9 quotes
There was always something left: a vacuum energy that permeated every fibre of the Universe.
The Book of Nothing (2009)
There is a good deal more to nothing than meets the eye.
The Book of Nothing (2009)
The logic of the Greeks prevents them having the idea at all and it is to the Indian cultures that we must look to find thinkers who are comfortable with the idea that Nothing might be something.
The Book of Nothing (2009)
Everyone knows there are billions and billions of stars, and national debts conjure up similar astronomical numbers. Yet we have found a way to hide the zeros: 109 doesn't look as bad as 1,000,000,000.
The Book of Nothing (2009)
Gradually, over the last twenty years, the vacuum has turned out to be more unusual, more fluid, less empty, and less intangible than even Einstein could have imagined.
The Book of Nothing (2009)
The Indian system of counting is probably the most successful intellectual innovation ever devised by human beings. It has been universally adopted. ...It is the nearest thing we have to a universal language.
The Book of Nothing (2009)
The physicist's concept of nothing—the vacuum... began as empty space—the void... turned into a stagnant ether through which all the motions of the Universe swam, vanished in Einstein's hands, then re-emerged in the twentieth-century quantum picture of how Nature works.
The Book of Nothing (2009)
If one looks at the special problems that were the mainsprings of progress along the oldest and most persistent lines of human inquiry, then one finds Nothing, suitably disguised as something, never far from the centre of things.
The Book of Nothing (2009)
The quantum revolution showed us why the old picture of a vacuum as an empty box was untenable. ...Gradually, this exotic new picture of quantum nothingness succumbed to experimental exploration... in the form of vacuum tubes, light bulbs and X-rays. Now the 'empty' space itself started to be probed. ...There was always something left: a vacuum energy that permeated every fibre of the Universe.
The Book of Nothing (2009)