A Quote by Brian Greene

In quantum mechanics there is A causing B. The equations do not stand outside that usual paradigm of physics. The real issue is that the kinds of things you predict in quantum mechanics are different from the kinds of things you predict using general relativity. Quantum mechanics, that big, new, spectacular remarkable idea is that you only predict probabilities, the likelihood of one outcome or another. That's the new idea.

Brian Greene

Quote Topics

Another Big Causing Different Equations General General Relativity Idea Issue Kinds Likelihood Mechanics New New Idea Only Outcome Outside Paradigm Physics Predict Quantum Quantum Mechanics Real Relativity Remarkable Spectacular Stand Things Using Usual

Quote Author

Brian Greene
American - Physicist
Born: February 9, 1963

General relativity is in the old Newtonian framework where you predict what will happen, not the probability of what will happen. And putting together the probabilities of quantum mechanics with the certainty of general relativity, that's been the big challenge and that's why we have been excited about string theory, as it's one of the only approaches that can put it together.

Brian Greene

As an adult I discovered that I was a pretty good autodidact, and can teach myself all kind of things. And developed a great interest in a number of different things from how to build a street hot rod from the ground up to quantum mechanics, and those two different kinds of mechanics, and it was really in the sciences, quantum mechanics, molecular biology, I would begin looking at these things looking for ideas, but in fact you don't read it for ideas you read it for curiosity and interest in the subject.

Dean Koontz

Quantum Mechanics is different. Its weirdness is evident without comparison. It is harder to train your mind to have quantum mechanical tuition, because quantum mechanics shatters our own personal, individual conception of reality

Brian Greene

Certainly we do not need quantum mechanics for macroscopic objects, which are well described by classical physics - this is the reason why quantum mechanics seems so foreign to our everyday existence.

Alain Aspect

Before the discovery of quantum mechanics, the framework of physics was this: If you tell me how things are now, I can then use the laws of physics to calculate, and hence predict, how things will be later.

Brian Greene

String theory is the most developed theory with the capacity to unite general relativity and quantum mechanics in a consistent manner. I do believe the universe is consistent, and therefore I do believe that general relativity and quantum mechanics should be put together in a manner that makes sense.

Brian Greene

While classical mechanics correctly predicts the behavior of large objects such as tennis balls, to predict the behavior of small objects such as electrons, we must use quantum mechanics.

Ivar Giaever

Quantum mechanics is just completely strange and counterintuitive. We can't believe that things can be here [in one place] and there [in another place] at the same time. And yet that's a fundamental piece of quantum mechanics. So then the question is, life is dealing us weird lemons, can we make some weird lemonade from this?

Seth Lloyd

What you can show using physics, forces this universe to continue to exist. As long as you're using general relativity and quantum mechanics you are forced to conclude that God exists.

Frank Tipler

The math of quantum mechanics and the math of general relativity, when they confront one another, they are ferocious antagonists and the equations don't work.

Brian Greene

'Participant' is the incontrovertible new concept given by quantum mechanics. It strikes down the 'observer' of classical theory, the man who stands safely behind the thick glass wall and watches what goes on without taking part. It can't be done, quantum mechanics says it...May the universe in some sense be 'brought into being' by the participation of those who participate?

John Archibald Wheeler

Quantum field theory, which was born just fifty years ago from the marriage of quantum mechanics with relativity, is a beautiful but not very robust child.

Steven Weinberg

While many questions about quantum mechanics are still not fully resolved, there is no point in introducing needless mystification where in fact no problem exists. Yet a great deal of recent writing about quantum mechanics has done just that.

Murray Gell-Mann

Just because quantum mechanics is weird does not mean that everything that is weird is quantum mechanics.

Victor J. Stenger

When the province of physical theory was extended to encompass microscopic phenomena through the creation of quantum mechanics, the concept of consciousness came to the fore again. It was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness.