Frank Wilczek - Particles Quotes

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When two identical 3He atoms collide... the interference is destructive. Particles that behave like 3He atoms are called fermions, short for "particles obeying Fermi–Dirac statistics."... while bosons imitate one another... the "identity force" between fermions acts like a repulsion, and the probability of finding a fermion at some point in space is reduced if some of its identical siblings are nearby.... It is the repulsive identity forces between electrons that support white dwarf stars... against their own gravity.

Frank Wilczek
Particles that, like 4He, show constructive interference are said to be bosons—a shorthand term for "particles obeying Bose–Einstein statistics." …One way to recognize bosons is their tendency to imitate one each other.... the presence of one boson increases the chance that another of its identical siblings will also appear in the same spot. There's an attraction between them. We will speak... of an attractive identity force drawing together identical bosons. Lasers are a spectacular example...

Frank Wilczek
When we view nature stripped to essentials, so to speak, in this Unification Table, what we see is... a five bit register.... It is in just this form that data is stored and manipulated within a digital computer.... Every particle, then, can be specified by a five-bit word and stored in a five-bit register. It's eerie that even the odd restriction on how many minus signs are allowed is reminiscent of a trick used in computers, to detect errors in transmission. You see, if allowed words must have an odd number of minus signs, any single error in transmission of a word can be detected.... our world might be an intricate program working itself out on a gigantic computing machine.

Frank Wilczek
A common habit of thought... is the idea that space is [a] simple receptacle in which bodies move around, with no two bodies present at the same point.... In modern quantum physics generally, and in the standard model of fundamental physics in particular, physical space appears as a far more flexible framework. Many kinds of particles can be present at the same point in space at the same time. Indeed, the primary ingredients of the standard model are not particles at all, but an abundance of quantum fields, each a complex object in itself, and all omnipresent.

Frank Wilczek