Frank Wilczek: Physical

Frank Wilczek is physicist. Explore interesting quotes on physical.
Frank Wilczek: 98   quotes 0   likes

“A common habit of thought… is the idea that space is [a] simple receptacle in which bodies move around, with no two bodies present at the same point. …In modern quantum physics generally, and in the standard model of fundamental physics in particular, physical space appears as a far more flexible framework. Many kinds of particles can be present at the same point in space at the same time. Indeed, the primary ingredients of the standard model are not particles at all, but an abundance of quantum fields, each a complex object in itself, and all omnipresent.”

Frank Wilczek

"Multiversality" (2013)

Idea , Appearance , Time

“As the idea of permanence of objects has faded, the idea of permanence of physical laws has become better established and more powerful.”

Frank Wilczek

Source: Longing for the Harmonies: Themes and Variations from Modern Physics (1987), Ch.7 New Star

Law , Idea

“Ironically, conventional quantum mechanics itself involves a vast expansion of physical reality, which may be enough to avoid Einstein Insanity. The equations of quantum dynamics allow physicists to predict the future values of the wave function, given its present value. According to the Schrödinger equation, the wave function evolves in a completely predictable way. But in practice we never have access to the full wave function, either at present or in the future, so this “predictability” is unattainable. If the wave function provides the ultimate description of reality — a controversial issue!”

Frank Wilczek

we must conclude that “God plays a deep yet strictly rule-based game, which looks like dice to us.”
Einstein’s Parable of Quantum Insanity (2015)

God , Way , Game , Reality

“What should be most significant to us are not physical artifacts, but the meaning they embody. …whenever we create paintings, songs, poems, books, computer programs—or ideas in the minds of children—we do something of this sort.”

Frank Wilczek

Longing for the Harmonies: Themes and Variations from Modern Physics (1987)

Children , Books , Idea , Painting

“For many centuries before modern science, and for the first two and a half centuries of modern science, the division of reality into matter and light seemed self-evident. …As long as the separation between the massive and the massless persisted, a unified description of the physical world could not be achieved.”

Frank Wilczek

Source: The Lightness of Being – Mass, Ether and the Unification of Forces (2008), Ch. 1, p. 9.

World , Reality , Light , Science

“The most abstract conservation laws of physics come into their being in describing equilibrium in the most extreme conditions. They are the most rigorous conservation laws, the last to break down. The more extreme the conditions, the fewer the conserved structures… In a deep sense, we understand the interior of the sun better that the interior of the earth, and the early stages of the big bang best of all.”

Frank Wilczek

Fourth Theme, Prelude Four
Longing for the Harmonies: Themes and Variations from Modern Physics (1987)

Law , Understanding , Sense , Sun

“The traditional “cosmological” Multiverse considers that there might be physical realms inaccessible to us due to their separation in space-time. The quantum Multiverse arises from entities that occupy the same space-time, but are distant in Hilbert space – or in the jargon, decoherent.”

Frank Wilczek

"Multiversality" (2013)

Distant , Time

“The phase transition paradigm: The standard model of fundamental physics incorporates, as one of its foundational principles, the idea that “empty space” or “vacuum” can exist in different phases, typically associated with different amounts of symmetry. Moreover, the laws of the standard model itself suggest that phase transitions will occur, as functions of temperature. Extensions of the standard model to build in higher symmetry (gauge unification or especially supersymmetry) can support effective vacua with radically different properties, separated by great distance or by domain walls. That would be a form of failure of universality, in our sense, whose existence is suggested by the standard model.”

Frank Wilczek

"Multiversality" (2013)

Law , Idea , Failure , Support

“What is conserved, in modern physics, is not any particular substance or material but only much more abstract entities such as energy, momentum, and electric charge. The permanent aspects of reality are not particular materials or structures but rather the possible forms of structures and the rules for their transformation.”

Frank Wilczek

Source: Longing for the Harmonies: Themes and Variations from Modern Physics (1987), Ch.8 The Weak Interaction

Reality

“If the “universe” contains everything that exists, what can be outside it? If the answer is “Things that don’t exist”, then “multiverse” becomes an idea in the domain of psychology, not physics.”

Frank Wilczek

"Multiversality" (2013)

Idea , Universe

“Physics is my religious belief. In the sense that in physics we discover a fantastically wonderful world out there that’s rich in potential, rich in realization, and that has ample scope for fantasy, because the laws are so strange and there’s so much stuff out there to understand. And when you understand it, you understand how that could be.
I learn that I myself am very small. But I am also very large because I contain multitudes, as Walt Whitman said. I can process information. I can understand things. I can imagine. I can have fun. That’s the essence of my religion. I learn my religion from the study of what the world is and how it works.”

Frank Wilczek

as quoted by Claudia Dreyfus in: [January 21, 2021, A Prodigy Who Cracked Open the Cosmos (an interview with Franck Wilczek), Quanta Magazine, https://www.quantamagazine.org/frank-wilczek-cracked-open-the-cosmos-20210112/]

Study , Religion , Law , Understanding