Quotes from Andrew Thomas

As the great physicist John Wheeler said: "To my mind there must be, at the bottom of it all, not an equation, but an utterly simple idea. And to me that idea, when we finally discover it, will be so compelling, so inevitable, that we will say to one another: 'Oh, how beautiful. How could it have been otherwise?

information content is called the holographic bound.

To divide all the difficulties under examination into as many parts as possible, and as many as were required to solve them in the best way, and to conduct my thoughts in a given order, beginning with the simplest and most easily understood objects, and gradually ascending, as it were step by step, to the knowledge of the most complex.

As we move about in space, we are also moving forward in time. This means we effectively navigate a path through spacetime called a world line.

Fractals are the geometry of chaos, and they are found throughout Nature.

We assume the complete physical equivalence of a gravitational field and a corresponding acceleration of the reference system.

The clue to unification is the universe itself. "Uni" means "one". The universe is the one thing that exists. It is everything that exists.

The observation of an object by an observer results in an equivalent observation of the observer by the observed object.

Just like a wine glass breaking, or a car rusting, the entropy of a closed system will always increase with time.

Likewise, when an isolated particle encounters a randomised environment, the effect of the environment will be to destroy the ordered coherent phases of the particle's wavelike nature. The regularity dissipates into the environment and can never be reformed — just like a broken egg.

Downgrade the "now". Realise that the current moment is no more real than the past moments in your life.

Totalitarian Principle: "Everything which is not forbidden is compulsory".

If a loved one dies, you might take some comfort from the knowledge that this period of time in which your loved one is dead has, in fact, no greater reality than the time when your loved one was alive. According to physics, it is just as valid to consider your loved one as alive as it is to consider them dead!

Galileo stated that there was no experiment you could possibly perform which could detect if you were stationary or moving at a constant velocity. This unification of "being stationary" and "moving" stands as the first of the great unifications in physics.

Michael Faraday demonstrated that if you push a magnet through a coil of wire, an electric current flows. Conversely, if you pass an electric current through a wire it can deflect a nearby magnetic compass. From this, Faraday deduced that electric currents create magnetic fields, and moving magnetic fields create electric currents. Thus was electromagnetism discovered, unifying electricity and magnetism.

the two forces of electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force were, in fact, the same force behaving in two different ways at our everyday low energies. If it is sufficiently hot enough then the electromagnetic force and the weak force would merge into a single force. This was confirmed in the 1980s in CERN, the European laboratory for particle physics, when they recreated the temperature of the early universe and demonstrated the existence of the so-called electroweak force.

I have long contended that consciousness is the way information feels.

Such pairs of properties — such as momentum and position — which behave in this way are called conjugate variables. The theory which expresses this uncertainty in conjugate variable values is called the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. According to the uncertainty

you would expect that at the ultimate base of Nature, we will surely find a principle which is simple, beautiful, and elegant. As the great physicist John Wheeler said: "To my mind there must be, at the bottom of it all, not an equation, but an utterly simple idea. And to me that idea, when we finally discover it, will be so compelling, so inevitable, that we will say to one another: 'Oh, how beautiful. How could it have been otherwise?

I have decided not to appeal the ruling that took my law license. My accusers, the Board of Supervisors, once again have fired my lawyers, ensuring I cannot properly defend myself or my anti-corruption efforts.

Our success as consultants will depend upon the essential rightness of the advice we give and our capacity for convincing those in authority that it is good.

Today, corruption has won and justice has lost. I brought corruption cases in good faith involving powerful people, and the political and legal establishment blatantly covered up and retaliated by targeting my law license.

While we do not ask for accolades, we must defend ourselves from repeated public attacks.

Ideas that are at odds with the inherited collective wisdom of antiquity are always, on their face suspect.