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Planets Are Too Dim To Be Detected With Existing Equipment, Far Away, Except In These Very Special Circumstances Where They're Seen By Their Gravitational Effect

-Murray Gell-Mann

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Planets Are Too Dim

Murray Gell-Mann

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Planets Are Too Dim To Be Detected With Existing Equipment, Far Away, Except In These Very Special Circumstances Where They're Seen By Their Gravitational Effect

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I Think Also Of My Colleagues In Elementary Particle Theory In Many Lands, And Feel That In Some Measure I Am Here As A Representative Of Our Small, Informal, International Fraternity.

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Today The Network Of Relationships Linking The Human Race To Itself And To The Rest Of The Biosphere Is So Complex That All Aspects Affect All Others To An Extraordinary Degree. Someone Should Be Studying The Whole System, However Crudely That Has To Be Done, Because No Gluing Together Of Partial Studies Of A Complex Nonlinear System Can Give A Good Idea Of The Behavior Of The Whole.

Of Course The Word Chaos Is Used In Rather A Vague Sense By A Lot Of Writers, But In Physics It Means A Particular Phenomenon, Namely That In A Nonlinear System The Outcome Is Often Indefinitely, Arbitrarily Sensitive To Tiny Changes In The Initial Condition

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I Would Recommend That Skeptics Devote Even More Effort Than They Do Now To Understanding The Reasons Why So Many People Want Or Need To Believe.

Bush Is A Nice Fellow Who Gives Very Good Parties. I Just Wish Someone Would Find Him A Better Job Than Running The Country.

Both Biological And Cultural Diversity Are Now Severely Threatened And Working For Their Preservation Is A Critical Task.

So The Old Copenhagen Interpretation Needs To Be Generalized, Needs To Be Replaced By Something That Can Be Used For The Whole Universe, And Can Be Used Also In Cases Where There Is Plenty Of Individuality And History

The Persistence Of Erroneous Beliefs Exacerbates The Widespread Anachronistic Failure To Recognize The Urgent Problems That Face Humanity On This Planet.

Just Because Things Get A Little Dingy At The Subatomic Level Doesn't Mean All Bets Are Off.

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The World Of The Quark Has Everything To Do With A Jaguar Circling In The Night.

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As A Theoretical Physicist, I Feel At Once Proud And Humble At The Thought Of The Illustrious Figures That Have Preceded Me Here To Receive The Greatest Of All Honors In Science, The Nobel Prize.

My Colleagues In Elementary Particle Theory In Many Lands [and I] Are Driven By The Usual Insatiable Curiosity Of The Scientist, And Our Work Is A Delightful Game. I Am Frequently Astonished That It So Often Results In Correct Predictions Of Experimental Results. How Can It Be That Writing Down A Few Simple And Elegant Formulae, Like Short Poems Governed By Strict Rules Such As Those Of The Sonnet Or The Waka, Can Predict Universal Regularities Of Nature?

If Someone Says That He Can Think Or Talk About Quantum Physics Without Becoming Dizzy, That Shows Only That He Has Not Understood Anything Whatever About It.

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Niels Bohr Brainwashed A Whole Generation Of Theorists Into Thinking That The Job (interpreting Quantum Theory) Was Done 50 Years Ago.

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Three Principles - The Conformability Of Nature To Herself, The Applicability Of The Criterion Of Simplicity, And The Utility Of Certain Parts Of Mathematics In Describing Physical Reality - Are Thus Consequences Of The Underlying Law Of The Elementary Particles And Their Interactions. Those Three Principles Need Not Be Assumed As Separate Metaphysical Postulates. Instead, They Are Emergent Properties Of The Fundamental Laws Of Physics.

What Is Especially Striking And Remarkable Is That In Fundamental Physics A Beautiful Or Elegant Theory Is More Likely To Be Right Than A Theory That Is Inelegant.

Planets Are Too Dim To Be Detected With Existing Equipment, Far Away, Except In These Very Special Circumstances Where They're Seen By Their Gravitational Effect

In Our Work, We Are Always Between Scylla And Charybdis; We May Fail To Abstract Enough, And Miss Important Physics, Or We May Abstract Too Much And End Up With Fictitious Objects In Our Models Turning Into Real Monsters That Devour Us.

Think How Hard Physics Would Be If Particles Could Think

What Is Especially Striking And Remarkable Is That In Fundamental Physics, A Beautiful Or Elegant Theory Is More Likely To Be Right Than A Theory That Is Inelegant. A Theory Appears To Be Beautiful Or Elegant (or Simple, If You Prefer) When It Can Be Expressed Concisely In Terms Of Mathematics We Already Have. Symmetry Exhibits The Simplicity. The Foundamental Law Is Such That The Different Skins Of The Onion Resemble One Another And Therefore The Math For One Skin Allows You To Express Beautifully And Simply The Phenomenon Of The Next Skin.

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Perhaps We See Equations As Simple Because They Are Easily Expressed In Terms Of Mathematical Notation Already Invented At An Earlier Stage Of Development Of The Science, And Thus What Appears To Us As Elegance Of Description Really Reflects The Interconnectedness Of Nature's Laws At Different Levels.

All Of Modern Physics Is Governed By That Magnificent And Thoroughly Confusing Discipline Called Quantum Mechanics ... It Has Survived All Tests And There Is No Reason To Believe That There Is Any Flaw In It. We All Know How To Use It And How To Apply It To Problems; And So We Have Learned To Live With The Fact That Nobody Can Understand It.

The Chaos Can Act As A Magnifier Of Quantum Fluctuations So That They Can Produce Sizable Effects In The World Around Us. But We Know That That Can Happen Often

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I Am Frequently Astonished That It So Often Results In Correct Predictions Of Experimental Results.

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For Me, The Study Of These Laws Is Inseparable From A Love Of Nature In All Its Manifestations. The Beauty Of The Basic Laws Of Natural Science, As Revealed In The Study Of Particles And Of The Cosmos, Is Allied To The Litheness Of A Merganser Diving In A Pure Swedish Lake, Or The Grace Of A Dolphin Leaving Shining Trails At Night In The Gulf Of California.

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What I Try To Do In The Book Is To Trace The Chain Of Relationships Running From Elementary Particles, Fundamental Building Blocks Of Matter Everywhere In The Universe, Such As Quarks, All The Way To Complex Entities, And In Particular Complex Adaptive System Like Jaguars.

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