Alan Guth Quotations

It's actually safe to create a universe in your basement.

Despite its name, the big bang theory is not really a theory of a bang at all. It is really only a theory of the aftermath of a bang.

In the context of general relativity, space almost is a substance. It can bend and twist and stretch, and probably the best way to think about space is to just kind of imagine a big piece of rubber that you can pull and twist and bend.

Space is certainly something more complicated than the average person would probably realize. Space is not just an empty background in which things happen.

It’s hard to build models of inflation that don't lead to a multiverse. It’s not impossible, so I think there’s still certainly research that needs to be done. But most models of inflation do lead to a multiverse, and evidence for inflation will be pushing us in the direction of taking [the idea of a] multiverse seriously.

The recent developments in cosmology strongly suggest that the universe may be the ultimate free lunch.

The question of the origin of the matter in the universe is no longer thought to be beyond the range of science -- everything can be created from nothing...it is fair to say that the universe is the ultimate free lunch.

The Big Bang theory says nothing about what banged, why it banged, or what happened before it banged.

Now, what space ultimately is - I should confess, I think most physicists believe - we don't yet know.

Our best theory of describing space at a fundamental level is probably string theory.

When one studies the properties of atoms, one found that the reality is far stranger than anybody would have invented in the form of fiction. Particles really do have the possibility of, in some sense, being in more than one place at one time.