Brian Greene
Brian Greene
Brian Randolph Greeneis an American theoretical physicist and string theorist. He has been a professor at Columbia University since 1996 and chairman of the World Science Festival since co-founding it in 2008. Greene has worked on mirror symmetry, relating two different Calabi–Yau manifolds. He also described the flop transition, a mild form of topology change, showing that topology in string theory can change at the conifold point...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth9 February 1963
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
Even when I wasn't doing much 'science for the public' stuff, I found that four or five hours of intense work in physics was all my brain could take on a given day.
...quantum mechanics—the physics of our world—requires that you hold such pedestrian complaints in abeyance.
When I give this talk to a physics audience, I remove the quotes from my 'Theorem'.
The bottom line is that time travel is allowed by the laws of physics.
Physics grapples with the largest questions the universe presents. 'Where did the totality of reality come from?' 'Did time have a beginning?'
I think individuals are enormously surprised by the progress. When you look around the world, it's a very rich but complex place. When you understand the physics behind it, you understand it's a few simple laws ... if these cutting-edge ideas are correct.
We had guys in the past who wanted to win; now we have guys who expect to win. It's an attitude shift in the way we think about ourselves.
Jake finished close behind Ben White of eventual team champion Liverpool. Jake has been looking forward to this race against one of the top runners in New York and came away disappointed. I think this set back will fuel Jake to beat White next time.
I think math is a hugely creative field, because there are some very well-defined operations that you have to work within. You are, in a sense, straightjacketed by the rules of the mathematics. But within that constrained environment, it's up to you what you do with the symbols.
Science is a self-correcting discipline that can, in subsequent generations, show that previous ideas were not correct.
We know that if supersymmetric particles exist, they must be very heavy; otherwise we would have spotted them by now.
There may have been many big bangs, one of which created our universe. The other bangs created other universes.
What makes a Beethoven symphony spectacular, what makes a Brahms rhapsody spectacular is that the patterns are wondrous.
I think the appropriate response for a physicist is: 'I do not find the concept of God very interesting, because I cannot test it.'