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“It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble … There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change.”

“Had I been a literary man I might, perhaps, have moralized upon the futility of all ambition. But as it was, the thing that struck me with keenest force was the enormous waste of labour to which this sombre wilderness of rotting paper testified.”

“…a rigorous punishment of human selfishness. Man had been content to live in ease and delight upon the labours of his fellow-man, had taken Necessity as his watchword and excuse, and in the fullness of time Necessity had come home to him.”

“…the strength of a man and the softness of a woman, the institution of the family, and the difference of occupations are mere militant necessities of an age of physical force”

“Can a cube that does not last at any time at all, have a real existence? … any real body must have extension in /four/ directions: it must have Length, Breadth, Thickness— and Duration.”

“God for all intents and purposes is an equal sign, and at least up until now, something humanity has always been able to believe in is that the universe adds up”

“gravity, in this view, exists in order that all possible observational vantage points are on completely equal footing, i.e. so that the equivalence principle holds. Similarly, non-gravitational forces exist in order that nature respect their associated gauge symmetries… all of these symmetries, as well as super symmetry, emerge from string theory.”

“you don’t have to search far to locate where the Big Bang occurred, for it took place where you are now, as well as everywhere else. in the beginning, all locations we now see as separate were the same location.”

“although we had solid reason to believe that the powerful mirror relation holds for the shape progression leading to the tear—the pinching and growing a new sphere—we realized no one knew if the mirroring continued after the tear has occurred… if true, we would have demonstrated that space can tear”

(they did)

another unserious physics moniker:

mathematicians called the sequence of manipulations a Flop Transition* (relatable)

*imaged as slightly tearing the calabi-yau space at the pinch, opening it up, & gluing in another beachball-like shape that they then reinflate to a nice plump form. thus ‘flopping’ the original
beachball shape into a new orientation w/in the overall calabi-yau shape

at every point in the 3 familiar extended dimensions, string theory claims that there are six hitherto unanticipated dimensions, tightly curled up into one of these rather complicated looking 6 dimensional geometrical shapes: calabi-yau spaces

string theory requires extra space dimensions
that must be curled up to a very small size to be consistent with our never having seen them. but a tiny string can prove a tiny space; as a string moves about, oscillating as it goes, the geometrical form of the extra dimensions plays a critical role in determining its resonant vibration, thus establishing the masses and charges of fundamental particles

Physicsts are so unserious with naming things. I laughed out loud at this part—

the hypothetical super partners of neutrinos and quarks are Sneutrinos and Squarks.

“…this hypothetical particle has been named the Selectron, a contraction of ‘super symmetric’ and ‘electron’…
…for photons there should be ‘Photinos’ and for the gluons there should be ‘Gluinos’”

“one way that we learn about the structure of an object is by hurling other things at it and observing the precise way in which they are deflected.”
particle accelerators hurl bits of matter at each other (& other objects) and elaborate detectors analyze the resulting spray of debris. the size of the probe particle that we use sets the lower limit to the length scale to which we are sensitive.

“what appear to be different elementary particles are actually notes on a fundamental string. the universe, being composed of an enormous amount of these vibrating strings is akin to a cosmic symphony”

according to string theory, the properties of an elementary particle, it’s mass and various force charges, are determined by the precise resonant patterns of vibration that its internal string executes.
heavier particles have internal strings that vibrate more energetically

“from the ancient Pythagorean ‘music of the spheres’ to the harmonies of nature that have guided inquiry through the ages, we have collectively sought the song of nature in the gentle wanderings of celestial bodies and the riotous fulminations of subatomic particles”

“if we were to magnify the atom to the size of the known universe, the planck length would barely expand to the height of an average tree. as so we see, the incompatibility between general relativity and quantum mechanics becomes a parent only in a rather esoteric realm of the universe”

just as the symmetry between all possible observational vantage points in general relativity requires the existence of a gravitational force…gauge symmetries require the existence of yet other forces.
the strong force allows gauge symmetry associated with changing quark color charges.
the weak and electromagnetic forces are bound to their respective gauge symmetries as well

physicists realized that any attempt to verify this seemingly basic quality of reality ruins the [double slit] experiment. Feynman proclaimed each electron actually goes through both slits. he argued that in traveling from the source to a given point on the phosphorescent screen, each individual electron actually traverses every possible trajectory simultaneously

time elapses more slowly for an individual in motion than it does for a stationary individual.

this disparity does not just apply to time as measured by watches, but also the time
measured by heartbeats & the decay of body parts.

this has been directly confirmed with observation of muons (but there is a catch)

the electric charge of a particle plays the same role for the electromagnetic force as mass for for gravity. it determines how strongly the particle can exert, as well as respond, electromagnetically

“The wind whipped through the needles of the mother tree, but she stood steadfast. She had seen nature in countless forms: hot summer days when the mosquitoes swarmed, rain that came in sheets for weeks, snow so heavy some of her branches snapped, periods of drought followed by long, damp spells, the sky turned scarlet, her limbs on fire… she would be here for hundreds more years. Farewell, dear momma”

“The signals between the trees could be as sharp as the electrochemical impulses between neurons, the brain chemistry that allows us to think and communicate…The amount of carbon transferred relative to nitrogen was strikingly similar to their respective quantities in molecules of an amino acid called glutamate… the most abundant neurotransmitter in the brain”

“The older trees are able to discern which seedlings are their own kin. The old trees nurture the young ones and provide them food and water, just as we do with our own children. It is enough to make one pause, take a deep breath, and contemplate the social network of the forest and how this is critical for evolution… These old trees are mothering their children”

“The old and young [trees are] responding to one another by emitting chemical signals. Chemicals identical to our own neurotransmitters, signals created by ions cascading across fungal membranes.”

“The misery, the discomfort, and the trauma. A thing that lives in her is hungry for it, lapping it up like a cat. Staring avidly at it through the thin pane that separates them, and thinking Yes.”

“But that was all just messianic crowd-pleasing. They were going to feast on the carcase of Earth, was all it was.”

“We fear it, yet most of us fear more than anything that it may take someone other than ourselves. For the greatest fear of death is that it will always pass us by & leave us there, alone”

“Some of us, in time become so conscious of it that we live harder, more obstinately, with more fury. Some need its constant presence to even be aware of its antithesis. Others become so preoccupied with it that they go into the waiting room long before it has announced its arrival.”