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I think it's too fast to say that all sci-fi ultimately winds up having some place in science. On the other hand, imaginative minds working outside of science as storytellers certainly have come upon ideas that, with the passing decades, have either materialized of come close to materializing.

Brian Greene

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Brian Greene
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: February 9
Actor
Author
Physicist
Professor
Theoretical Physicist
Writer
New York City
New York
Brian Randolph Greene
Mind
Hand
Passing
Materialized
Think
Working
Fast
Storytellers
Thinking
Upon
Minds
Winds
Science
Certainly
Imaginative
Place
Close
Storyteller
Hands
Outside
Passings
Ideas
Wind
Ultimately
Come
Either
Decades

More quotes by Brian Greene

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Physicists have come to realize that mathematics, when used with sufficient care, is a proven pathway to truth.
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The central idea of string theory is quite straightforward. If you examine any piece of matter ever more finely, at first you'll find molecules, atoms, sub-atomic particles. Probe the smaller particles, you'll find something else, a tiny vibrating filament of energy, a little tiny vibrating string.
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Einstein comes along and says, space and time can warp and curve, that's what gravity is. Now string theory comes along and says, yes, gravity, quantum mechanics, electromagnetism - all together in one package, but only if the universe has more dimensions than the ones that we see.
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I wouldn't say that The Fabric of the Cosmos is a book on cosmology. Cosmology certainly plays a big part, but the major theme is our ever-evolving understanding of space and time, and what it all means for our sense of reality.
Brian Greene
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The pinpoints of starlight we see with the naked eye are photons that have been streaming toward us for a few years or a few thousand.
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I've had various experiences where I've been called by Hollywood studios to look at a script or comment on various scientific ideas that they're trying to inject into a story.
Brian Greene
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Before the discovery of quantum mechanics, the framework of physics was this: If you tell me how things are now, I can then use the laws of physics to calculate, and hence predict, how things will be later.
Brian Greene
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It's hard to teach passionately about something that you don't have a passion for.
Brian Greene
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Every moment is as real as every other. Every 'now,' when you say, 'This is the real moment,' is as real as every other 'now' - and therefore all the moments are just out there. Just as every location in space is out there, I think every moment in time is out there, too.
Brian Greene
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String theory envisions a multiverse in which our universe is one slice of bread in a big cosmic loaf. The other slices would be displaced from ours in some extra dimension of space.
Brian Greene
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Science is the greatest of all adventure stories, one that's been unfolding for thousands of years as we have sought to understand ourselves and our surroundings.
Brian Greene
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To tell you the truth, I've never met anybody who can envision more than three dimensions. There are some who claim they can, and maybe they can it's hard to say.
Brian Greene
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When kids look up to great scientists the way they do to great musicians and actors, civilization will jump to the next level
Brian Greene
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But, as Einstein once said, “For we convinced physicists, the distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion, however persistent.”5
Brian Greene
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In essence, we string theorists have been trying to work out the score of the universe, the harmonies of the universe, the mathematical vibrations that the strings would play. So musical metaphors have been with us in science since the beginning.
Brian Greene
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Quantum Mechanics is different. Its weirdness is evident without comparison. It is harder to train your mind to have quantum mechanical tuition, because quantum mechanics shatters our own personal, individual conception of reality
Brian Greene
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So: if you buy the notion that reality consists of the things in your freeze-frame mental image right now, and if you agree that your now is no more valid than the now of someone located far away in space who can move freely, then reality encompasses all of the events in spacetime.
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Oftentimes, if you're talking to a seasoned interviewer who asks you a question, they may do a follow-up if they didn't quite get it. It's rare that they'll do a third or fourth or fifth or sixth follow-up, because there's an implicit, agreed-upon decorum that they move on. Kids don't necessarily move on if they don't get it.
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Physicists are more like avant-garde composers, willing to bend traditional rules... Mathematicians are more like classical composers.
Brian Greene
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Over the centuries, monumental upheavals in science have emerged time and again from following the leads set out by mathematics.
Brian Greene