Physicists From The United Kingdom

"[W]hat we call yesterday is self-contained and has its experience of being yesterday, and today has memories of yesterday; and therefor I say that it's later... but each is completely self-contained, and there's no reason why you should put one... here, and another one there..."

"[[Symbols|[S]ymbols]] have no meaning if divorced from the entities that they represent."

"I find no reason to reverse the standard assumption of physics... what we experience can be explained by the assumption of an external world governed by law."

"If you could look microscopically... at... my molecules... you would not recognize me from one second to another. In my body, every second, one hundred million million million... hemoglobin molecules... is destroyed, and the same number is created. So... at each split second, I'm really a very different person."

"[[Time|[T]ime]] is really an illusion... and motion too... [T]hey are not really there in the external world. They are put into the world by us, in the way we interpret it, and by our brains..."

"[T]he work that I did with... has shown... time that is measured by clocks is... an average of all the changes in the universe."

"Thus, even now, three and a half centuries after Galileo... it is still remarkably difficult to say categorically whether the earth moves..."

"In fact, I once had a discussion with a distinguished astrophysicist who said to me, well, this is what Mach said, and this is what Mach did and what he required. And I said to him, now excuse me, if you don't mind me saying, what you've just told me is your interpretation of Dennis Sciama's interpretation of Einstein's interpretation of Mach. And he said you're quite right. I’ve never read a word of Mach."

"[I]f you imagine two NOWs... there will be some difference between them, and if you work out some weighted average of all of that difference... you can call that... the amount of time between them. ...[T]his has nothing to do with some substance... It's just difference between those two things. ...[T]his is the quantity that is... being measured by my watch..."

"If you could freeze the camera now and... show me as I am, and all the atoms... and... the whole universe... like a snapshot, the would be... a NOW."

"[T]his is very different from the Newtonian picture where Newton presupposes there's a river of time flowing, that is there before anything is put into it. ...[T]he things are there first, and the time is deduced from it afterwards."

"Information theory would never have got off the ground if structured things—configurations—did not exist."

"The concepts of message and probability enable one, for a definite source of N messages, to define Shannon’s information. If p_i,\quad i = 1, 2, ..., N, is the relative probability of message i and \log p_i is its base-2 logarithm, then the information I of the given source is(1) \quad I = - \sum_{k=1}^N p_i \log p_i.The minus sign makes I positive because all probabilities, which are necessarily greater than or equal zero, are less than unity (their sum being\textstyle \sum_{i}^N p_i = 1, so that their logarithms are all negative."

"(quote at 14:08 of 1:54:14)"

"[A NOW] has no duration. ...[I]t's absolutely instantaneous. There is no thickness to it. Nothing changes. ...So these s, in one sense, are truly eternal, because they never change, and on the other hand, because nothing changes, they are experienced as a flash. ...[It]'s a nice contradiction... [T]he eternal is experienced as a flash, because nothing changes."

"[T]ime is not an illusion, but the flow of time is. So is change. In spacetime, the future exists and the past doesn't disappear. When we combine Einstein's classical spacetime with quantum mechanics, we get quantum parallel universes... This means there are many pasts and futures that are all real—but this in no way diminishes the unchanging mathematical nature of the full physical reality. ...[A]lthough this idea of an unchanging reality is venerable and dates back to Einstein, it remains controversial... with scientists I greatly respect expressing a spectrum of views. ...Julian Barbour argues in his book The End of Time not only that change is illusory, but that one can even describe physical reality without introducing the time concept at all."

"There is nothing in between... [NOWs]. Each are separate snapshots. ...These [real photographs] ...are not changed by ...reversing the order ...It may be convenient for ...for the way we think about the world and for ordering our experiences, to suppose that these come in a certain order; but ...the picture is not changed... the snapshot is... self-contained."

"To get the string of string theory, you have to imagine taking a violin string and just keep pulling on the two ends. Now, if you keep pulling, what happens of course is that the waves on the string move along at a certain speed which depends on the tension with which you pull it. And if you keep pulling on the violin string of course a real one will break. But if you imagine that you keep pulling, then at some point the speed of the waves on the string will increase indefinitely. But not of course indefinitely because there's a fundamental limit which is the speed of light. So when you've reached the point where you pull on your violin strings and you've stretched it to the point where actually the waves on it are now moving at the speed of light, then you have a very strange material and that material is the string of string theory. In a way the branes are essentially the same material but just more extended."

"In the case of parallel multi D-branes there can be open strings with one end on one brane and the other end on another brane. Classically, such a string has a minimum energy proportional to the distance between the branes. Supersymmetry ensures that this remains true quantum-mechanically, so additional massless states can appear only when two or more D-branes coincide."

"It is argued that the type IIA 10-dimensional superstring theory is actually a compactified 11-dimensional supermembrane theory in which the fundamental supermembrane is identified with the soltionic membrane of 11-dimensional supergravity. The charged extreme black holes of the 10-dimensional type IIA string theory are interpreted as the Kaluza-Klein modes of 11-dimensional supergravity and the dual sixbranes as the analogue of Kaluza-Klein monopoles. All other p-brane solutions of the type IIA superstring theory are derived from the 11-dimensional membrane and its magnetic dual fivebrane soliton."

"Born approximation is a familiar and convenient approximation in handling scattering problems. It is adequate, or at least informative, in so many cases that we tend to develop the habit of using its first-order term without always checking the conditions for its applicability."

"An important episode for my understanding of conduction problems arose from a paper by Kretschmann, ... who attacked the then accepted theory of conductivity and claimed that the basis of the papers by Bloch and others was quite wrong. He had a number of objections which were mostly not very well conceived, but he claimed, in particular, that in the usual derivation of the Boltzmann equation one had made unjustified use of perturbation theory. In trying to defend the theory I therefore set out to prove that perturbation theory was in order, and to my amazement I found that this was very questionable, if not exactly for the reasons given by Kretschmann. It appeared that the usual application of Fermi's 'golden rule' depended on the inequality ħ/τ ≪ kT, where τ is the collision time. This was not satisfied for many metals. Indeed Landau's dimensional analysis made them comparable. ..."

"His contributions to condensed matter physics were largely on fundamental questions, establishing the principles of this subject. Most of this work was done during the years 1928–37, but much of it could not be tested until the experimental techniques needed for this had become sufficiently developed. ... Rudolf Peierls's work in nuclear physics began in 1933, when James Chadwick challenged him and Hans Bethe to explain his first measurements of the cross-section for photo-disintegration of the deuteron. Peierls's experience in this field developed rapidly within the next few years, on both practical questions and academic research, to the point where he and Otto Frisch could confidently conclude that the construction of an atomic bomb would be quite possible using 235U, which could be obtained obtained from natural uranium by a feasible separation process, and they pointed this out in the famous Frisch-Peierls Memorandum of 1940 which they sent to the British government. This led to the Atomic Bomb Project, at first in Britain under the name "Tube Alloys Project" and later in USA as the "Manhattan District Project", which many of the UK scientists, including both Peierls and Frisch, were sent to join at the end of 1943."

"Richard Dalitz, in: (quote from page v)"

"At about this same time Dirac wrote a paper that proposed a general theory of how measurements should be described in quantum mechanics. Similar work was also done by P. Jordan in Göttingen. These two papers constitute what is called transformation theory, because they show how one can transform information gained by measuring one quantity into predicting information about another."

"When I arrived in Leipzig, Heisenberg was working on the theory of ferromagnetism. It was known the magnetism of such substances as iron was due to the "spin" of the electrons inside the substance. Each electron spins like a little top, and in the iron there is a "molecular field", a force that tends to align the spin of each electron with that of its neighbors. But the nature of this field was unknown. It could not be a magnetic effect because magnetic forces are much too weak to account for the observed behaviour. Heisenberg saw that the answer lay in the Pauli exclusion principle, which says that no two electrons can be in exactly the same state. Thus two electrons with the same spin orientation keep out of each other's way; while this repulsion may increase their energy of motion, it diminishes their mutual repulsion, and can therefore lead to a decrease in total energy, making the parallel alignment of the electron spins energetically favourable. He had encountered this mechanism in the theory of atomic spectra and concluded that it was also responsible for ferromagnetism."

"It is Rudi's genius to show the reader in concrete terms how to do the predicting after some organized thinking."

"The atoms which constitute a solid consist of nuclei and electrons. For a description of the state of the solid it is not, however, necessary to specify the state of all the Z electrons of each atom, since we can eliminate most or all of them by a principle that is familiar from the theory of molecules. ... Since the atomic nuclei are much heavier than the electrons, they move much more slowly, and it is therefore reasonable to start from the approximation in which they are taken to be taken to be at rest, though not necessarily in the regular positions."

"Any theoretical physicist has met, in his introduction to the subject, the simplest examples of Schrödinger's equation, including the harmonic oscillator. In demonstrating its solution, it is usually shown that for energies satisfying the usual quantum condition, E = (n + ½)ħω (1.1.1) where n is a non-negative integer and ω the frequency, the equation has a solution satisfying the correct boundary conditions. It is equally important to know that these are the only solutions, i.e., that for an energy not equal to (1.1.1) no admissible solution exists. This negative statement is not usually proved in elementary treatments, or else it is deduced from quite elaborate discussions of the convergence and behavior of a certain infinite series. It is therefore surprising to find that the result can be seen without any complicated algebra."

"1.4 Types of binding ... The most important types of force are as follows: (a) Electrostatic forces. In an ionic crystal the attraction is mainly due to the Coulomb interaction between point charges. This is particularly amenable to calculation, and a great deal of work has been done on it. The force is a 'two-body' force, i.e. the interaction between two given ions is independent of the positions of any other ions that may be present. ... (b) Van der Waals forces. This name describes the effect that a neutral and isotropic atom can acquire a polarization under the influence of an electric field, and even two neutral isotropic atoms will induce small dipole moments in each other, due to the fluctuating moments which they possess because of the existence of virtual excited states. ... (c) Homopolar binding. These are forces like those effective in homopolar molecules, and we know they are due to the exchange of electrons between the atoms. In molecular crystals (H2, Cl2, etc.) these bonds can easily be localized and we can start from a description of the molecular by the methods of quantum chemistry and then add the relatively weak forces between different molecules. In other cases, however, such as diamond or graphite, each atom shares some valence electrons with each of its neighbors, and it is therefore not possible to single out any given groups of atoms that may be regarded as chemically saturated. The quantitative discussion of such forces is not easy. ... (d) Overlap. If two atoms approach so closely that their electron shells overlap, then there is a strong repulsive force between them. ... (e) Metallic bond. ... it is worth noting that in the case of a metal the presence and motion of the conduction electrons is an important factor in holding the crystal together and in determining its structure."

"With both light and electrons, one was faced with the so-called "wave-particle duality"; both could be regarded as waves for some purposes and as particles for others. An important step in resolving this paradox was a paper by Max Born in July 1926, in which he suggested that the waves determine the probability of finding the particle in a particular place. This idea was already considered much earlier by Einstein, but it was rejected by him. This interpretation of the theory was further developed in the spring of 1927 by Heisenberg, who formulated his "uncertainty principle" ..."

"After the war, Bethe went back to Cornell, where he helped build an outstanding research center in high-energy physics. Peierls returned to Birmingham, where he created the outstanding school of theoretical physics in Western Europe. The two physicists established a pipeline between the two institutions and offered their generous evaluations of the young postdocs and colleagues—Hugh McManus, Edwin Salpeter, Stuart Butler, Richard Dalitz, Freeman Dyson, and others—that they sent to one another. Their correspondence likewise gives perceptive overviews of advances in high-energy physics, especially of the progress made after 1955 in the nuclear many-body problem on which Bethe was concentrating. Their letters also concern policy challenges posed by, for example, the cold war, nuclear weaponry, nuclear test ban treaties, and antiballistic missiles."

"To few Freemasons of the present day, except to those who have made Freemasonry a subject of especial study, is the name of Desaguliers very familiar. But it is well that they should know that to him, perhaps, more than to any other man, are we indebted for the present existence of Freemasonry as a living Institution, for it was his learning and social position that gave a standing to the Institution, which brought to its support noblemen and men of influence so that the insignificant assemblage of four London Lodges at the Apple-Tree Tavern has expanded into an association which now shelters the entire civilized world. And the moving spirit of all this was John Theophilus Desaguliers."

"All the knowledge we have of nature depends upon facts; for without observations and experiments our natural philosophy would only be a science of terms and an unintelligible jargon. But then we must call in Geometry and Arithmetics, to our Assistance, unless we are willing to content ourselves with natural History and conjectural Philosophy. For, as many causes concur in the production of compound effects, we are liable to mistake the predominant cause, unless we can measure the quantity and the effect produced, compare them with, and distinguish them from, each other, to find out the adequate cause of each single effect, and what must be the result of their joint action."

"When mons. Descartes's philosophical Romance, by the Elegance of its Style and the plausible Accounts of natural Phænomena, had overthrown the Aristotelian Physics, the World received but little Advantage by the Change: For instead of a few Pedants, who, most of them, being conscious of their Ignorance, concealed it with hard Words and pompous Terms; a new Set of Philosophers started up, whose lazy Disposition easily fell in with a Philosophy, that required no Mathematicks to understand it, and who taking a few Principles for granted, without examining their Reality or Consistence with each other, fancied they could solve all Appearances mechanically by Matter and Motion; and, in their smattering Way, pretended to demonstrate such things, as perhaps Cartesius himself never believed ; his Philosophy (if he bad been in earnest) being unable to stand the test of the Geometry which he was Master of."

"It is to Sir Isaac Newton's Application of Geometry to Philosophy, that we owe the routing of this Army of Goths and Vandals in the philosophical World; which he has enriched with more and greater Discoveries, than all the Philosophers that went before him: And has laid such Foundations for future Acquisitions, that even after his Death, his Works still promote natural Knowledge. Before Sir Isaac, we had but wild Guesses at the Cause of the Motion of the Comets and Planets round the Sun', but now he has clearly deduced them from the universal Laws of Attraction (the Existence of which he has proved beyond Contradiction) and has shewn, that the seeming Irregularities of the Moon, which Astronomers were unable to express in Numbers, are but the just Consequences of the Actions of the Sun and Earth upon it, according to their different Positions. His Principles clear up all Difficulties of the various Phænomena of the Tides; and the true Figure of the Earth is now plainly shewn to be a flatted Spheroid higher at the Equator than the Poles, notwithstanding many Assertions and Conjectures to the contrary."

"But to return to the Newtonian Philosophy: Tho' its Truth is supported by Mathematicks, yet its Physical Discoveries may be communicated without. The great Mr. Locke was the first who became a Newtonian Philosopher without the help of Geometry; for having asked Mr. Huygens, whether all the mathematical Propositions in Sir Isaac's Principia were true, and being told he might depend upon their Certainty; he took them for granted, and carefully examined the Reasonings and Corollaries drawn from them, became Master of all the Physics, and was fully convinc'd of the great Discoveries contained in that Book."

"The Higgs is a very special type of particle - one we've never seen before. It has strange properties that we need to understand. This award was a complete surprise to me. It's really quite humbling and of course I'm delighted to receive it. I'm over the moon to be frank."

"He was involved in the development of the CMS detector concept from the earliest days and has been influential in many areas of the detector design. The innovative concepts in CMS are likely to influence the next generation of high-energy physics experiments. He proposed the idea of discovering the elusive Higgs boson via its decay into two photons, which is central to the concept of the high resolution lead-tungstate crystal calorimeter, one of the major components of the CMS design."

"We have a design [special characteristics of the detector] which is entirely based on a single magnet, a high field solenoid. The first thing one actually does in the design of the experiment is actually to figure out the magnetic field configuration for the measurement of muons. That then determines the rest of the design. The detector is built such that [see diagram] the first layer is within a tracker, which is all silicon."

"He developed new technologies within the detector that ultimately allowed it to find the Higgs - the mechanism which explains how sub-atomic particles came to have substance, or mass."

"Professor Virdee is one of the UK's most distinguished physicists and, as one of the creators of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) Experiment he has made outstanding contributions to science. The CMS experiment, at the Large Hadron Collider, CERN, Geneva, has delivered seminal results in particle physics, including the groundbreaking discovery of the Higgs Boson, or the God particle, a particle that gives mass to other particles. Beyond his innovative work in particle physics, he is also a great campaigner for science, and promoter of science and education in Africa and India"

"The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a discovery machine. We are actually looking to make discoveries. So, I think that’s the name of the game. As the data come in, the emphasis will be on the high statistical significance of the statements that we make at the end of the programme – we are half way through the LHC programme today and so [there is] another 10-15 years to go. The name of the game is actually to retrieve all the physics that is at this special energy scale of the LHC. There is some magic, I think, about this energy scale."

"The good thing about Higgs is that depending on the mass it actually manifests itself inside the detector in completely different ways. And many different ways depending on the mass, and we have to cover all the different ways and, in fact, when you have done you find that detector can do anything that the nature has in store for us. Anything."

"An Indian-origin physicist, best known for his work on the Large Hadron Collider experiment, has been accorded an honorary knighthood by Britain's Queen Elizabeth II for his achievements in science."

"CERN physicist, Tejinder Virdee has done search for the elusive Higgs boson, also known as the "God particle"."

"Tejinder set about building a detector within the Large Hadron Collider that's capable of taking forty million phenomenally detailed images every second. Finding the Higgs will validate everything physicists think they know about the very nature of the universe: not finding it, will force them back to the drawing board."

"The difficulty, as in all this work, is to find a notation which is both concise and intelligible to at least two people of whom one may be the author."

"All scientists must communicate their work, for what is the point of learning new things about how the world works if you don't tell anyone about them?"

"Most probably some law hitherto undiscovered exists."