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Sean M. Carroll Quotes
born 1966 United States
Sean M. Carroll (born October 5, 1966) is an American theoretical cosmologist, and senior research associate in the Department of Physics at the California Institute of Technology, specializing in dark energy and general relativity.
Random Sean M. Carroll quote
14 quotes
It can't be stressed enough that the multiverse is utterly hypothetical—but that doesn't mean it isn't real.
But sometimes reality chooses not to conform to our preferences.
But the very fact that matter in the cosmos is still moving, rather than at rest, is the single most surprising thing about the universe.
In contrast to the arbitrarily complicated evolution of a (nonintegrable) classical system, all a quantum state ever does is move in circles.
Metaphysical principles are tempting shortcuts but not reliable guides. There are good reasons why things often seem to happen for reasons—and also reasons why that’s not a bedrock principle.
The Big Picture (2016)
The “reasons” and “causes” why things happen, in other words, aren’t fundamental; they are emergent. We need to dig in to the actual history of the universe to see why these concepts have emerged.
The Big Picture (2016)
Even if we don't know the answer, a change of perspective can help us improve the question.
People don't like to read papers — they like to read titles.
Meaning in life can’t be reduced to simplistic mottos. In some number of years I will be dead; some memory of my time here on Earth may linger, but I won’t be around to savor it.
The Big Picture (2016)
Physics is not just a set of true facts and equations and things like that. In many ways it's kind of an attitude. It's a way of thinking about different things.
There probably are more forces than we know about, but they’re only going to be of direct interest to physicists, I’m afraid. No tractor beams.
The mystery of the arrow of time comes down to this: Why were the conditions in the early universe set up in a particular way, in a configuration of low entropy that enabled all of the interesting and irreversible processes to come?
What we’re seeing is a manifestation of the layered nature of our descriptions of reality. At the deepest level we currently know about, the basic notions are things like “spacetime,” “quantum fields,” “equations of motion,” and “interactions.” No causes, whether material, formal, efficient, or final. But there are levels on top of that, where the vocabulary changes.
The Big Picture (2016)
The momentary or Laplacian nature of physical evolution doesn’t have much relevance for the choices we face in our everyday lives. For poetic naturalism, the situation is clear. There is one way of talking about the universe that describes it as elementary particles or quantum states, in which Laplace holds sway and what happens next depends only on the state of the system right now.
The Big Picture (2016)