Particle Quotes

“One of the most curious consequences of quantum physics is that a particle like an electron can seemingly be in more than one place at the same time until it is observed, at which point there seems to be a random choice made about where the particle is really located. Scientists currently believe that this randomness is genuine, not just caused by a lack of information. Repeat the experiment under the same conditions and you may get a different answer each time.”
― Marcus du Sautoy, The Great Unknown: Seven Journeys to the Frontiers of Science

“the Z-particle Pure energy—no mass at all. It may well be the
smallest building block in nature. Matter is nothing but trapped energy.”
― Dan Brown, Angels & Demons

“We are like some particle in motion always moving and meeting other particle.”
― Santosh Kalwar, That's My Love Story

“Life is both a particle and a wave, Lacey taught me, and also it's neither. But only when no one is watching. Once you measure it, it has to choose. It was the act of witnessing that turned nothing into something, collapsed possibility clouds into concrete and irrevocable truth. I'd only pretended to understand before, but I understood now: When no one was watching, I was a cloud. I was all possibilities.”
― Robin Wasserman, Girls on Fire

“The realization, early in high school, that a particle behaved differently if observed or left alone.”
― Lara Santoro, The Boy

“The wave quality of light is the same as that of the electron. The wave determines the probable location of the photon of light when it is detected. The wave character of light is not vibrating stuff like a wave of water but rather a wavelike function encoding information about where you'll find the photon of light once it is detected. Until it reaches the detector plate, like the electron, it is seemingly passing through both slits simultaneously, making its mind up about its location only once it is observed [...].
It's this act of observation that is such a strange feature of quantum physics. Until I ask the detector to pick up where the electron is, the particle should be thought of as probabilistically distributed over space, with a probability described by a mathematical function that has wavelike characteristics. The effect of the two slits on this mathematical wave function alters it in such a way that the electron is forbidden from being located at some points on the detector plate. But when the particle is observed, the die is cast, probabilities disappear, and the particle must decide on a location.”
― Marcus du Sautoy, The Great Unknown: Seven Journeys to the Frontiers of Science

“The important concept of the solar wind is that Space is not empty. It is an energy and particle filled environment that interacts with whatever is in it! Astronomers call this 'Dark Energy'.”
― Steven Magee, Solar Radiation, Global Warming and Human Disease

“Like measuring light as a particle or wave makes it what the observer expects, so too does assuming things about reality make it so. I fear the conclusion people gear up for is the wholesale demise of many millions unless this spiritual ennui ceases. How many catastrophes have people expected in the last few decades? How many times have humans expected the End Times?”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Flies to Wanton Boys

“So rich a client having suffered such a messy death was an unsettling embarrassment to Captain Harald Biscay. It was bad for business. He had the murder hushed up immediately, his security staff investigating the matter covertly but thoroughly. Five and a half thousand souls onboard. Five and a half thousand suspects. Three days. So far, nothing. Now it would be taken further by the planetary authorities on the colony world below. A forensic team (cunningly disguised as a cleaning crew) was now rummaging through Smiffs apartment, examining every single particle. He had a feeling -- a strong feeling, about what they were going to find. Somehow, Biscay was of the opinion that this was going to be another contender for the Unsolved Murders show.”
― Christina Engela, Dead Man's Hammer

“Is a particle really a wave packet?
Could something like a "phase transition" involve dimensions that are more transitory then we imagined.
Example; a photon as a two dimensional sheet is absorbed by an electron so that the photon becomes a part of the geometry of the electron in which the electrons dimensions change in some manner.
Could "scale" have more variation and influence on space and time that our models currently predict.”
― R.A. Delmonico

“I never thought about a job in astronomy until I saw a job advert advertising one. It was in the Canary Islands, working for the UK Government’s Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC). Wow! That sounded so cool! I applied, got flown out for an interview on the island and took the job. I felt like I had won the lottery, as I was being paid to do something I was interested in and living on the beautiful island of La Palma. I started my career fixing broken vacuum cleaners at the city hospital, it was quite a change!”
― Steven Magee, Magee’s Disease

“High altitude professional astronomy is a radiation occupation.”
― Steven Magee

“Les partícules s'agraden d'estar juntes. Podria ser que el moviment quàntic fos només això: buscar-se, colpir-se, consumar-se.”
― Helena Guilera Recoder, L'escuma