Physik – Yoice.net

Alan Hirshfeld | the pendulum of belief had swung irreversibly to the Copernican side

"In Newton’s day, the Ptolemaic system and the Keplerian version of the Copernican system were taught side by side in the universities of the world. But the pendulum of belief had swung irreversibly to the Copernican side. In the minds of most scientists, the heliocentric universe had become fact…Yet there remained a crucial missing element in what was otherwise a complete and compelling picture of the universe: Not one shred of indisputable observational proof existed that the Earth moved through space.Here then was the holy grail of many an astronomer. To prove that the Earth in fact revolved in a wide orbit around the Sun, the parallax of just one star – any star – had to be detected. The hunt for stellar parallax was on."

Alan Hirshfeld

Albert Einstein | The struggle, so violent in the early days of science

in Albert Einstein

“The struggle, so violent in the early days of science, between the views of Ptolemy and Copernicus would then be quite meaningless. Either CS [coordinate system] could be used with equal justification. The two sentences, “the Sun is at rest and the Earth moves,” or “the Sun moves and the Earth is at rest,” would simply mean two different conventions concerning two different CS.”

Albert Einstein

Richard Feynman | iintellectual tyranny in the name of science

in Richard Phillips Feynman

"Science alone of all the subjects contains within itself the lesson of the danger of belief in the infallibility of the greatest teachers in the preceding generation (…) When someone says, “Science teaches such and such,” he is using the word incorrectly. Science doesn’t teach anything; experience teaches it. If they say to you, “Science has shown such and such,” you might ask, “How does science show it? How did the scientists find out? How? What? Where?” It should not be “science has shown” but “this experiment, this effect, has shown.” And you have as much right as anyone else, upon hearing about the experiments–but be patient and listen to all the evidence–to judge whether a sensible conclusion has been arrived at. (…) The experts who are leading you may be wrong. (…) I think we live in an unscientific age in which almost all the buffeting of communications and television-words, books, and so on-are unscientific. As a result, there is a considerable amount of intellectual tyranny in the name of science."

Richard Phillips Feynman

Sir Fred Hoyle | So, does the earth spin?

in Fred Hoyle

"We can talk with precision of a body as spinning around relative to something or another, but there is no such thing as absolute spin: the Earth is not spinning to those of us who live on its surface and our point of view is as good as anyone else’s – but no better." (F. Hoyle: Frontiers of Astronomy, New York, Harper & Row, 1966, p304.)

Sir Fred Hoyle

Brian Cox | There is absolutely no basis at all for thinking the world is flat

in Brian Edward Cox

“There is absolutely no basis at all for thinking the world is flat. Nobody in human history, as far as I know, has thought the world was flat. The Greeks measured the radius of the Earth. I cannot conceive of a reason why anybody would think the world is flat. There are interesting bits of physics that tell you you live on a spinning planet and one of them is called the Coriolis force, which is the force that's responsible for causing storm systems to rotate on the planet. So when you see those beautiful pictures of storms spinning around and rotating, the reason for that is that we live on a spinning planet. It's probably the most nonsensical suggestion that a thinking human being could possibly make. It is drivel.”

Brian Edward Cox

Papst Pius XII | Big Bang – Creation – Science

in Papst Pius XII

"In fact, it seems that present-day science, with one sweeping step back across millions of centuries, has succeeded in bearing witness to that primordial 'Fiat lux' Let there be light uttered at the moment when, along with matter, there burst forth from nothing a sea of light and radiation, while the particles of the chemical elements split and formed into millions of galaxies ... Hence, creation took place in time, therefore, there is a Creator, God exists. Although it is neither explicit nor complete, this is the reply we were awaiting from science, and which the present human generation is awaiting from it."

Papst Pius XII

Alexander Unzicker | Physics has lost its grip on the ground

in Alexander Unzicker

"Physics has lost its grip on the ground. For every anomaly, scientists pull a new parameter out of a hat instead of trying to understand the underlying principles. They have accumulated more than 30 "natural constants": all values that no one can explain."

Alexander Unzicker

Werner Heisenberg | This mathematical scheme had for me a magical attraction

in Werner Heisenberg

"I found in the formulae. which were the results of my collaboration with Kramers, a mathematics which in a certain sense worked automatically, independently of all physical models. This mathematical scheme had for me a magical attraction, and I was fascinated by the thought that perhaps here could be seen the first threads of an enormous net of deep-set relations."

Werner Heisenberg

Dr. Erik Verlinde | For me gravity doesn’t exist

in Dr. Erik Verlinde

"We’ve known for a long time gravity doesn’t exist, it’s time to yell it."

Dr. Erik Verlinde

Isaac Newton | so great an absurdity that

in Isaac Newton

"[…]that one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it."

Isaac Newton

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