Jorge Cham > Quotes

“Mass is the property of objects that makes them resist changes in velocity. Simply”
― Jorge Cham, We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe

“A single gram of antiparticles combined with a gram of normal particles would release more than 40 kilotonnes of explosive force, which is more than twice as powerful as the atomic bombs dropped by the United States in WWII. A normal household raisin weighs about a gram, so a raisin plus anti-raisin combination would be a dehydrated weapon of mass fruitation.”
― Jorge Cham, We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe

“this is mathematical speculation by a bunch of overcaffeinated theorists.”
― Jorge Cham, We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe

“Yes, those ten-billion-dollar twenty-seven-kilometer-long machines are good for more than just finding bosons named after Peter Higgs.”
― Jorge Cham, We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe

“biologists have been arguing for decades about the definition of “life” (the zombie-rights activists are a powerful lobby group),”
― Jorge Cham, We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe

“Antiwater would look and feel and behave the same way as regular water except that if you drank it you would explode in a blinding flash of light, which, we admit, would be antirefreshing.”
― Jorge Cham, We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe

“Theorists are a smart bunch (in theory),”
― Jorge Cham, We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe

“Například na urychlení jednoho párátka zhruba na 10 procent rychlosti světla byste potřebovali raketu s nádrží větší než Jupiter.”
― Jorge Cham, Frequently Asked Questions about the Universe

“Ever since William of Ockham,119 scientists and philosophers have preferred simpler, more compact explanations over longer, more complex ones. For example, suppose you came home one day and your pool smelled like baboons. Would it make more sense to assume that an international crime organization put drops of baboon perfume in your pool as part of a complicated heist involving Justin Bieber and three professional basketball players, or would it make more sense to simply assume your pet baboon disobeyed your order and jumped in the pool to cool off?”
― Jorge Cham, We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe

“if there were once more stars visible to us than there are today, what once-obvious facts are we missing because humans arrived nearly fourteen billion years after the party started?”
― Jorge Cham, We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe

“Procrastination applies to ending things as well as starting them. (p. 149)”
― Jorge Cham, Piled Higher and Deeper 20th Anniversary Collection

“Today, we could maybe store the information contained in one of your toenails if we used every computer in existence.”
― Jorge Cham, Frequently Asked Questions about the Universe

“this is more in the category of late-night herb-inspired speculation than actual scientific prediction.”
― Jorge Cham, We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe

“Seeing other cultures is the best way to learn which things you thought were universal but are actually local.”
― jorge Cham

“the entire universe contained in a single point, a singularity, where the mass is enormous, the volume zero, the density infinite, and the parking impossible.”
― Jorge Cham, We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe

“if you are on a rocket moving close to the speed of light relative to Earth, then your speed through space is very high. So in order for your total speed through space-time relative to Earth to stay within the speed limit of the universe, your speed through time has to decrease—as measured by clocks on Earth.”
― Jorge Cham, We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe

“In the 1940s, scientists started to wonder if we could build machines that worked just like the human brain. In particular, two scientists, Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts, designed the very first artificial neuron. This neuron was a simple mathematical model.”
― Jorge Cham, Out of Your Mind: The Biggest Mysteries of the Human Brain

“The history of science is one of revolutions in which we discover each time that our view of the world was distorted by our particular perspective. A flat Earth, an Earth-centered solar system, a universe dominated by stars and planets—these were all reasonable ideas given the data at the time, but we now see them as embarrassingly naïve. Almost certainly, there are more such revolutions around the corner, in which important ideas we accept now, such as relativity and quantum physics, might be shattered and replaced with mind-blowing new ones.”
― Jorge Cham, We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe

“Today’s philosophy questions are tomorrow’s precision science experiments.”
― Jorge Cham, We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe

“Ok, I need to transfer my thoughts from my head to this screen. C'mon, Write! -- (Cecilia brings her head into contact with the computer screen) They're Touching! Transmit! Transmit!”
― Jorge Cham, Piled Higher and Deeper 20th Anniversary Collection

“At some point, Larry the cat will be going so fast that he actually sees the photon hit the target before it leaves the flashlight!”
― Jorge Cham, We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe

“Kvarky samy o sobě prakticky nic neváží! Každý z nich váží míň, než kolik je 1 procento hmotnosti protonu. Ale jakmile dáte dva kvarky dohromady, kdovíproč se jejich hmotnost navýší na stonásobek. To je, jako kdybyste secvakli tři kostičky lega a najednou zjistili, že váží jako třista kostiček lega.”
― Jorge Cham, Frequently Asked Questions about the Universe

“Still, I keep looking over my shoulder for some reason.”
― Jorge Cham, PhD Chapter 5: Adventures in Thesisland

“And if you have your doubts, there is a real website that you can check to see if the world has been destroyed”
― Jorge Cham, We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe

“To think freely, we need free time.”
― Jorge Cham, PhD Chapter 2: Life is Tough and Then You Graduate

“To end class struggle, we must skip class.”
― Jorge Cham, PhD Chapter 2: Life is Tough and Then You Graduate

“And this idea extends to your actions as well. Every action you take causes interactions with other particles, and changes their quantum state in a unique way that in principle stores the information of that interaction. In a very real sense, our actions ripple through time, never lost and always present in the quantum history of the universe. In this way, everyone who ever lived is still with us, through the faint but indelible mark we all leave on the things around us. One day, you too may die, and you will become part of the universe’s record. There’s an old adage that says we live on in the hearts and minds of those who knew us. According to quantum mechanics, this isn’t just true; it’s a mathematical fact.”
― Jorge Cham, Frequently Asked Questions about the Universe