John D. Barrow
John D. Barrow
John David Barrow FRSis an English cosmologist, theoretical physicist, and mathematician. He is currently Research Professor of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge. Barrow is also a writer of popular science and an amateur playwright...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth29 November 1952
stars dark unseen
Apparently, a great deal of dark, unseen material exists, whose gravitational pull is responsible for the motions of the stars and galaxies that we see.
expanding-universe astronomy certain
There are only certain intervals of time when life of any sort is possible in an expanding universe and we can practise astronomy only during that habitable time interval in cosmic history.
thinking people doubt
History is full of people who thought they were right -- absolutely right, completely right, without a shadow of a doubt. And because history never seems like history when you are living through it, it is tempting for us to think the same.
trying states observation
When we try to observe things that are very small, the act of observation itself will significantly disturb the state we are seeking to measure.
past foresight knows
We can predict the present without having to know everything about the past.
god spiritual world
All our surest statements about the nature of the world are mathematical statements, yet we do not know what mathematics "is"... and so we find that we have adapted a religion strikingly similar to many traditional faiths. Change "mathematics" to "God" and little else might seem to change. The problem of human contact with some spiritual realm, of timelessness, of our inability to capture all with language and symbol-all have their counterparts in the quest for the nature of Platonic mathematics.
secret knows universe
We can never know the origins of the universe. The deepest secrets are the ones that keep themselves.
reason should convenience
There is no reason that the universe should be designed for our convenience.
science mathematics revealing
What cannot be known is more revealing than what can.
Some things are as they are regardless of what they were.
once-upon-a-time
Once upon a time there was no Time.
stars sea space
If all the stars and galaxies in the universe today were smoothed out into a uniform sea of atoms, there would only be about one atom in every cubic meter of space.