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  3. Carlo Rovelli

Carlo Rovelli Quotes

Carlo Rovelli is an Italian theoretical physicist and writer who has worked in Italy, the United States and since 2000, in France. His work is mainly in the field of quantum gravity, where he is among the founders of the loop quantum gravity theory. He has also worked in the history and philosophy of science. He collaborates regularly with several Italian newspapers, in particular the cultural supplements of Il Corriere della Sera, Il Sole 24 Ore and La Repubblica.

✵ 3. May 1956  •  Other names کارلو روولی
Carlo Rovelli photo

Works

Quantum gravity
Quantum gravity
Carlo Rovelli
The Order of Time
The Order of Time
Carlo Rovelli
Seven Brief Lessons on Physics
Carlo Rovelli: 21 quotes1 like

Famous Carlo Rovelli Quotes

“Listening to a cultivated person of today who jokes and almost boasts of his scientific ignorance is as sad as listening to a scientist who boasts of not having read any poem.”

Carlo Rovelli

Il Sole 24 Ore cultural supplement, October 17, 2010.

“In his youth Albert Einstein spent a year loafing aim- lessly. You don’t get anywhere by not ‘wasting’ time – something, unfortunately, which the parents of teenagers tend frequently to forget.”

Carlo Rovelli book Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

Incipit
Seven Brief Lectures on Physics (2014)
Source: Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

“We are made of the same stardust of which all things are made, and when we are immersed in suffering or when we are experiencing intense joy we are being nothing other than what we can’t help but be: a part of our world.”

Carlo Rovelli book Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

Source: Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

“The landscape is magic, the trip is far from being over.”

Carlo Rovelli Quantum gravity

Source: Quantum gravity (2004), p. xv

“Don't trust your teachers.”

Carlo Rovelli

Lectures at The First Quantum Geometry and Quantum Gravity School, March 23 - April 3, 2007, Zakopane, Poland.

“The new coherent picture is not yet available. With all their immense empirical success, G(eneral)R(elativity) and Q(uantum)M(echanics) have left us with an understanding of the physical world which is unclear and badly fragmented. At the foundations of physics there is today confusion and incoherence.”

Carlo Rovelli Quantum gravity

Source: Quantum gravity (2004), p. 4

Carlo Rovelli Quotes about time

“[T]ime is much more elastic than our intuition of this rigid passage... The time interval between one point and another... depends on where you are.”

Carlo Rovelli

Carlo Rovelli: The nature of time (Apr 10, 2020)

“If we formulate the fundamental theory of nature in a timeless language, we have then the problem of recovering the familiar notion of time.”

Carlo Rovelli

"Forget time" (Aug, 2008)

“General relativity has changed our understanding of space and time. ...The spacetime of general relativity ...is likely to be just a classical approximation that loses its meaning in the quantum theory, for the same reason the trajectory of a particle does.”

Carlo Rovelli

"Forget time" (Aug, 2008)

“I... interpret mechanics as a theory of relations between variables, rather than the theory of the evolution of variables in time.”

Carlo Rovelli

"Forget time" (Aug, 2008)

“[I]n a fundamental description of nature we must "forget time"... this can be done in the classical and in the quantum theory.”

Carlo Rovelli

"Forget time" (Aug, 2008)

“I argue that the best strategy for understanding quantum gravity is to build a picture of the physical world where the notion of time plays no role at all.”

Carlo Rovelli

"Forget time" (Aug, 2008)

Carlo Rovelli Quotes about the world

“I think that physics is about escaping the prison of the received thoughts and searching for novel ways of thinking the world, about trying to clear a bit the misty lake of insubstantial dreams, which reflect reality like the lake reflects the mountains.”

Carlo Rovelli Quantum gravity

Source: Quantum gravity (2004), p. xvii

“The World is Made of Events, not Things.”

Carlo Rovelli book The Order of Time

Source: The Order of Time (2018), p. 85

“The difference between past and future... cause and effect... memory and hope... regret and intention... in the elementary laws that describe the mechanisms of the world, there is no such difference.”

Carlo Rovelli book The Order of Time

2. Loss of Direction. Where Does the Eternal Current Come From?
The Order of Time (2018)

“Children grow up and discover that the world is not as it seemed within the four walls of their homes. Humankind as a whole does the same.”

Carlo Rovelli book The Order of Time

Source: The Order of Time (2018), p. 11

Carlo Rovelli Quotes

“But it isn’t absence that causes sorrow. It is affection and love. Without affection, without love, such absences would cause us no pain. For this reason, even the pain caused by absence is, in the end, something good and even beautiful, because it feeds on that which gives meaning to life.”

Carlo Rovelli book The Order of Time

Source: The Order of Time (2018), p. 105

“A handful of types of elementary particles, which vibrate and fluctuate constantly between existence and non-existence and swarm in space even when it seems that there is nothing there, combine together to infinity like the letters of a cosmic alphabet to tell the immense history of galaxies, of the innumerable stars, of sunlight, of mountains, woods and fields of grain, of the smiling faces of the young at parties, and of the night sky studded with stars.”

Carlo Rovelli

Source: Seven Brief Lectures on Physics (2014), p. 34

“Time is... the expression of our ignorance of the full microstate.”

Carlo Rovelli

"Forget time" (Aug, 2008)

“If we had a starship, we could move near a black hole, stay there for a half hour and then come out. Outside hundreds of years could have gone. So we could... come away from the black hole into the far future easily.”

Carlo Rovelli

Carlo Rovelli: The nature of time (Apr 10, 2020)

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