Oftentimes, if you're talking to a seasoned interviewer who asks you a question, they may do a follow-up if they didn't quite get it. It's rare that they'll do a third or fourth or fifth or sixth follow-up, because there's an implicit, agreed-upon decorum that they move on. Kids don't necessarily move on if they don't get it.
Brian GreeneThe pinpoints of starlight we see with the naked eye are photons that have been streaming toward us for a few years or a few thousand.
Brian GreeneBefore the discovery of quantum mechanics, the framework of physics was this: If you tell me how things are now, I can then use the laws of physics to calculate, and hence predict, how things will be later.
Brian GreeneFree will is the sensation of making a choice. The sensation is real, but the choice seems illusory. Laws of physics determine the future.
Brian GreeneEvidence in support of general relativity came quickly. Astronomers had long known that Mercuryโs orbital motion around the sun deviated slightly from what Newtonโs mathematics predicted. In 1915, Einstein used his new equations to recalculate Mercuryโs trajectory and was able to explain the discrepancy, a realization he later described to his colleague Adrian Fokker as so thrilling that for some hours it gave him heart palpitations.
Brian GreeneIn the far, far future, essentially all matter will have returned to energy. But because of the enormous expansion of space, this energy will be spread so thinly that it will hardly ever convert back to even the lightest particles of matter. Instead, a faint mist of light will fall for eternity through an ever colder and quieter cosmos.
Brian Greene