Quantum Void Quotes

“When the world goes crazy, a friend can be the difference between a crushing defeat and I might just make it.”
― Douglas Phillips, Quantum Void

“Marie Curie. I’m sure you know, she didn’t recognize the damage she was doing to herself by handling radium until it was too late. Even after learning that she was dying, she told people, ‘There is nothing to fear in life, only more to understand.”
― Douglas Phillips, Quantum Void

“Two new friends, three if you counted an alien jellyfish living more than three hundred light-years away. It was both surprising and comforting to find out that people cared. When the world goes crazy, a friend can be the difference between a crushing defeat and I might just make it.”
― Douglas Phillips, Quantum Void

“This cloud hadn’t arisen from a natural process any more than global warming had. Humans had done this, not only through their natural curiosity, their creativity and ambition, but also through their neglect. Would we ever learn? Or would advances in technology forever come with an illustration of how deadly the world can be? Core had said we would learn in time. Daniel was not so sure.”
― Douglas Phillips, Quantum Void

“words related to science. There was a time when a fact had been an accepted truth. Not anymore. For some, the word fact had become synonymous with a claim or assertion. Any person offering an argument could simply stack up their own set of alternative facts and, in their mind, be entirely justified. It often left Daniel wondering if there was any hope for the evolution of the species.”
― Douglas Phillips, Quantum Void

“Fate is an imagined property of the universe.”
― Douglas Phillips, Quantum Void

“It was always astonishing how badly mangled the meaning of words had become in the modern world, especially those words related to science. There was a time when a fact had been an accepted truth. Not anymore. For some, the word fact had become synonymous with a claim or assertion. Any person offering an argument could simply stack up their own set of alternative facts and, in their mind, be entirely justified. It often left Daniel wondering if there was any hope for the evolution of the species.”
― Douglas Phillips, Quantum Void

“In a Level I multiverse, we live in a sea of never-ending infinite space. Within that space, we can see only a “small” sphere with a diameter of 13.8 billion light-years (that’s how long it’s been since the Big Bang, thus we have no ability to see objects that might be farther away). But this visible sphere is merely a pocket universe—a bubble within the never-ending sea. The bubble came into existence from a Big Bang and a period of inflation (the few microseconds after the Big Bang during which space inflated faster than the speed of light). If this model represents the true nature of our universe, there could be many other pocket universes out there, far beyond our limited view, each of them also a result of local inflation within the infinite sea. A Level II multiverse is much the same except that each pocket universe has different versions of the fundamental forces, different elementary particles, etc. For example, the force of gravity might be stronger in one pocket universe than another. A Level III multiverse is derived from quantum superposition, and I’ll talk about that in the next section. A Level IV multiverse is purely mathematical, and I’ll leave that one to the deep-thinking mathematicians like Tegmark. Each multiverse concept has one thing in common: every universe was created from nothing, springing from a fluctuation in a quantum field that caused a single point of nothingness to blossom.”
― Douglas Phillips, Quantum Void

“Critical density equals actual density. The amount of mass needed to exactly cancel the expansive force is precisely how much mass there is in our universe. The WMAP mission (and the European Space Agency Planck mission in 2013) both performed something like this humongous scale by accurately measuring real-world values for H and G and plugging them into the equation above. To the accuracy humans can measure, we live in a universe of critical density, otherwise known as a flat universe. What does this mean? It means the entire universe sums to this digit: 0.”
― Douglas Phillips, Quantum Void

“It’s called the Hubble constant (H) and WMAP provided the most accurate measure anyone has ever had. Along with Newton’s gravitational constant (G), physicists derived this very simple equation for critical density, ρc. Critical density is the balance between H and G, between the expansive force and the gravitational force (which derives from mass). Critical density is the bullseye on a target, a what-if calculation of the relationship between these two opposing forces.”
― Douglas Phillips, Quantum Void

“What was the number for critical density again?” Marie asked. Nala picked up one of the cracker boxes and wrote on it: 9.47 × 10–27 kg / m3. “Nine point four seven times ten to the minus twenty-seven kilograms per cubic meter,” she recited.”
― Douglas Phillips, Quantum Void

“Critical density is a number with deep meaning. It tells you the precise amount of mass that is needed to exactly cancel expansion. It’s what makes our universe flat.”
― Douglas Phillips, Quantum Void

“The hyperbolic paraboloid boson was the newest addition to the Standard Model of physics, responsible for the shape of space itself. Once Core had revealed the fingerprint of the new particle, ecstatic physicists around the world had quickly confirmed its existence and spun off multiple studies to examine its properties.”
― Douglas Phillips, Quantum Void

“Marie’s action might have been impulsive, but if a man had done the same, he’d probably be deemed heroic. Certainly not irrational.”
― Douglas Phillips, Quantum Void

“Too bad there was no floor map of the building in the headband’s list of capabilities. She would need to figure how to get there the old-fashioned way—ask for directions. “I wonder,” she said innocently to the guard. “Could I take a look from the other side?” “Sure,” he said. “Two flights up, then straight down the hallway to the far end. There’s another stairwell that will get you back down to this level.”
― Douglas Phillips, Quantum Void

“Whether real or imaginary, fate doesn’t shape the events of our lives. It’s our resolve, our determination to use whatever abilities we possess that makes a difference.”
― Douglas Phillips, Quantum Void

“The universe doesn’t care whether it makes sense to you.”
― Douglas Phillips, Quantum Void

“There were no actual photographs of atoms and never would be. Even the largest atom, cesium, is six hundred times smaller than the wavelength of visible light, forever invisible to our eyes.”
― Douglas Phillips, Quantum Void

“Experimentation provided data, data provided guidance toward reality, and the whole point of science was to expose reality.”
― Douglas Phillips, Quantum Void

“What is nothing, when even empty space is something? Explanations of the Big Bang were sometimes stymied as soon as anyone asked what had existed prior. If cosmologists answered, “we don’t know” it felt unsatisfactory, but if they answered with “nothing,” then they were stuck trying to define exactly what nothing represented and how something could spring from it spontaneously.”
― Douglas Phillips, Quantum Void

“Today is the result of yesterday’s probabilities, and tomorrow will materialize from today’s.”
― Douglas Phillips, Quantum Void

“the whole point of science was to expose reality.”
― Douglas Phillips, Quantum Void

“Nothing is certain. Outcomes follow probabilities.”
― Douglas Phillips, Quantum Void

“As life clicks by, the missed opportunities and the unspoken words are things that stick with you, often painfully.”
― Douglas Phillips, Quantum Void