Frank Wilczek - Physical Quotes

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The traditional cosmological Multiverse considers that there might be physical realms inaccessible to us due to their separation in space-time. The quantum Multiverse arises from entities that occupy the same space-time, but are distant in Hilbert space – or in the jargon, decoherent.

Frank Wilczek
For many centuries before modern science, and for the first two and a half centuries of modern science, the division of reality into matter and light seemed self-evident.... As long as the separation between the massive and the massless persisted, a unified description of the physical world could not be achieved.

Frank Wilczek
Ironically, conventional quantum mechanics itself involves a vast expansion of physical reality, which may be enough to avoid Einstein Insanity. The equations of quantum dynamics allow physicists to predict the future values of the wave function, given its present value. According to the Schrödinger equation, the wave function evolves in a completely predictable way. But in practice we never have access to the full wave function, either at present or in the future, so this predictability is unattainable. If the wave function provides the ultimate description of reality — a controversial issue! — we must conclude that God plays a deep yet strictly rule-based game, which looks like dice to us.

Frank Wilczek
As the idea of permanence of objects has faded, the idea of permanence of physical laws has become better established and more powerful.

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
What should be most significant to us are not physical artifacts, but the meaning they embody.... whenever we create paintings, songs, poems, books, computer programs—or ideas in the minds of children—we do something of this sort.

Frank Wilczek