Home > Author > Lisa Randall
61 " Given that they’ve never seen (or felt or smelled) it, many people I’ve spoken to are surprised at the existence of dark matter and find it quite mysterious—or even wonder if it’s some sort of mistake. People ask how it can possibly be that most matter—about five times the amount of ordinary matter—cannot be detected with conventional telescopes. Personally, I would expect quite the opposite (though admittedly not everyone sees it this way). It would be even more mysterious to me if the matter we can see with our eyes is all the matter that exists. Why should we have perfect senses that can directly perceive everything? The big lesson of physics over the centuries is how much is hidden from our view. From this perspective, the question is really why the stuff we do know about should constitute as much of the energy density of the Universe as it does. "
― Lisa Randall , Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs: The Astounding Interconnectedness of the Universe
62 " The uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics, coupled with the relations of special relativity, tell us that, using physical constants, we can relate a particle’s mass, energy, and momentum to the minimum size of the region in which a particle of that energy can experience forces or interactions. "
― Lisa Randall , Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe's Hidden Dimensions
63 " if there is a conventional explanation for an observation, it is almost always the right one. Radical departures should be accepted only when they explain phenomena that older ideas fail to accommodate. In "
64 " The weak force violates parity symmetry by acting differently on left-handed and right-handed particles. It turns out that only left-handed particles experience the weak force. For example, a left-handed electron would experience the weak force, whereas one spinning to the right would not. Experiments show this clearly—it’s the way the world works—but there is no intuitive, mechanical explanation for why this should be so. "
65 " Trillions of solar neutrinos pass through you each second, but interact so weakly that you never notice. "
66 " But the Universe is by definition a single entity and in principle its components interact. This book explores "
67 " So, in a sense, looking under the lamppost for dark matter is appropriate. "
68 " The problem is that string theory is defined at an energy scale that is about ten million billion times larger than those we can experimentally explore with our current instruments. "
69 " Maxwell was a brilliant scientist who counted among his many interests optics and color, the mathematics of ovals, thermodynamics, the rings of Saturn, measuring latitude with a bowl of treacle, and the question of how cats land upright while conserving angular momentum when dropped upside down. "