Will Self Quotes

Do you realize that if you fall into a black hole, you will see the entire future of the Universe unfold in front of you in a matter of moments and you will emerge into another space-time created by the singularity of the black hole you just fell into?

Today, all physicists know from studying Einstein and Bohr that sometimes an idea which looks completely paradoxical at first, if analyzed to completion in all detail and in experimental situations, may, in fact, not be paradoxical.

I learned Einstein's theory of relativity when I was still in school. I simply got interested.

Relativity theory forced the abandonment, in principle, of absolute space and absolute time.

I claim that relativity and the rest of modern physics is not complicated. It can be explained very simply. It is only unusual or, put another way, it is contrary to common sense.

Time can behave like another direction in space under extreme conditions.

The math of quantum mechanics and the math of general relativity, when they confront one another, they are ferocious antagonists and the equations don't work.

The world is not made up of particles and waves and beams of light with a definite existence. Instead, the world works in a much more exploratory way. It is aware of all the possibilities at once and trying them out all the time. That is a hard thing to picture.

I always think of space-time as being the real substance of space, and the galaxies and the stars just like the foam on the ocean.

Great moments in science: Einstein discovers that time is actually money.

Physics is often stranger than science fiction, and I think science fiction takes its cues from physics: higher dimensions, wormholes, the warping of space and time, stuff like that.

Each of us can manifest the properties of a field of consciousness that transcends space, time, and linear causality.

Before 1915, space and time were thought of as a fixed arena in which events took place, but which was not affected by what happened in it. Space and time are now dynamic quantities... space and time not only affect but are also affected by everything that happens in the universe.

What we observe as material bodies and forces are nothing but shapes and variations in the structure of space.

I always found it satisfying that gravity was described by Einstein's geometric theory of general relativity.

Imaginary time is a new dimension, at right angles to ordinary, real time.

There certainly is a tension between the relativity of simultaneity and non-locality in quantum theory, but it's not strong enough to add up to a falsification of either side by itself.

I've always been a big fan of time travel, and I'm very into the notion that some day we'll be able to do it. Beam me up!

You will never find scientists leading armies into battle. You just won't. Especially not astrophysicists - we see the biggest picture there is. We understand how small we are in the cosmos. We understand how fragile and temporary our existence is here on Earth.

Trust me: you make a movie about time travel, and you know for a fact humans will never travel through time. The paradoxes that come up just from trying to tell a story with time travel really illuminates the fact that it's impossible. It will never happen. We can barely get through a movie that involves time travel.

From apparently superluminal radio sources in deep space, to the neutrinos that were supposed to be arriving ahead of schedule at the Grand Sasso experiment in Italy, every apparent exception to Einstein's ultimate speed law has turned out to be a phantom.

I feel as though maybe our concept of time and space is very limited. Maybe everything is all happening at once, if you know what I mean.

Although the theory of relativity makes the greatest of demands on the ability for abstract thought, still it fulfills the traditional requirements of science insofar as it permits a division of the world into subject and object (observer and observed) and, hence, a clear formulation of the law of causality.

I like the sci-fi channel. Just science in general. I came across a segment on time travel and how time travel is possible. We create a spaceship that's moving at almost the speed of light, we go in that spaceship in outer space, and we fly around for a year, when we get back to Earth, Earth would've aged 10 years.

When you're falling through space time has no meaning.