“What had stopped them both in their tracks was Gamow's suggestion that the laws of physics could describe something being created out of nothing.”

—  John D. Barrow

The Book of Universes: Exploring the Limits of the Cosmos (2011)
Context: Einstein had spent the previous thirty years showing how we could understand the behaviour of whole universes with simple maths. Gamow saw that those universes must have had a past that was unimaginably different to the present. What had stopped them both in their tracks was Gamow's suggestion that the laws of physics could describe something being created out of nothing.<!--ch. 1, p. 2

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John D. Barrow 58
British scientist 1952–2020

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