John Archibald Wheeler
John Archibald Wheeler
John Archibald Wheelerwas an American theoretical physicist. He was largely responsible for reviving interest in general relativity in the United States after World War II. Wheeler also worked with Niels Bohr in explaining the basic principles behind nuclear fission. Together with Gregory Breit, Wheeler developed the concept of Breit–Wheeler process. He is best known for linking the term "black hole" to objects with gravitational collapse already predicted early in the 20th century, for coining the terms "quantum foam", "neutron moderator",...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhysicist
Date of Birth9 July 1911
CountryUnited States of America
Behind it all is surely an idea so simple, so beautiful, that when we grasp it - in a decade, a century, or a millennium - we will all say to each other, how could it have been otherwise? How could we have been so stupid?
This is *our* Universe, our museum of wonder and beauty, our cathedral.
I like to say, when asked why I pursue science, that it is to satisfy my curiosity, that I am by nature a searcher trying to understand. If you haven't found something strange during the day, it hasn't been much of a day.
One can only learn by teaching.
The laws of physics that we regard as 'sacred,' as immutable, are anything but.
No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon.
Every heat engineer knows he can design his heat engine reliably and accurately on the foundation of the second law [of thermodynamics]. Run alongside one of the molecules, however, and ask it what it thinks of the second law. It will laugh at us. It never heard of the second law. It does what it wants. All the same, a collection of billions upon billions of such molecules obeys the second law with all the accuracy one could want
Surely where there's smoke there's fire? No, where there's so much smoke there's smoke.
It was the defining event and remains a thousand degrees hot.
We are not only observers. We are participators. In some strange sense this is aparticipatory universe.
Time, among all concepts in the world of physics, puts up the greatest resistance to being dethroned from ideal continuum to the world of the discrete, of information, of bits.... Of all obstacles to a thoroughly penetrating account of existence, none looms up more dismayingly than 'time.' Explain time? Not without explaining existence. Explain existence? Not without explaining time. To uncover the deep and hidden connection between time and existence ... is a task for the future.
If you haven't found something strange during the day, it hasn't been much of a day.
It is my opinion that everything must be based on a simple idea. And it is my opinion that this idea, once we have finally discovered it, will be so compelling, so beautiful, that we will say to one another, yes, how could it have been any different.
The observer cannot be left out of the description of the observation.