American - Mathematician | August 26, 1951 -
I don't care about movies. I tend to play badminton once a week.
Edward Witten
CareWeekPlayMoviesBadminton
Regardless of any deviations, it was clear I was supposed to end up in math and physics.
EndPhysicsUpClearRegardlessAny
I'm actually, for the most part, a complete agnostic politically.
AgnosticCompleteMostPartActually
String theory is an attempt at a deeper description of nature by thinking of an elementary particle not as a little point but as a little loop of vibrating string.
NatureThinkingPointLittleTheory
It's indeed surprising that replacing the elementary particle with a string leads to such a big change in things. I'm tempted to say that it has to do with the fuzziness it introduces.
ChangeSayThingsBigSurprising
Quantum mechanics brought an unexpected fuzziness into physics because of quantum uncertainty, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
UncertaintyUnexpectedPhysics
I just think too many nice things have happened in string theory for it to be all wrong. Humans do not understand it very well, but I just don't believe there is a big cosmic conspiracy that created this incredible thing that has nothing to do with the real world.
WorldBelieveThinkWrongNiceReal
Even before string theory, especially as physics developed in the 20th century, it turned out that the equations that really work in describing nature with the most generality and the greatest simplicity are very elegant and subtle.
WorkNatureSimplicityPhysicsOut
As far as extra dimensions are concerned, very tiny extra dimensions wouldn't be perceived in everyday life, just as atoms aren't: we see many atoms together but we don't see atoms individually.
LifeTogetherEverydaySeeAtoms
As for the forces, electromagnetism and gravity we experience in everyday life. But the weak and strong forces are beyond our ordinary experience. So in physics, lots of the basic building blocks take 20th- or perhaps 21st-century equipment to explore.
LifeExperienceBuildingStrong
As of now, string theorists have no explanation of why there are three large dimensions as well as time, and the other dimensions are microscopic. Proposals about that have been all over the map.
TimeNowThreeWhyMapOver
But the beauty of Einstein's equations, for example, is just as real to anyone who's experienced it as the beauty of music. We've learned in the 20th century that the equations that work have inner harmony.
WorkBeautyMusicHarmonyRealJust
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