If you have somebody who's brilliant and highly creative with a different point of view than you have, and a very different intellectual background, great things can happen.
Kip ThorneRead
A big misconception is that a black hole is made of matter that has just been compacted to a very small size. That's not true. A black hole is made from warped space and time.
Interpretation
What this quote means
A black hole is not merely a dense object but a region where space and time are significantly altered.
Kip Thorne emphasizes that black holes are not just compacted matter but rather areas in the universe where the very fabric of space and time is distorted due to extreme gravitational forces. This challenges common misconceptions and highlights the complex nature of black holes in astrophysics.
Themes
Black HoleSpaceTimeGravityAstrophysics
In practice
Example use cases
In a lecture about black holes, this quote could illustrate the difference between common perceptions and scientific understanding.
More from Kip Thorne
All quotes →I think that the future of the human race is to spread through the universe, and now is the time that we should be laying the foundations for that.
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Whether you can go back in time is held in the grip of the law of quantum gravity.
Kip ThorneRead
'Closed timelike curve' is the jargon for time travel. It means you go out, come back and meet yourself in the past.
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If you think that the distance from the Earth to the nearest planet where we could live comfortably... is being, like, from New York to Australia... what we've achieved so far, in going to the moon, that's about two-and-a-half inches. So that's the challenge.
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If you go down through the horizon of a black hole, at the center you don't find a tunnel that leads you to some other place in the universe.
Kip ThorneRead
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