Skip to content

First time Quote by Lee Smolin

““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 theory is required to have both open and closed strings. But this means it must include gravity. And the difference between gravity and the other forces is naturally explained, in terms of the difference between open and closed strings. For the first time, gravity plays a central role in the unification of the forces.””

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 4.9 out of 5 (8 ratings)

First time

More by Lee Smolin

“This unification of forces and motion has a simple consequence. In a particle theory, you can freely add all kinds of forces, so there is nothing to prevent a proliferation of constants describing the workings of each force. But in string theory, there can be only two fundamental constants. One, called the string tension, describes how much energy is contained…

“One field Faraday studied was the electric field. This is not a number but a vector, which we may visualize as an arrow and which can vary its direction and length. Imagine such an arrow at each point of space. Imagine that the ends of the arrows at nearby points are attached to one another ny rubber bands. If I…

“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…

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…

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 are at least doubled. A new superpartner is simply postulated to go along with each known particle. Not only are there squarks and sleptons and photinos, there are also sneutrinos to partner the neutrinos, Higgsinos with…

Those who do good science do so because they choose problems that are suited to them.

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 small six-dimensional geometry over each point. They chose the geometry of the six wrapped-up dimensions to be one of the Calabi-Yau spaces (see Chapter 8). As noted, there are at least a hundred thousand of these,…

“The current crisis in particle physics springs from the fact that the theories have gone beyond the standard model in the last thirty years fall into two categories. Some were falsifiable, and they were falsified. The rest are untested-either because they make no clean predictions or because the predictions they do make are not testable with current technology. Over the…

“By the time I began my study of physics in the early 1970s, the idea of unifying gravity with the other forces was as dead as the idea of continuous matter. It was a lesson in the foolishness of once great thinkers. Ernst Mach didn’t believe in atoms, James Clerk Maxwell believed in the aether, and Albert Einstein searched for…

“These two discoveries, of relativity and of the quantum, each required us to break definitively with Newtonian physics. However, in spite of great progress…

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.”

Image

“Problem 1: Combine general relativity and quantum theory into a single theory that can claim to be the complete theory of nature. This is…

Image

Explore all 114 Lee Smolin quotes

More First time quotes

A man walks down the street. It's a street in a strange world. Maybe it's the third world. Maybe it's his first time around. He doesn't speak the language. He holds no currency. He is a foreign man. He is surrounded by the sound, sound of cattle in the marketplace, scatterlings and orphanages. He looks around, around he sees angels…

“I’m so stressed that a weird Olympic-style commentary starts up in my head. And here we have Zelah Green, the fourteen-year-old champion of rituals, attempting the afternoon toilet-touching event for the first time … I take my first faltering step towards the rim. And she’s approaching the target, booms the voice. Steady approach, good footwork … My right hand, naked…

I'm very used to working with first time actors - you can just look back at 'E.T.' with Drew Barrymore, and Christian Bale from…

Steven Spielberg

Image

“I’m waiting for you,” he murmured, smiling a slow, familiar grin that seemed to hint at a secret between them. And for the first…

Alexandra Monir

Image

“Treat every natural beauty you met as if you see them for the first and last time!”

Mehmet Murat ildan

Image

“I won’t break your heart. For the first time in my life, I’ve found something worth fighting for, someone more important than me.”

Image

Life is like a parachute jump: you have to get it right the first time.

Image

When I was in my twenties and just so sexually prolific, the first time I went to Machu Picchu, this guy, a spiritual teacher,…

Woody Harrelson

Image

When my kids were in the school play for the first time, I decided I had to make the costumes from scratch and bought…

Sarah Alexander

Image

“I will run every mile, i will save every line, i will say i reached the top and i will fall back down standing. I will write down every thing, the good and the bad,I will wake up one day and go back to the start. I will notice that the good ones were nothing but my beautiful lines, were…

Mennah al refaey

“Or maybe your magic isn't that destructive after all. The rain of Doritos, the bed thing,this...Maybe it's just that you create too big, you know?" When I could find my voice, I said, "Cal, that might be the nicest thing anyone's said to me since we got here." He twirled one of the naked roots between his fingers, and didn't…

There is no pain like the first time you get your heart broken.

Image

Browse all 9,317 First time quotes