A Quote by Isidor Isaac Rabi

You know that, according to quantum theory, if two particles collide with enough energy you can, in principle, with an infinitesimal probability, produce two grand pianos.

Isidor Isaac Rabi

Quote Topics

According Collide Energy Enough Grand Know Particles Principle Probability Produce Quantum Quantum Theory Theory Two

Quote Author

Isidor Isaac Rabi
American - Physicist
July 29, 1898 - January 11, 1988

I did my masters in elementary particles. But the foundations of elementary particles is quantum theory and there were too many conceptual problems around quantum theory that I couldn't live with. So I decided I was going to work on the foundations of quantum theory. That's what I did my Ph.D on.

Vandana Shiva

The incomplete knowledge of a system must be an essential part of every formulation in quantum theory. Quantum theoretical laws must be of a statistical kind. To give an example: we know that the radium atom emits alpha-radiation. Quantum theory can give us an indication of the probability that the alpha-particle will leave the nucleus in unit time, but it cannot predict at what precise point in time the emission will occur, for this is uncertain in principle.

Werner Heisenberg

In quantum physics, the study of material at the subatomic level, you get down to the tiniest levels. When they take these subatomic particles, put them in particle accelerators and collide them, quantum physicists discover there's nothing there. There's no one home - no ghost in the machine.

Wayne Dyer

String theory?[pause] It closed the conceptual gulp between relativity and quantum mechanics. It postulates that subatomic particles are not points, but strings, about one planck length long. The rate at which strings vibrate can generate the properties of all known particles. Huh? How did I know that?

Willie Garson

Quantum physics is teaching us that particles themselves don't create particles. It's what Jesus said 2,000 years ago, that it's the Spirit that gives life and that you don't get particles from more particles.

Wayne Dyer

In Darwin's theory, you just have to substitute 'mutations' for his 'slight accidental variations' (just as quantum theory substitutes 'quantum jump' for 'continuous transfer of energy'). In all other respects little change was necessary in Darwin's theory...

Erwin Schrodinger

It seems significant that according to quantum physics the indestructibility of energy on one hand which expresses its timeless existence and the appearance of energy in space and time on the other hand correspond to two contradictory (complementary) aspects of reality. In fact, both are always present, but in individual cases the one or the other may be more pronounced.

Wolfgang Pauli

Quantum events have a way of just happening, without any cause, as when a radioactive atom decays at a random time. Even the quantum vacuum is not an inert void, but is boiling with quantum fluctuations. In our macroscopic world, we are used to energy conservation, but in the quantum realm this holds only on average. Energy fluctuations out of nothing create short-lived particle-antiparticle pairs, which is why the vacuum is not emptiness but a sea of transient particles. An uncaused beginning, even out of nothing, for spacetime is no great leap of the imagination.

Taner Edis

I favour an interpretation of quantum mechanics (the 'Everett interpretation') according to which reality branches in any chancy quantum situation. On this view, Schrödinger's set-up will give rise to in two future branches of reality, one with a live cat, and one with a dead cat - and the talk of '50% chances' just indicates that the two branches are both equally real futures of the cat that originally entered the box.

David Papineau

We're going to need a definitive quantum theory of gravity, which is part of a grand unified theory - it's the main missing piece.

Kip Thorne

If you bang two electrons together with enough energy, you produce protons. If there are no independent laws, then all the properties of protons must somehow be 'known' by the electrons. By extension, every elementary particle must carry around enough information to produce the entire universe. I find that difficult to believe.

Alan Guth

Just take the lack of presence of F1 in the United States. In theory - and logically - you would have an East Coast Grand Prix, a West Coast Grand Prix, and I think you should have a street race in Detroit - it is still the motor capital of the US. You stay in the US for four weeks and could have two to three races, certainly two.

Martin Sorrell

Many people have asked me why there are three pedals in these grand pianos. Well the pedal in the middle is there to separate the two other pedals.

Victor Borge

But a machine that was powerful enough to accelerate particles to the grand unification energy would have to be as big as the Solar System - and would be unlikely to be funded in the present economic climate.