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Under ordinary circumstances, visible light is absorbed or emitted when the electrons in an atom or molecule are excited into orbits of higher energy, or sink back into orbits of lower energy, respectively.

— Steven Weinberg The Discovery of Subatomic Particles (1983)

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More quotes by Steven Weinberg

Elementary particles are terribly boring, which is one reason why we're so interested in them.

The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.

Dreams of a Final Theory: The Search for the Fundamental Laws of Nature (1993)

The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things which lifts human life a little above the level of farce and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.

The First Three Minutes (1977)

It seems that scientists are often attracted to beautiful theories in the way that insects are attracted to flowers — not by logical deduction, but by something like a sense of smell.

Today for real mystery one has to look to cosmology and elementary particle physics.

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