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Steven Weinberg

94 quotes

“... most physicists would probably agree that the place of local fields is nowhere so secure as in the theory of photons and gravitons, whose properties seem indissolubly linked with the space-time concepts of gauge invariance (of the second kind) and/or Einstein's equivalence principle.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As everyone today knows, in specifying the value of a gauge coupling constant it is necessary to say not only what its value is but where — that is at what normalization scale — it has that value.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Calculation of fine structure constants." In Fourth Workshop on Grand Unification, pp. 380–394. Birkhäuser, Boston, MA, 1983. (page 390)
“Elementary particles are terribly boring, which is one reason why we're so interested in them.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Elementary particles and the laws of Physics" in The 1986 Dirac Memorial Lectures (1987)
“The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) first seen 1993 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Dreams of a Final Theory: The Search for the Fundamental Laws of Nature (1993), .
“Either by God you mean something definite or you don't mean something definite. If by God you mean a personality who is concerned about human beings, who did all this out of love for human beings, who watches us and who intervenes, then I would have to say in the first place how do you know, what makes you think so? And in the second place, is that really an explanation? If that's true, what explains that? Why is there such a God? It isn't the end of the chain of whys, it just is another step, and you have to take the step beyond that.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) first seen 1998 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Steven Weinberg, PBS interview, 1998
“If you have bought one of those T-shirts with Maxwell's equations on the front, you may have to worry about its going out of style, but not about its becoming false. We will go on teaching Maxwellian electrodynamics as long as there are scientists.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) first seen 1998 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Revolution That Didn't Happen" in The New York Review of Books (1998)
“Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) first seen 1999 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Address at the Conference on Cosmic Design, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington, D.C. (April 1999)
“One of the great achievements of science has been, if not to make it impossible for intelligent people to be religious, then at least to make it possible for them not to be religious. We should not retreat from this accomplishment.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) first seen 1999 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Address at the Conference on Cosmic Design, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington, D.C. (April 1999)
“In trying to get votes for the Superconducting Super Collider, I was very much involved in lobbying members of Congress, testifying to them, bothering them, and I never heard any of them talk about postmodernism or social constructivism. You have to be very learned to be that wrong.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) first seen 1995 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Night Thoughts of a Quantum Physicist" (February 1995); republished in Facing Up: Science And Its Cultural Adversaries (2001)
“It seems that scientists are often attracted to beautiful theories in the way that insects are attracted to flowers — not by logical deduction, but by something like a sense of smell.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Physics Today (November 2005) page 35
“If there is no point in the universe that we discover by the methods of science, there is a point that we can give the universe by the way we live, by loving each other, by discovering things about nature, by creating works of art. And that—in a way, although we are not the stars in a cosmic drama, if the only drama we're starring in is one that we are making up as we go along, it is not entirely ignoble that faced with this unloving, impersonal universe we make a little island of warmth and love and science and art for ourselves. That's not an entirely despicable role for us to play.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in Frankenberry The Faith of Scientists: In Their Own Words (2008), p. 336
“There is a hope, which I nurse but I don't see being realized, that eventually we'll find that quantum mechanics as we know it now is just an approximation ...”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: (Steven Weinberg interviewed by Richard Dawkins in 2008; quote at 58:49 of 1:14:51 in video)
“'s kindness to me and my wife went beyond his help with this research. He had my wife and me to dinner at his house and at that dinner I went to the bathroom and I learned something about Källén that I don't think anyone knows. And that is that he had hand towels embroidered with the . And I mentioned this to Mrs. Källén and she said they were a present from Pauli.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: (quote at 10:15 of 1:28:03 in video; lecture recorded on February 13, 2009)
“A theorist today is hardly considered respectable if he or she has not introduced at least one new particle for which there is no experimental evidence.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Particle physics, from Rutherford to the LHC," Physics Today 64, no.8 (August 2011), 29-33, on 30.
“There’s something I’ve been working on for more than a year — maybe it’s just an old man’s obsession, but I’m trying to find an approach to quantum mechanics that makes more sense than existing approaches. I’ve just finished editing the second edition of my book, Lectures on Quantum Mechanics, in which I think I strengthen the argument that none of the existing interpretations of quantum mechanics are entirely satisfactory.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) first seen 2015 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Steven Weinberg, in "Science’s Path From Myth to Multiverse" by Dan Falk (March 17, 2015)
“It doesn't work to build half an accelerator. The particles need to go all the way around.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) first seen 2015 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On The Shoulders of Giants - "The Future of Science" by Steven Weinberg, World Science Festival, YouTube, 2015
“Having taught quantum mechanics and written a book about it recently — a technical treatise — I find that I am not as happy about quantum mechanics as I used to be — not as dismissive of the critics. And it's a bad sign in particular that those physicists who are happy about quantum mechanics — who don't see anything wrong with it — don't agree with each other about what it means. ... And the problem has specifically to do with the act of measurement.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) first seen 2016 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: (quote at 17:35 of 1:05:21 in video; 4th delivered on October 20, 2016 in San Antonio, Texas)
“Symmetry is not enough by itself. In electromagnetism, for example, if you write down all the symmetries we know, such as Lorentz invariance and gauge invariance, you don’t get a unique theory that predicts the magnetic moment of the electron. The only way to do that is to add the principle of renormalisability – which dictates a high degree of simplicity in the theory and excludes these additional terms that would have changed the magnetic moment of the electron from the value Schwinger calculated in 1948.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“... I found that I was unable to explain the foundations of quantum mechanics in a way that I found entirely satisfactory.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) first seen 2018 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Problems of Quantum Mechanics: Steven Weinberg (July 17, 2018) YouTube video at 3:58 of 45:42
“... there are particles ... that we have never seen in a laboratory but astronomers tell us make up most of the matter in the universe — the so-called . It's dark because it doesn't radiate — it doesn't interact with light. We just know about it because of its gravitational field. What is the dark matter? ... We have a lot of ideas — all going in different directions. We don't know which is the right idea.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our mistake is not that we take our theories too seriously, but that we do not take them seriously enough. It is always hard to realize that these numbers and equations we play with at our desks have something to do with the real world. ...The most important thing accomplished by the three-degree radiation background in 1965 was to force us to take seriously the idea that there was an early universe.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) first seen 1977 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: (1977)
“The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things which lifts human life a little above the level of farce and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) first seen 1993 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: (1993), Epilogue, p. 155
“This is not intended to be yet another popular book that offers... the latest news in physics. Still, it would be a pity not to show the links between the historic discoveries... and the work of fundamental physics today. I have therefore taken the opportunity... of this new edition to point out these links... I now carry the story of the discovery of elementary particles... to the present day.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Under ordinary circumstances, visible light is absorbed or emitted when the electrons in an atom or molecule are excited into orbits of higher energy, or sink back into orbits of lower energy, respectively.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The s and s in nuclei, like the electrons surrounding the nuclei, can be excited to states of higher energy or... fall back to a state of lower energy, but the energies... are typically a million times those need to excite the electrons...”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Electrons are believed to be absolutely stable, and protons and neutrons (when bound...) live at least 1030 years. With few exceptions, all other particles have very short lifetimes...”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Plücker's student J. W. Hittorf... observed that solid bodies... near a small cathode would cast shadows... [and] deduced... the rays travel... in straight lines.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Perrin... showed in 1895 that the rays deposit negative electrical charge on a charge collector... inside... the tube.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[I]n 1897 Thomson... detected a deflection... by electric forces between the rays and the electrified metal plates. ...due largely to the use of better vacuum pumps ...to where the effects of residual gas ...became negligible. (Some evidence for... deflection was [also] found... by Goldstein.) [D]eflection was toward the positively charged plate... away from the negatively charged one, confirming Perrin... that the rays carry negative electric charge.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Thomson... exerted electric and magnetic forces on the rays and measured the amount... deflected.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The laws of motion... were set out by... Newton at the beginning of... the Principia. ...[T]he key principle is ...in the Second Law... paraphrased as... the force to give an object a certain acceleration is proportional to the product of the and the .”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Acceleration is the rate of change of . ...The units are ...velocity per unit time, or distance-per-time per time. ...[F]alling bodies ...near ...earth fall with an acceleration or 9.8 meters-per-second per second ...after the first second ...falling at speed ...9.8 meters per second, after two seconds... 19.6 ...and so on. [T]he units of velocity are length/time... and units of acceleration... (distance/time)/time, or equivalently distance/time2 ...[T]he acceleration near... Earth would be written 9.8 m/sec2 for short.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As a special case of Newton's Second Law, a body... when acted on by zero force, will experience zero acceleration—that is, it will move with constant velocity. Newton listed this... as the First Law... The Third Law... action equals reaction: If one body exerts a force on another... the second... exerts an equal force in the opposite direction on the first.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When the velocity and the acceleration are changing, we can define the instantaneous velocity or acceleration at any moment as the average values... over a vanishingly small time interval centered on that moment. Newton's Law actually relates the force to the instantaneous acceleration.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Velocity, acceleration, and force are vectors... they have direction as well as magnitude. It is often convenient to describe... [vectors] in terms of their components along specified directions. ...Components of vectors can be negative as well as positive ...Newton's Second Law applies separately to each component... it says... the component of force in any direction is equal to the mass times the corresponding component of acceleration.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When several forces act... the total force is the sum... each component of the total force is the sum of the corresponding components of the individual forces.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Early speculation on about electric forces relied... on an analogy with Newton's theory of gravitational forces. At the end of Principia, Newton described gravitation as a cause that acts on the sun and the planets "according to the quantity of solid matter which they contain and propagates on all sides to immense distances, decreasing always as the inverse square of the distances." ...It was irresistible to guess that the electric force might obey a similar law, also proportional to the inverse square of the distance... with charge playing the role that mass plays...”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“(...Newton's theory... is now known only to be an approximation... for particles... not moving too fast and gravitational forces... not too strong. ...It is one of the consequences of General Relativity that gravitation is produced by and acts on energy as well as mass, so that it even affects particles of zero mass, like the photon.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Coulomb used a... device of his own invention, the torsion balance, to measure forces between small pith balls. The inverse-square law was found to hold accurately...”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is... convenient to state Coulomb's law in modern terms, first used... by James Clerk Maxwell. The electric force... is always proportional to the electric charge... We call the factor of proportionality the electric field so...Electric force... = Electric charge... x Electric field”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The years since the mid-1970s have been the most frustrating in the history of particle physics. We are paying the price of our own success: theory has advanced so far that further progress will require the study of processes at energies far beyond the reach of existing facilities. In order to break out of this impasse, physicists began in 1982 to develop plans for a scientific project of unprecedented size and cost, known as the Superconducting Super Collider.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is with Isaac Newton that the modern dream of a final theory really begins.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The last thirty years of Einstein's life were largely devoted to a search for a so-called unified field theory that would unify James Clerk Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism with the general theory of relativity, Einstein's theory of gravitation. Einstein's attempt was not successful, and with hindsight we can now see that it was misconceived. Not only did Einstein reject quantum mechanics; the scope of his effort was too narrow. ... Nevertheless Einstein's struggle is our struggle today. It is the search for a final theory.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The best military historians in fact do recognize the difficulty in stating rules of generalship. They do not speak of a science of war, but rather of a pattern of military behavior that cannot be taught or stated precisely but that somehow or other sometimes helps in winning battles. This is called the art of war. In the same spirit I think that one should not hope for a science of science, the formulation of any definite rules about how scientists do or ought to behave, but only aim at a description of the sort of behavior that historically has led to scientific progress—an art of science.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I managed to get a quick PhD — though when I got it I knew almost nothing about physics. But I did learn one big thing: that no one knows everything, and you don't have to.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Another lesson to be learned, to continue using my oceanographic metaphor, is that while you are swimming and not sinking you should aim for rough water.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As you will never be sure which are the right problems to work on, most of the time that you spend in the laboratory or at your desk will be wasted. If you want to be creative, then you will have to get used to spending most of your time not being creative, to being becalmed on the ocean of scientific knowledge.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Finally, learn something about the history of science, or at a minimum the history of your own branch of science. The least important reason for this is that the history may actually be of some use to you in your own scientific work.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Many people do simply awful things out of sincere religious belief, not using religion as a cover the way that Saddam Hussein may have done, but really because they believe that this is what God wants them to do, going all the way back to Abraham being willing to sacrifice Isaac because God told him to do that. Putting God ahead of humanity is a terrible thing.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have a friend — or had a friend, now dead — Abdus Salam, a very devout Muslim, who was trying to bring science into the universities in the Gulf states and he told me that he had a terrible time because, although they were very receptive to technology, they felt that science would be a corrosive to religious belief, and they were worried about it... and damn it, I think they were right. It is corrosive of religious belief, and it's a good thing too.”
Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source