Quotes About String Theory

#1. I take out my book, glad to have a few minutes to study the diagram on time travel and string theory. But before I can build a time machine out of strings, I need to figure out what the heck they are talking about.

Wendy Mass

#2. String theory envisions a multiverse in which our universe is one slice of bread in a big cosmic loaf. The other slices would be displaced from ours in some extra dimension of space.

Brian Greene

#3. According to String Theory, what appears to be empty space is actually a tumultuous ocean of strings vibrating at the precise frequencies that create the 4 dimensions you and I call height, width, depth and time.

Roy H. Williams

#4. I just think too many nice things have happened in string theory for it to be all wrong. Humans do not understand it very well, but I just don't believe there is a big cosmic conspiracy that created this incredible thing that has nothing to do with the real world.

Edward Witten

#5. I spent most of my career doing high-energy physics, quarks, dark matter, string theory and so on.

Geoffrey West

#6. Our best theory of describing space at a fundamental level is probably string theory.

Alan Guth

#7. Teddy tried, in the manner of a simple layman, to keep up with theoretical physics, via articles in the Telegraph and an heroic struggle with Stephen Hawking in 1996, but admitted defeat when he came across string theory. From then on he took every day as it came, hour by hour.

Kate Atkinson

#8. When we understand string theory, we will know how the universe began. It won't have much effect on how we live, but it is important to understand where we come from and what we can expect to find as we explore.

Stephen Hawking

#9. The full name of string theory is really superstring theory. The 'super' stands for this feature called supersymmetry, which, without getting into any details, predicts that for every known particle in the world, there should be a partner particle, the so-called supersymmetric partner.

Brian Greene

#10. I believe conspiracy theories are part of a larger conspiracy to distract us from the real conspiracy. String theory.

Andy Kindler

#11. The next big accelerator might be the ILC in Japan, a linear collider which might be able to probe the boundaries of string theory. So we physicists have to learn how to engage the public so that taxpayers money is used to explore the nature of the universe.

Michio Kaku

#12. The problem is that string theory is defined at an energy scale that is about ten million billion times larger than those we can experimentally explore with our current instruments.

Lisa Randall

#13. String theory is not the only theory that can accommodate extra dimensions, but it certainly is the one that really demands and requires it.

Brian Greene

#14. For bedtime reading, I usually curl up with a good monograph on quantum physics or string theory, my specialty. But since I was a child, I have been fascinated by science fiction. My all-time favorite is 'The Foundation Trilogy,' by Isaac Asimov.

Michio Kaku

#15. Just like an ordinary guitar string, a fundamental string can vibrate in different modes. And it is these different modes of vibration of the string that are understood in string theory as being the different elementary particles.

Lee Smolin

#16. According to string theory in quantum mechanics the core of energy and matter on a subatomic level is a vibrating, string-like filament that is identical in all energy and matter.

Russell Anthony Gibbs

#17. Your humble correspondent realizes that many readers are left-wing, anti-string-theory fighters. So they probably smoke marijuana and this is my modest attempt to help them.

Lubos Motl

#18. For string theory to make sense, the universe should have nine spacial dimensions and one time dimension, for a total of ten dimensions.

Brian Greene

#19. Technically you need the extra dimensions. At first people didn't like them too much, but they've got a big benefit, which is that the ability of string theory to describe all the elementary particles and their forces along with gravity depends on using the extra dimensions.

Edward Witten

#20. String theory is based on the simple idea that all the four forces of the universe: gravity, the electromagnetic force and the two nuclear forces, can be viewed, as music.

Michio Kaku

#21. I hope we find evidence of dark matter in the lab and in outer space. This would go a long way to proving the correctness of string theory, which is what I do for a living. That is my day job. So string theory is a potentially experimentally verifiable theory.

Michio Kaku

#22. General relativity is the cornerstone of cosmology and astrophysics. It has also provided the conceptual basis for string theory and other attempts to unify all the forces of nature in terms of geometrical structures.

Paul Davies

#23. Some string theorists prefer to believe that string theory is too arcane to be understood by human beings, rather than consider the possibility that it might just be wrong.

Lee Smolin

#24. I don't think about a theory of everything when I do my research. And even if we knew the ultimate underlying theory, how are you going to explain the fact that we're sitting here? Solving string theory won't tell us how humanity was born.

Lisa Randall

#25. If string theory is right, the microscopic fabric of our universe is a richly intertwined multidimensional labyrinth within which the strings of the universe endlessly twist and vibrate, rhythmically beating out the laws of the cosmos.

Brian Greene

#26. If string theory is a mistake, it's not a trivial mistake. It's a deep mistake and therefore kind of worthy.

Lee Smolin

#27. String Theory describes energy and matter as being composed of tiny, wiggling strands of energy that look like strings. And the pitch of a string's vibration determines the nature of its effect.

Roy H. Williams

#28. We need a theory that goes before the Big Bang, and that's String Theory. String Theory says that perhaps two universes collided to create our universe, or maybe our universe is butted from another universe leaving an umbilical cord. Well, that umbilical cord is called a wormhole.

Michio Kaku

#29. I do feel strongly that string theory is our best hope for making progress at unifying gravity and quantum mechanics.

Brian Greene

#30. We do not know how to formulate string theory nor do we know its underlying principles. Surprisingly, this fact does not stop us from making progress.

Nathan Seiberg

#31. Look at the size of the universe and look at what we're discovering about string theory. There's a wide-eyed sense of we're just getting started here.

Rob Bell

#32. Because string theory is such a high-risk venture - unsupported by experiment,

Lee Smolin

#33. Combining quantum entanglement with wormholes yields mind boggling results about black holes. But I don't trust them until we have a theory of everything which can combine quantum effects with general relativity. i.e. we need to have a full blown string theory resolve this sticky question.

Michio Kaku

#34. I had to get back to dealing with facts. One fact was that something bizarre was going on, but I'd be far more likely to find an explanation in a modern book on string theory than in an ancient tome on the spirit world.

Hilary Duff

#35. String theory is 21 st century physics that fell accidentally into the 20th century.

Edward Witten

#36. In the book, I make the point that here we have string theory and here we have twistor theory and we don't know if either one of them is the right approach to nature.

Roger Penrose

#37. I like to think that Einstein would look at string theory's journey and smile, enjoying the theory's remarkable geometrical features while feeling kinship with fellow travelers on the long and winding road toward unification.

Brian Greene

#38. I can assure you that no string theorist would be interested in working on string theory if it were somehow permanently beyond testability. That would no longer be doing science.

Brian Greene

#39. In string theory, all particles are vibrations on a tiny rubber band; physics is the harmonies on the string; chemistry is the melodies we play on vibrating strings; the universe is a symphony of strings, and the 'Mind of God' is cosmic music resonating in 11-dimensional hyperspace.

Michio Kaku

#40. At that moment it would have been easier for me to spontaneously grasp quantum string theory

Augusten Burroughs

#41. Is the universe 'elegant,' as Brian Greene tells us? Not as far as I can tell, not the usual laws of particle physics, anyway. I think I might find the universal principles of String Theory most elegant - if I only knew what they were.

Leonard Susskind

#42. My belief is based on the fact that string theory is the first science in hundreds of years to be pursued in pre-Baconian fashion, without any adequate experimental guidance.

Philip Warren Anderson

#43. As you say, the way string theory requires all these extra dimensions and this comes from certain consistency requirements about how string should behave and so on.

Roger Penrose

#44. In essence, String Theory describes space and time, matter and energy, gravity and light, indeed all of God's creation ... as music.

Roy H. Williams

#45. Every string theory that's been written down says the speed of light is universal. But other ideas about quantum gravity predict the speed of light has actually increased.

Lee Smolin

#46. There are a lot of good things about string theory, and it's great that some people want to work on it.

Antony Garrett Lisi

#47. One of the strangest features of string theory is that it requires more than the three spatial dimensions that we see directly in the world around us. That sounds like science fiction, but it is an indisputable outcome of the mathematics of string theory.

Brian Greene

#48. Einstein comes along and says, space and time can warp and curve, that's what gravity is. Now string theory comes along and says, yes, gravity, quantum mechanics, electromagnetism - all together in one package, but only if the universe has more dimensions than the ones that we see.

Brian Greene

#49. So when you ask me how string theory might be tested, I can tell you what's likely to happen at accelerators or some parts of the theory that are likely to be tested.

Edward Witten

#50. There was quantum mechanics, string theory, and then there was the most mind-bending frontier of the natural world, women.

Marisha Pessl

#51. The best theory comes from string theory, which states that dark matter is nothing but a higher vibration of the string. We are, in some sense, the lowest octave of a vibrating string.

Michio Kaku

#52. Some of its proponents like to say that string theory is a piece of twenty-first- century mathematics that has, by our good fortune, fallen into our hands in the twentieth century.

Lee Smolin

#53. One very important aspect of string theory is definitely testable. That was the prediction of supersymmetry, which emerged from string theory in the early '70s.

Edward Witten

#54. The most important single thing about string theory is that it's a highly mathematical theory, and the mathematics holds together in a very tight and consistent way. It contains in its basic structure both quantum mechanics and the theory of gravity. That's big news.

Leonard Susskind

#55. My emotional investment is in finding truth. If string theory is wrong, I'd like to have known that yesterday. But if we can show it today or tomorrow, fantastic.

Brian Greene

#56. I'd say many features of string theory don't mesh with what we observe in everyday life.

Brian Greene

#57. Even before string theory, especially as physics developed in the 20th century, it turned out that the equations that really work in describing nature with the most generality and the greatest simplicity are very elegant and subtle.

Edward Witten

#58. String theory is an attempt at a deeper description of nature by thinking of an elementary particle not as a little point but as a little loop of vibrating string.

Edward Witten

#59. I'm the Ted Bundy of string theory.

Sam Harris

#60. Einstein was searching for String Theory. It not only reconciles General Relativity to Quantum Mechanics, but it reconciles Science and the Bible as well.

Roy H. Williams

#61. When I was in high school, I was really into string theory and superstring theory and read 'Scientific American.' It's fascinating.

Sam Trammell

#62. Very much, string theory is simply a work in progress. What we are inching toward every day are predictions that within the realm of current technology we hope to test. It's not like we're working on a theory that is permanently beyond experiment. That would be philosophy.

Brian Greene

#63. In order to achieve a true understanding of string theory, some new idea will be required, and most likely, some break with the concepts on which we've traditionally based physical theory.

David Gross

#64. String theory's biggest prediction is that gravity exists. That's good. That's a lot more than preceding theories could do.

Sheldon Lee Glashow

#65. The central idea of string theory is quite straightforward. If you examine any piece of matter ever more finely, at first you'll find molecules, atoms, sub-atomic particles. Probe the smaller particles, you'll find something else, a tiny vibrating filament of energy, a little tiny vibrating string.

Brian Greene

#66. The idea that excites me the most concerns the two greatest puzzles in science: the origin of the universe, and the origin of consciousness. The origin of the universe is what I do for a living, working on string theory. But I am also fascinated by consciousness.

Michio Kaku

#67. ... The wonders of life and the universe are mere reflections of microscopic particles engaged in a pointless dance fully choreographed by the laws of physics.

Brian Greene

#68. What the string theorists do is arguably physics. It deals with the physical world. They're attempting to make a consistent theory that explains the interactions we see among particles and gravity as well. That's certainly physics, but it's a kind of physics that is not yet testable.

Sheldon Lee Glashow

#69. The universe as a giant harpstring, oscillating in and out of existence! What note does it play, by the way? Passages from the Numerical Harmonies, I supposed?

Ursula K. Le Guin

#70. subscribed to the theory that life consisted of a long string of miseries, tolerated only because the alternative was worse.

Amy Fecteau

#71. But my agent has a theory. She says every marriage is jerry-rigged. Even the ones that look reasonable from the outside are held together inside with chewing gum and wire and string.

Jenny Offill

#72. All high mathematics serves to do is to beget higher mathematics.

Ashim Shanker

#73. If patterns of ones and zeroes were "like" patterns of human lives and deaths, if everything about an individual could be represented in a computer record by a long strings of ones and zeroes, then what kind of creature could be represented by a long string of lives and deaths?

Thomas Pynchon