43 Quotes by Frank Wilczek

Matter is not what it appears to be. Its most obvious property-variously called resistance to motion, inertia, or mass- can be understood more deeply in completely different terms. The mass of ordinary matter is the embodied energy of more basic building blocks, themselves lacking mass. Nor is space what it appears to be. What appears to our eyes as empty space is revealed to our minds as a complex medium full of spontaneous activity.

Yet it is beautiful to discover that there’s another chapter to the story, where we discover deep unity beneath, and supporting, the diversity of appearance. All colors are one thing, seen in different states of motion. That is science’s brilliantly poetic answer to Keats’s complaint that science “unweaves a rainbow.

Thus the electromagnetic information entering our eyes at each image point is infinite-dimensional twice over, because for each spectral color there are two possible polarizations, each of which can occur with an independent strength. Human vision overlooks that doubling because human eyes cannot distinguish between different polarizations of light.

Total energy, which is the conserved quantity, is the sum of several terms: kinetic energy, mass energy, potential energy, and field energy. Those different terms refer to aspects of reality that seem, on the face of it, quite different. Much of the power of the concept of energy, in applications, comes precisely from its ability to describe, and relate, several different aspects of reality.

The human mind is our ultimate sense organ. Mind has discovered that there are invisible infinities hidden in light. Our perception of color projects the doubly infinite-dimensional space of physical color onto the three-dimensional wall of our inner Cave.

If an energetic and powerful Creator made the world, it could be that what moved Him – or Her, or Them, or It – to create was precisely an impulse to make something beautiful.

In the more advanced, modern parts of physics we learn that light itself is a form of matter, and indeed that matter in general, when understood deeply, is remarkably light-like. So again, our interest in and experience with light, which is deeply rooted in our essential nature, proves fortunate.

So graphene makes an extremely strong, tough material. At the same time, because it is only one atomic layer thick, a graphene sheet is light and flexible. In explaining their 2010 award, the Nobel committee mentioned that a one-square meter graphene hammocck could support a cat, while weighing about as much as one of the cat’s whiskers.

The entity we perceive as empty space is a multilayered, multicolored superconductor. What an amazing, astonishing, beautiful, breathtaking concept. Extraordinary, too.