Leonard Susskind
20 quotes
Biography
"There is a philosophy that says that if something is unobservable -- unobservable in principle -- it is not part of science. If there is no way to falsify or confirm a hypothesis, it belongs to the realm of metaphysical speculation, together with astrology and spiritualism. By that standard, most of the universe has no scientific reality -- it's just a figment of our imaginations."
"The standard SU(3)×SU(2)×U(1) theory of strong, electromagnetic, and weak interactions appears to correctly describe physics down to the smallest distance scales yet probed."
"(Jokingly) Sex in ten dimensions is impossible... topologically."
"The problem with general relativity is that the principles are pretty simple and the computations are always ugly."
"A straight line is a special case of a curve. It's a curve which is uncurved."
"Elegance requires that the number of defining equations be small. Five is better than ten, and one is better than five. On this score, one might facetiously say that String Theory is the ultimate epitome of elegance. With all the years that String Theory has been studied, no one has found even a single defining equation! The number at present count is zero. We know neither what the fundamental equations of the theory are nor even if it has any."
"My physics has been extremely mainstream, ... It's not true that I'm some sort of a [radical thinker], not at all."
"I typically ask the question: Do you think that you can visualize a five-dimensional space? (visualize means close your eyes and see it). Everybody says no I can't do that - well I can't do it either! Four? Not really no - I can use a trick to help me visualize it but direct visualization I cannot. Now I say close your eyes and can you visualize a cube? Yeah, I can visualize the cube. Then we go down to two dimensions. What I want you to do is to visualize an abstract two-dimensional space - can you do that? And everybody says sure. And I say what do you see? They say "oh I see a curved surface". And my response to that is: yes you see a curved surface; but the only way you can visualize it is by visualizing it as embedded in three dimensions (unless you have some brain different than mine). Right, can you even visualize a one-dimensional space? "Sure I can see a line" - No! What you see is that line embedded on a piece of paper embedded in three dimensions. Even a point you cannot visualize without seeing it suspended in three dimensions. What is it that's special about three dimensions? Is there something really mathematically special? No: it's architecture your brain architecture evolved for the purpose of navigating around in three dimensions"
"... Lenny Susskind ... is very well known for his technical work, for his popular work, for his semi-technical books, The Theoretical Minimum, and, within the physics community, as a storyteller, a mentor, and a guiding visionary of the field."
"Dozens of other popular authors have written about black holes and string theory, but Gefter’s excitement makes even such overdone subjects seem fresh. And through the whole process, she and her father remain awed by the physicists whose work they’re studying—late in the book, her father even asks Susskind for an autograph."
"Extra dimensional theories are sometimes considered science fiction with equations. I think that's a wrong attitude. I think extra dimensions are with us, they are with us to stay, and they entered physics a long time ago. They are not going to go away."
"Life is fragile: it thrives only in a narrow range of temperatures between freezing and boiling. How lucky that our planet is just the right distance from the sun: a little farther, and the death of the perpetual Antarctic winter - or worse - would prevail; a little closer, and the surface would truly fry anything that touched it."
"I have a funny mental framework when I do physics. I create an imaginary audience in my head to explain things to - it is part of the way I think. For me, teaching and explaining, even to my imaginary audience, is part of the process."
"I'm afraid I am a bit of a technophobe - a nineteenth-century man caught in the twenty-first century. But there is one piece of technology that I would especially welcome: a device to automatically balance restaurant tables on all four legs so that they don't rock back and forth."
"I did not come from an academic background. My father was a smart man, but he had a fifth-grade education. He and all his friends were plumbers. They were all born around 1905 in great poverty in New York City and had to go to work when they were 12 or 13 years old."
"Why is there space rather than no space? Why is space three-dimensional? Why is space big? We have a lot of room to move around in. How come it's not tiny? We have no consensus about these things. We're still exploring them."
"Space can vibrate, space can fluctuate, space can be quantum mechanical, but what the devil is it? And, you know, everybody has their own idea about what it is, but there's no coherent final consensus on why there is space."
"Unforeseen surprises are the rule in science, not the exception. Remember: Stuff happens."
"I'm not going to argue with people about the existence of God. I have not the vaguest idea of whether the universe was created by an intelligence."
"You are a victim of your own neural architecture which doesn't permit you to imagine anything outside of three dimensions. Even two dimensions. People know they can't visualise four or five dimensions, but they think they can close their eyes and see two dimensions. But they can't."