[I]n science we have to be particularly cautious about 'why' questions. When we ask, 'Why?' we usually mean 'How?' If we can answer the latter, that … - Lawrence M. Krauss

" "

[I]n science we have to be particularly cautious about 'why' questions. When we ask, 'Why?' we usually mean 'How?' If we can answer the latter, that generally suffices for our purposes. For example, we might ask: 'Why is the Earth 93 million miles from the Sun?' but what we really probably mean is, 'How is the Earth 93 million miles from the Sun?' That is, we are interested in what physical processes led to the Earth ending up in its present position. 'Why' implicitly suggests purpose, and when we try to understand the solar system in scientific terms, we do not generally ascribe purpose to it.

English
Collect this quote

About Lawrence M. Krauss

Lawrence Maxwell Krauss (born May 27, 1954) is an American theoretical physicist and cosmologist who is professor of physics, Foundation Professor of the School of Earth and Space Exploration, and director of the Origins Project at the Arizona State University. He is the author of several bestselling books, including The Physics of Star Trek.

Biography information from Wikiquote

Also Known As

Native Name: Lawrence Maxwell Krauss
Alternative Names: Lawrence Krauss Larry Krauss
PREMIUM FEATURE
Advanced Search Filters

Filter search results by source, date, and more with our premium search tools.

Related quotes. More quotes will automatically load as you scroll down, or you can use the load more buttons.

Additional quotes by Lawrence M. Krauss

What's going to happen in the far future? Remember a hundred years ago we thought we lived into static eternal Universe. What will the future bring? The amazing thing is, for civilizations that live in a far future, what will they see? Well, the Universe is accelerating. That means all the distant galaxies are getting carried away from us, and eventually they'll move away from us faster than the speed of light. It's allowed in General relativity. They will disappear. The longer we wait, the less we will see. In a hundred billion years any observers evolving on stars around [us]... and there will be stars just like our Sun in 100 billion years. Any observers and civilizations... evolving around those stars will see nothing except for our Galaxy, which is exactly the picture they had in 1915. All evidence of the Hubble expansion will disappear. Why? Because we won't see other galaxies moving apart from us. So they will have no evidence, in fact, of Big Bang. They won't see the Hubble expansion. They won't even know about dark energy, and I won't go into that. They won't know about the cosmic microwave background - it will disappear too. It will redshift away, and it turns out for fancy reasons: there is a plasma in our Galaxy and when the Universe is 50 times its present age the microwave background won't able to propagate in our Galaxy. All evidence of the Big Bang will have disappeared, and those scientists will discover quantum mechanics, discover relativity, discover evolution, discover all the basic principles of science that we understand today, use the best observations they can do with the best telescopes they will build and they will derive a picture of the Universe which is completely wrong. They will derive a picture of the Universe as being one Galaxy surrounded by empty space that's static and eternal. Falsifiable science will produce the wrong answer. In fact, I want to end with the good news. We live in a very special time, the only time we can observationally verify that we live in a very special time.

Try QuoteGPT

Chat naturally about what you need. Each answer links back to real quotes with citations.

Loading...