Frank Wilczek - Physics Quotes

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What is conserved, in modern physics, is not any particular substance or material but only much more abstract entities such as energy, momentum, and electric charge. The permanent aspects of reality are not particular materials or structures but rather the possible forms of structures and the rules for their transformation.

Frank Wilczek
The most abstract conservation laws of physics come into their being in describing equilibrium in the most extreme conditions. They are the most rigorous conservation laws, the last to break down. The more extreme the conditions, the fewer the conserved structures... In a deep sense, we understand the interior of the sun better that the interior of the earth, and the early stages of the big bang best of all.

Frank Wilczek
The phase transition paradigm: The standard model of fundamental physics incorporates, as one of its foundational principles, the idea that empty space or vacuum can exist in different phases, typically associated with different amounts of symmetry. Moreover, the laws of the standard model itself suggest that phase transitions will occur, as functions of temperature. Extensions of the standard model to build in higher symmetry (gauge unification or especially supersymmetry) can support effective vacua with radically different properties, separated by great distance or by domain walls. That would be a form of failure of universality, in our sense, whose existence is suggested by the standard model.

Frank Wilczek
If the universe contains everything that exists, what can be outside it? If the answer is Things that don't exist, then multiverse becomes an idea in the domain of psychology, not physics.

Frank Wilczek
In physics, your solution should convince a reasonable person. In math, you have to convince a person who's trying to make trouble. Ultimately, in physics, you're hoping to convince Nature. And I've found Nature to be pretty reasonable.

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
In physics, you don't have to go around making trouble for yourself — nature does it for you.

Frank Wilczek