John D. Barrow: Quotes about space

John D. Barrow was British scientist. Explore interesting quotes on universe.
John D. Barrow: 116   quotes 1   like

“While we have no reason to expect that our position in the universe is special in every way, we would be equally misled were we to assume that it could not be special in any way.”

John D. Barrow

The Book of Universes: Exploring the Limits of the Cosmos (2011), ch. 2, p. 22

Way , Universe

“There was always something left: a vacuum energy that permeated every fibre of the Universe.”

John D. Barrow

Source: The Book of Nothing (2009), chapter nought "Nothingology—Flying to Nowhere"<!-- p. 10-->
Context: The quantum revolution showed us why the old picture of a vacuum as an empty box was untenable.... Gradually, this exotic new picture of quantum nothingness succumbed to experimental exploration... in the form of vacuum tubes, light bulbs and X-rays. Now the 'empty' space itself started to be probed.... There was always something left: a vacuum energy that permeated every fibre of the Universe.

Universe

“The Indian system of counting is probably the most successful intellectual innovation ever devised by human beings. It has been universally adopted. …It is the nearest thing we have to a universal language.”

John D. Barrow

Source: The Book of Nothing (2009), chapter one "Zero—The Whole Story"

Universe , Success

“There could not be a non-mathematical Universe containing living observers.”

John D. Barrow

The Artful Universe (1995)
Context: Where there is life there is a pattern, and where there is a pattern there is mathematics. Once that germ of rationality and order exists to turn a chaos into a cosmos, then so does mathematics. There could not be a non-mathematical Universe containing living observers.<!-- Ch. 5, p. 230

Mathematics , Universe

“The physicist's concept of nothing—the vacuum… began as empty space—the void… turned into a stagnant ether through which all the motions of the Universe swam, vanished in Einstein's hands, then re-emerged in the twentieth-century quantum picture of how Nature works.”

John D. Barrow

Source: The Book of Nothing (2009), chapter nought "Nothingology—Flying to Nowhere"

Nature , Universe

“Einstein showed us how to find all the possible universes that were consistent with the laws of physics and the character of gravity, how to reconstruct their pasts and predict their futures. But actually finding them was no easy task.”

John D. Barrow

Preface
The Book of Universes: Exploring the Limits of the Cosmos (2011)

Law , Universe , Past , Future

“Even today, there persists… a feeling that the creation of the Universe out of nothing must violate some basic conservation law that stops one from getting something for nothing. Nevertheless, there is actually no evidence that the Universe as a whole possesses a non-zero value of any such conserved quantity. The total mass-energy of all the constituents of a finite Universe appears to be always equal in magnitude but opposite in sign to the total gravitational potential energies of those particles. …Similarly, there is no evidence that the Universe possesses any overall net rotation or electric charge.”

John D. Barrow

New Theories of Everything (2007)

Law , Feeling , Universe , Appearance

“The legacy of the great monotheistic religions is the expectation of a single over-arching explanation for the Universe. …There is no logical reason why the Universe should not contain surds of arbitrary elements that do not relate to the rest.”

John D. Barrow

New Theories of Everything (2007)

Religion , Universe

“Einstein showed us that the Universe might contain a mysterious form of vacuum energy…. Last year, two teams of astronomers used Earth's most powerful telescopes… to gather persuasive evidence for the reality of the cosmic vacuum energy. Its effects are dramatic. It is accelerating the expansion of the Universe.”

John D. Barrow

Source: The Book of Nothing (2009), chapter nought "Nothingology—Flying to Nowhere"<!-- p. 11-->

Reality , Universe

“The secret of how galaxies came into being may well be fathomed by the study of the most elementary particles of matter in particle detectors buried deep underground; the identity of those elementary particles may be revealed by observations of distant starlight. …by the coming together of the largest and the smallest aspects of the physical world our appreciation of the unity of the universe becomes more impressive and complete.”

John D. Barrow

Preface
The Origin of the Universe (1997)

Secret , World , Study , Universe

“A less inflexible picture of mathematics is one that focuses on the fact that it is an open-ended human activity. Inventionism is the belief that mathematics is nothing more than what mathematicians do. …We invent mathematics; we do not discover it. …The independent discovery of the same mathematical theorems by different mathematicians from totally different economic, cultural, and political backgrounds—often at widely separated times in history—argues against such a simple view. The inventionist could respond by pointing to the universality of human languages. …One might expect that those aspects of this universal grammar that share features of logic, and hence counting, would also make counting appear instinctive. In fact, although simple counting… is fairly universal in ancient and primitive cultures, virtually none of them went on to carry out mathematical operations more sophisticated than counting. This suggests that these higher mathematical operations are not genetically programmed into the human brain… They are more likely to be by-products of multi-purpose pattern-recognition capabilities.”

John D. Barrow

The Artful Universe (1995)

History , Mathematics , Universe , Appearance

“What Hubble discovered was the expansion of the universe…. We are not expanding. Nor is Brooklyn. Nor is earth. Nor is the solar system. Nor, in fact, is the Milky Way galaxy. Nor even those aggregates of thousands of galaxies that we call "galaxy clusters." These collections of matter are bound together by chemical and gravitational forces between their constituents—forces that are stronger than the force of expansion.”

John D. Barrow

The Origin of the Universe (1997)

Way , Universe

“Aristotle believed that the world did not come into being at some time in the past; it had always existed and it would always exist, unchanged in essence for ever. He placed a high premium on symmetry and believed that the sphere was the most perfect of all shapes. Hence the universe must be spherical. …An important feature of the spherical shape… was the fact that when a sphere rotates it does not cut into empty space where there is no matter and it leaves no empty space behind. …A vacuum was impossible. It could no more exist than an infinite physical quantity. …Circular motion was the most perfect and natural movement of all.”

John D. Barrow

The Book of Universes: Exploring the Limits of the Cosmos (2011)

Time , Past , Nature , Universe