#quantum

I believe that the quantum of our knowledge will increase considerably in the coming years and that scientists will continue to be amongst the brave voices speaking out. ↗

— Peter Garrett

#believe #brave #coming #considerably #continue

Quantum mechanics. What a repository, a dump, of human aspiration it was, the borderland where mathematical rigor defeated common sense, and reason and fantasy irrationally merged. Here the mystically inclined could find whatever they required and claim science as their proof. And for these ingenious men in their spare time, what ghostly and beautiful music it must be--spectral asymmetry, resonances, entanglement, quantum harmonic oscillators--beguiling ancient airs, the harmony of the spheres that might transmute a lead wall into gold and bring into being the engine that ran on virtually nothing, on virtual particles, that emitted no harm and would power the human enterprise as well as save it. Beard was stirred by the yearnings of these lonely men. And why should he think they were lonely? It was not, or not only, condescension that made him think them so. They did not know enough, but they knew too much to have anyone to talk to. What mate waiting down the pub or in the British Legion, what hard-pressed wife with job and kids and housework, was going to follow them down these warped funnels in the space-time continuum, into the wormhole, the shortcut to a single, final answer to the global problem of energy? ↗

— Ian Mcewan

#pseudo-science #quantum-mechanics #beauty

In fact any experiment that measures a quantum effect is one in which the quantum effect is aligned with the behavior of some heavy, macroscopic object; that's how we measure it. ↗

— Murray Gell-Mann

#any #behavior #effect #experiment #fact

The field of quantum valence fluctuations was another older interest which became much more active during this period, partly as a consequence of my own efforts. ↗

— Philip Warren Anderson

#another #became #consequence #during #efforts

Not only does God play dice but... he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen. ↗

— Stephen Hawking

#physics

According to the standard model billions of years ago some little quantum fluctuation, perhaps a slightly lower density of matter, maybe right where we're sitting right now, caused our galaxy to start collapsing around here. ↗

— Seth Lloyd

#ago #around #billions #caused #collapsing

Similarly, another famous little quantum fluctuation that programs you is the exact configuration of your DNA. ↗

— Seth Lloyd

#configuration #dna #exact #famous #fluctuation

Nevertheless, all of us who work in quantum physics believe in the reality of a quantum world, and the reality of quantum entities like protons and electrons. ↗

— John Polkinghorne

#electrons #entities #like #nevertheless #physics

I mean, we're really making a quantum change in our relationship to the plant world with genetic modification. ↗

— Michael Pollan

#genetic #i #making #mean #modification

If we look at the way the universe behaves, quantum mechanics gives us fundamental, unavoidable indeterminacy, so that alternative histories of the universe can be assigned probability. ↗

— Murray Gell-Mann

#assigned #behaves #fundamental #gives #histories