Sean M. Carroll quotes

Metaphysical principles are tempting shortcuts but not reliable guides. There are good reasons why things often seem to happen for reasons-and also reasons why that's not a bedrock principle. (Sean M. Carroll)
The fact that you can remember yesterday but not tomorrow is because of entropy. The fact that you're always born young and then you grow older, and not the other way around like Benjamin Button - it's all because of entropy. So I think that entropy is underappreciated as something that has a crucial role in how we go through life. View quote
Sean M. Carroll
If our local, observable universe is embedded in a larger structure, a multiverse, then there's other places in this larger structure that have denizens in them that call their local environs the universe. And conditions in those other places could be very different. Or they could be pretty similar to what we have here. View quote
Sean M. Carroll
Meaning in life can't be reduced to simplistic mottos. In some number of years I will be dead; some memory of my time here on Earth may linger, but I won't be around to savor it. View quote
Sean M. Carroll
In contrast to the arbitrarily complicated evolution of a (nonintegrable) classical system, all a quantum state ever does is move in circles. View quote
Sean M. Carroll
The mystery of the arrow of time comes down to this: Why were the conditions in the early universe set up in a particular way, in a configuration of low entropy that enabled all of the interesting and irreversible processes to come? View quote
Sean M. Carroll
All of my advice comes from remembering what I did wrong and then telling people not to do it. ... Don't wait to read the most recent research papers. ... Wonder how you could do better. ... Do your own research projects. Take the initiative. ... Ask your own questions - try to answer them. ... At some point you stop being a student and you start being a scientist. ... And it's a completely different skill set ... View quote
Sean M. Carroll
I don't want to give advice to people about their religious beliefs, but I do think that it's not smart to bet against the power of science to figure out the natural world. It used to be, a thousand years ago, that if you wanted to explain why the moon moved through the sky, you needed to invoke God. View quote
Sean M. Carroll
Even in empty space, time and space still exist. View quote
Sean M. Carroll
If time travel were possible, you still wouldn't be able to change the past - it's already happened! View quote
Sean M. Carroll
The particular aspect of time that I'm interested in is the arrow of time: the fact that the past is different from the future. We remember the past but we don't remember the future. There are irreversible processes. There are things that happen, like you turn an egg into an omelet, but you can't turn an omelet into an egg. (Sean M. Carroll)
I'm trying to understand cosmology, why the Big Bang had the properties it did. And it's interesting to think that connects directly to our kitchens and how we can make eggs, how we can remember one direction of time, why causes precede effects, why we are born young and grow older. It's all because of entropy increasing. View quote
Sean M. Carroll
When exactly does an observation occur? ... What were the laws of physics doing before there was anyone measuring things? And what do you mean by a measurement, anyway? Does it have to be a consciousness human being? ... Can a rock or a virus or an earthworm do an observation? View quote
Sean M. Carroll
Inflation is a simple idea: imagine that the universe begins in a tiny patch of space dominated by the potential energy of some scalar field, a kind of super-dense dark energy. This causes that patch to expand at a terrifically accelerated rate, smoothing out the density and diluting away any unwanted relics. Eventually the scalar field decays into ordinary matter and radiation, reheating the universe into a conventional Big Bang state, after which things proceed as normal. View quote
Sean M. Carroll
There probably are more forces than we know about, but they're only going to be of direct interest to physicists, I'm afraid. No tractor beams. View quote
Sean M. Carroll
The "reasons” and "causes” why things happen, in other words, aren't fundamental; they are emergent. We need to dig in to the actual history of the universe to see why these concepts have emerged. View quote
Sean M. Carroll
We are looking for a complete, coherent, and simple understanding of reality. Given what we know about the universe, there seems to be no reason to invoke God as part of this description. View quote
Sean M. Carroll
All the stuff we've ever seen in the laboratory, all the kinds of particles and matter and energy, that only makes up 5 percent of our universe. View quote
Sean M. Carroll
I'm trying to understand how time works. And that's a huge question that has lots of different aspects to it. View quote
Sean M. Carroll
Science isn't just about solving this or that puzzle. It's about understanding how the world works: the whole world from the vastness of the cosmos to the particularity of an individual human life. It's worth thinking about how all the different ways we have to talk about the world manage to fit together. View quote
Sean M. Carroll
Claims that some form of consciousness persists after our bodies die and decay into their constituent atoms face one huge, insuperable obstacle: the laws of physics underlying everyday life are completely understood, and there's no way within those laws to allow for the information stored in our brains to persist after we die. (Sean M. Carroll)
The arrow of time doesn't move forward forever. There's a phase in the history of the universe where you go from low entropy to high entropy. But then, once you reach the locally maximum entropy you can get to, there's no more arrow of time. View quote
Sean M. Carroll
A full understanding of what happens in our everyday lives needs to take into account what happened at the Big Bang. And not only is that intrinsically interesting and just kind of cool to think about, but it's also a mystery that is not given much attention by working scientists; it's a little bit underappreciated. View quote
Sean M. Carroll
Naturalism says that we were not put here for any purpose. But that doesn't mean there isn't such thing as purpose. It just means that purpose isn't imposed from outside. We human beings have the creative ability to give our lives purposes and meanings. View quote
Sean M. Carroll
The simplest way out of the puzzle of time travel is to say that it can't be done. That's very likely the right answer. However, we don't know for sure. View quote
Sean M. Carroll