, which emerged from string theory in the early '70s.

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