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The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, what is the Question?

Book by Leon M. Lederman · 18 quotes · Science, Physics, Theorists

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The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, what is the Question? Quotes

“When I talk about the pain and hardship of a scientist's life, I'm speaking of more than existential angst. Galileo's work was condemned by the Church; Madame Curie paid with her life, a victim of leukemia wrought by radiation poisoning. Too many of us develop cataracts. None of us gets enough sleep. Most of what we know about the universe we know thanks to a lot of guys (and ladies) who stayed up late at night.”

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Book:The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, what is the Question?
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“Theorists tend to peak at an early age; the creative juices tend to gush very early and start drying up past the age of fifteen-or so it seems. They need to know just enough; when they're young they haven't accumulated the intellectual baggage.”

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“The sequence of theorist, experimenter, and discovery has occasionally been compared to the sequence of farmer, pig, truffle. The farmer leads the pig to an area where there might be truffles. The pig searches diligently for the truffles. Finally, he locates one, and just as he is about to devour it, the farmer snatches it away.”

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Book:The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, what is the Question?
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“A theoretical physicist can spend his entire lifetime missing the intellectual challenge of experimental work, experiencing none of the thrills and dangers - the overhead crane with its ten-ton load, the flashing skull and crossbones and danger, radioactivity signs. A theorist's only real hazard is stabbing himself with a pencil while attacking a bug that crawls out of his calculations.”

RealScienceChallengesMissingDangerTenIntellectualLifetimeIntellectExperimentsLoadThrillPencilsBugsPhysicistAttackingTheoreticalCalculationsSkullsHazardsOverheadTheoristsStabbingCranes
Book:The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, what is the Question?
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“The aether: Invented by Isaac Newton, reinvented by James Clerk Maxwell. This is the stuff that fills up the empty space of the universe. Discredited and discarded by Einstein, the aether is now making a Nixonian comeback. It's really the vacuum, but burdened by theoretical, ghostly particles.”

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“One hundred thirty-seven is the inverse of something called the fine-structure constant. ...The most remarkable thing about this remarkable number is that it is dimension-free. ...Werner Heisenberg once proclaimed that all the quandaries of quantum mechanics would shrivel up when 137 was finally explained.”

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Book:The God Particle: If the Universe is the Answer, what is the Question?
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