Stephon Alexander > Quotes

“Perhaps the answers to these questions require fundamental advances at the interface of physics, the arts, and neuroscience. The deep links between musical form and physical form may be unveiled by understanding how both kinds of knowledge-music and physics-arise together in human brains and nowhere else. After all, brains, regardless of how mysterious they are, are the most complex structures in the universe.”
― Stephon Alexander, The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe

“In other words, if an observer looks at another frame of reference (like a moving train), he or she will still see that the speed of light is the same even though that frame of reference is moving relative to it. It is because of this symmetry that our standard theory of light, or electromagnetism, cannot accommodate a varying speed of light in empty space. But when a wave of light moves in a different medium, such as glass, Lorentz symmetry is no longer preserved, and light can change speed relative to empty space. This was the essence of Joao's contention. It could be that there is a quantum effect on space-time that fundamentally violates Einstein's cherished Lorentz symmetry, resulting in a variation of the speed of light in the early universe. As it turns out, the shape of extra dimensions in string theory can indeed cause certain constants, including the speed of light, to vary throughout the space-time fabric.”
― Stephon Alexander, The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe

“In three dimensions where the invariance of the speed of light is not readily manifest, the Maxwell equations are pieces (shadows) of a four-dimensional object with manifest invariance of the speed of light. This is like the shadow of an upright bicycle wheel cast on the ground, which can look like a line-the circular symmetry is no longer manifest.”
― Stephon Alexander, The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe

“The Hopfield model is a classic example of carrying concepts from one field to another-and also explains why I was working in neuroscience while completing a physics degree.”
― Stephon Alexander, The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe

“Hopfield proposed an equation for the overall "state" of the lattice of connected neurons, analogous to the overall energy in an array of interacting iron particles. The same mathematics that governs the Ising model also governs the Hopfield model: two neurons that both either fire, or do not fire, increase the state of connectedness, while neurons performing opposing actions decrease the state of connectedness.”
― Stephon Alexander

“Neurons are wired together in a much more complicated way than spins in a metal. But because that limitation was known, neuroscientists were able to focus on incorporating the complexity of the circuitry into the analogous model, and thus improve it.”
― Stephon Alexander, The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe

“Much like inflation, the cyclic universe has its strengths and challenges, and so it is still under active research in cosmology. One of the main challenges of the cyclic universe concerns the existence of a menacing field called a ghost.”
― Stephon Alexander, The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe

“In a nutshell, I was able to come up with the first model of inflation based on the annihilation of D-branes.”
― Stephon Alexander, The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe

“Superconductivity, since it was quantized, meaning that only discrete bundles of energy exist as opposed to a continuous flow, has not waned in importance. Once Cooper, Bardeen, and Schrieffer figured out how superconductivity worked, others were able to find useful applications for it. Superconductivity is at the heart of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-medical scans used to probe anatomical form and function. Some situations, such as tests for tumors, require far more precision than an X-ray scan. Strong and uniform magnetic fields are needed. The efficient electric currents in a superconductor generate the large magnetic fields, which optimize the MRI scanning operation.”
― Stephon Alexander, The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe

“There is no fundamental law of physics that requires the early universe to sustaon sound waves. Yet if we think of the early universe during its plasma epoch as an instrument, acoustics shed light on structure formation. What Peebles and Yu discovered is that the CMB was a medium where acoustic oscillations were initated and sustained for 300,000 years. If this is the case, then we can apply all of the concepts just described to understand the consequences of the sound waves propagating through the CMB. Shortly after the Big Bang, energy imparted into the plasma from a previous epoch (most likely cosmic inflation) created sound waves.”
― Stephon Alexander, The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe

“Planck's constant sets the scale for the wave-like nature of particles. It is a tiny number, which means that we don't see the waviness of macroscopic matter because we are moving slowly compared to the fast quantum particles zipping around the atom. If we were very tiny, we would see our inner waviness. De Broglie's connection between the wavelength of a particle and its momentum is at the heart of the famous uncertainty principle. And it was Werner Heisenberg that was able to precisely formulate it.”
― Stephon Alexander, The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe

“Supergravity is a version of Einstein's theory of general relativity, dressed up with supersymmetry-a symmetry that draws a connection between bosons and fermions, matching one boson for every fermion into "superpartners." Bosons are the entities responsible for transmitting forces, such as the photon that transmits the electromagnetic force. On the other hand, fermions are both matter particles, such as electrons and quarks, and the antiparticles of all these subatomic entities. Looking in the mirror is an example of how symmetry works. The image you see closely resembles how you appear to others because of your bilateral symmetry, even though the mirror switches your left side for your right. Think of supersymmetry as a mirror that switches Bosons for fermions without changing the behavior of the physical system.”
― Stephon Alexander, The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe

“The uncertainty of being able to know both where a particle is and where it is going beautifully mirrors jazz improvisation. And isn't it mind blowing that the spectrum of vibrations that were amplified by inflation, those that led to the structure in our universe today, is the same as the spectrum of noise? Fundamental to it all is the Fourier addition of waves. The harnonic structure of the cosmic microwave background emerges from quantum noise, just as distinct beats and rhythms emerge from a fundamental waveform, an oscillation, a uniform repetition, a circle.”
― Stephon Alexander, The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe

“We can think of the interactions of fields obeying similar four-dimensional equations that restrict them to live on a four-dimensional light cone. Other interactions that don't live on the light cone are not allowed.”
― Stephon Alexander, The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe

“Peebles and his graduate student Jer Yu were among the first to validate Pythagoras's and Kepler's intuitions of a musical cosmos. They discovered that the early universe generated sound waves with wavelengths extending 300,000 light years across-the size of the universe when the first stable atoms were formed and the CMB radiation was released. These sound waves contributed to the eventual creation of large-scale structures in the universe. Peebles and Yu summarized at the beginning of their groundbreaking 1970 paper, titled "Primeval Adiabatic Perturbation in an Expanding Universe," that "the possible discovery of radiation from the primeval fireball opens a promising lead toward a theory of the origin of galaxies.”
― Stephon Alexander, The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe

“contrary to the logical structure innate in physical law, in our attempts to reveal new vistas in our understanding, we often must embrace an irrational, illogical process, sometimes fraught with mistakes and improvisational thinking.”
― Stephon Alexander, The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe

“you want to be a great musician, you need to know three things. First, you must master the rules before trying to break them. Second, music is about tension and resolve. Third, practice, practice, practice, but when you’re out playing, forget it all.”
― Stephon Alexander, The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe

“What if the preinflationary universe was filled with light radiation; perhaps this energy could make space inflate.”
― Stephon Alexander, The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe

“What, then, sets human brains apart? What makes us uniquely able to do what nonhuman brains cannot: appreciate music and understand mathematics? And to create new things under the sun: compose, improvise, discover new mathematical facts about the universe?”
― Stephon Alexander, The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe

“In order to get a cyclic universe, the contracting past universe has to emerge into an expanding universe. Cosmologists call this phenomenon a cosmic bounce. Think of dropping a ball. For the ball to change direction, it has to hit the ground, decelerate, come to a stop, and change its downward velocity. This happens naturally due to momentum conservation and the elasticity of the ball. Similarly the "speed" of the decelerating universe will come to a halt and bounce into an expanding state after reaching a vanishing speed. In order for this to happen, we need a field that makes space-time like an "elastic" ball; called a ghost field, this field is an infinite reservoir of negative energy. Physicists do not like ghost fields because they can quantum mechanically transform to an infinite amount of light energy spontaneously. This happens because, according to an exchange Feynman diagram, the photon, the lightest particle in nature, can steal negative energy from the ghost field to create an explosive amount of photons. We don't see such explosive signatures of ghost fields today, so if cyclic universes are for realand do depend on ghost fields, then the ghost fields have figured out a clever way to not decay into photons. Nina Arkani-Hamed of the Institute for Advanced Studies and his colleagues proposed one way this could happen: the ghost field condenses, which bounds the negative energy to a finite value, preventing further decay into photons.”
― Stephon Alexander, The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe

“One of the mysteries in cosmology is that magnetic fields even exist across galactic distances, and we still don't know how and why.”
― Stephon Alexander, The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe

“Newton's law of motion unlocked the secrets of vibration and resonance from which, through the Fourier idea, we can both understand and construct complex waveforms from simple ones. As we will soon see, the Fourier idea applies to all the four forces and will serve as a key to understanding the structure of the universe. I leave you with a hint: if the structure of the universe is a result of a pattern of vibration, what causes the vibration? Is the universe behaving like an instrument?”
― Stephon Alexander, The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe

“It was amazing to me that the apparently unrelated Ising model of magnetism provided the direct inspiration for the Hopfield model of brain networks. The analogy was a beautiful one.”
― Stephon Alexander, The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe

“the paradigm that underlies much of physical reality is quantum field theory. It’s a mathematically daunting area of physics. Fortunately, for us, much of it can be understood in terms of the elements of music.”
― Stephon Alexander, The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe

“Interstellar”
― Stephon Alexander, The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe

“Leon enjoyed working on interesting and seemingly insurmountable problems, regardless of the subdiscipline. He would fearlessly tackle the most difficult issues or even correct long-held misconceptions and paradigms in other fields such as radiation physiology, neuroscience, and philosophy. During the time I spent working in the Cooper group, Leon was working in the field of neuroscience. And so it was that I began life as a graduate student in physics studying the brain. Who would have thought computational neuroscience would turn me into a cosmologist?”
― Stephon Alexander, The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe

“In the above equation, p is the momentum of the electron as it moves around the center of the nucleus and is the wavelength. It is amazing that this equation is a physical reality, for it states that an electron's "orbital" wavelength, a wave-like property, is related to how fast it is going around the nucleus, its momentum. The larger the wavelength, the slower and lighter the particle-recall that momentum is the product of the mass and velocity of a particle.”
― Stephon Alexander, The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe

“Many objects, especially musical instruments (and, as we will see, quantum fields), are endowed with a natural frequency such that the disturbed object will oscillate at a unique frequency (or set of frequencies), depending on the properties of the material that the object is made of. The simplest example of natural frequency is a mass connected to a spring. The only two parameters are the mass and the stiffness of the string.”
― Stephon Alexander, The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe

“Cosmic inflation generically produces a gravitational wave because the inflaton field, like a stone on a pond, disturbs the space-time fabric.”
― Stephon Alexander, The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe

“It was the interplay between symmetry and symmetry breaking that seemed to persist across seemingly unrelated phenomena, from elementary particles, to life, to the cosmos itself-as well as music.”
― Stephon Alexander, The Jazz of Physics: The Secret Link Between Music and the Structure of the Universe