Kip S. Thorne Quotes

The French translation of ‘a black hole has no hair’ is so obscene that French publishers resisted it vigorously, to no avail.

quizá incluso tenía miedo — a especular.

Pronto aprendimos a llevar varios problemas a la vez: un problema difícil que deba ser visitado y revisitado una vez tras otra a lo largo de muchos meses o años antes de que se abra la cáscara, con la esperanza de una gran ganancia; y otros problemas mucho más fáciles, con ganancias más inmediatas.

If we begin with the ill-understood laws of quantum gravity and then discard the fluctuations, we must obtain Einstein’s well-understood relativistic laws of physics. The fluctuations we discard are, for example, a froth of fluctuating, exquisitely tiny wormholes (“quantum foam” that pervades all of space; Figure 26.3 and Chapter 14).

La independencia nutre a la fuerza.

Time, he realized, must be warped by the masses of heavy bodies such as the Earth or a black hole, and that warping is responsible for gravity. He embodied this insight in what I like to call “Einstein’s law of time warps,” a precise mathematical formula that I describe qualitatively this way: Everything likes to live where it will age the most slowly, and gravity pulls it there.

Yes, that’s what I meant to say. If this seems a bit circular to you, well, it is, but it has deep meaning.

Simplicity is the touchstone in finding new physical laws. … If it's elegant, then it's a rough rule of thumb: you're on the right track.

y hemos contagiado a la comunidad física mundial nuestros niveles matemáticos escandalosamente bajos.

The first planet that Cooper and his crew visit is Miller’s. The most impressive things about this planet are the extreme slowing of time there, gigantic water waves, and huge tidal gravity. All three are related, and arise from the planet’s closeness to Gargantua.

Can you identify in your own life speculations that became educated guesses and then truth? Have you ever seen your established truths upended, with a resulting revolution in your life?

The science of Interstellar lies in all four domains: Newtonian, relativistic, quantum, and quantum gravity. Correspondingly, some of the science is known to be true, some is an educated guess, and some is speculation.

The detector consists of four huge mirrors (40 kilograms, 34 centimeters in diameter) that hang from overhead supports at the ends of two perpendicular arms. The waves’ tendex lines stretch one arm while squeezing the other, and then squeeze the first while stretching the second, over and over and over again. The oscillating separation between mirrors is monitored with laser beams, by a technique called interferometry. Hence LIGO’s name: Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory.

Everything is drawn inexorably toward the future.

By laws that we humans are capable of discovering, deciphering, mastering, and using to control our own fate. Even without bulk beings to help us, we humans are capable of dealing with most any catastrophe the universe may throw at us, and even those catastrophes we throw at ourselves — from climate change to biological and nuclear catastrophes.