Chess is a game with simple rules and pieces, a small sixty-four-space board, but there are more possible chess games than there are atoms in the universe.

~ Austin Grossman

Austin Grossman Atoms Atoms In The Universe Chess Complexity Simplicity The Universe

It was like bouncing tennis balls off a mystery piece of furniture and deducing, from the direction in which the balls ricocheted, whether it was a chair or a table or a Welsh dresser.

~ Marcus Chown

Marcus Chown Atoms Hilarious Physics Quantum Theory

The prime number 137 had continuously occupied Pauli's mind. It is an approximate value for a constant appearing in the fine structure theory of atomic spectra which in its theoretical expression ties together electromagnetism, relativity and quantum theory. Pauli saw the fine structure theory of spectra as a key in understanding the deepest contemporary problems of theoretical physics. For that reason the number 137 possessed a mysterious attraction for him.

~ K. V. Laurikainen

K. V. Laurikainen Atoms Fine Structure Constant History Of Science Physics Wolfgang Pauli

At the atomic level, matter does not even exist with certainty; it only exists as a tendency to exist.

~ Bruce H. Lipton

Bruce H. Lipton Atoms Biology Matter Physics Quantum Physics Science

The dogma of the impossibility of determining the atomic constitution of substances, which until recently was advocated with such fervor by the most able chemists, is beginning to be abandoned and forgotten; and one can predict that the day is not far in the future when a sufficient collection of facts will permit determination of the internal architecture of molecules. A series of experiments directed toward such a goal is the object of this paper.

~ Wilhelm Körner

Wilhelm Körner Atoms Chemistry Dogma Matter Molecules Physics Science Structure

After the discovery of spectral analysis no one trained in physics could doubt the problem of the atom would be solved when physicists had learned to understand the language of spectra. So manifold was the enormous amount of material that has been accumulated in sixty years of spectroscopic research that it seemed at first beyond the possibility of disentanglement. An almost greater enlightenment has resulted from the seven years of Röntgen spectroscopy, inasmuch as it has attacked the problem of the atom at its very root, and illuminates the interior. What we are nowadays hearing of the language of spectra is a true 'music of the spheres' in order and harmony that becomes ever more perfect in spite of the manifold variety. The theory of spectral lines will bear the name of Bohr for all time. But yet another name will be permanently associated with it, that of Planck. All integral laws of spectral lines and of atomic theory spring originally from the quantum theory. It is the mysterious organon on which Nature plays her music of the spectra, and according to the rhythm of which she regulates the structure of the atoms and nuclei.

~ Arnold Sommerfeld

Arnold Sommerfeld Atomic Structure Atomic Theory Atoms Bohr Max Planck Niels Bohr Nobel Laureates Nucleus Physics Planck Röntgen Science Spectra Spectroscopy Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen Wilhelm Röntgen

The history of atomism is one of reductionism – the effort to reduce all the operations of nature to a small number of laws governing a small number of primordial objects.

~ Leon M. Lederman

Leon M. Lederman Atomic Theory Atomism Atoms Cern Natural Laws Nature Nobel Laureate Particle Physics Physics Reductionism Science

In the last four days I have got the (results) given by Tantalum, Chromium, Manganese, Iron , Nickel, Cobalt and Copper ... The chief result is that ... the result for any metal (is) quite easy to guess from the results for the others. This shews that the insides of all the atoms are very much alike, and from these results it will be possible to find out something of what the insides are made up of.

~ Henry Moseley

Henry Moseley Atomic Theory Atoms Chemistry Early Death Elements Physics Pioneer Pioneering Scientist Science Scientist

If instead of arranging the atoms in some definite pattern, again and again repeated, on and on, or even forming little lumps of complexity like the odor of violets, we make an arrangement which is always different from place to place, with different kinds of atoms arranged in many ways, continually changing, not repeating, how much more marvelously is it possible that this thing might behave? Is it possible that that thing walking back and forth in front of you, talking to you, is a great glob of these atoms in a very complex arrangement, such that the sheer complexity of it staggers the imagination as to what it can do? When we say we are a pile of atoms, we do not mean we are merely a pile of atoms, because a pile of atoms which is not repeated from one to the other might well have the possibilities which you see before you in the mirror.

~ Richard Feynman

Richard Feynman Atoms Physics Richard Feynman Six Easy Pieces

Whoso meditates on the Omniscient, the Ancient, more minute than the atom, yet the Ruler and Upholder of all, Unimaginable, Brilliant like the Sun, beyond the reach of darkness.

~ Shri Purohit Swami

Shri Purohit Swami Ancient Atom Atomism Atoms Bhagavad Gita India Indian Philsophers

Life is not found in atoms or molecules or genes as such, but in organization; not in symbiosis but in synthesis.

~ Edwin Grant Conklin

Edwin Grant Conklin Atoms Biology Genes Life Molecules Organization Science Scientist Symbiosis Synthesis Zoologist

The chemists who uphold dualism are far from being agreed among themselves; nevertheless, all of them in maintaining their opinion, rely upon the phenomena of chemical reactions. For a long time the uncertainty of this method has been pointed out: it has been shown repeatedly, that the atoms put into movement during a reaction take at that time a new arrangement, and that it is impossible to deduce the old arrangement from the new one. It is as if, in the middle of a game of chess, after the disarrangement of all the pieces, one of the players should wish, from the inspection of the new place occupied by each piece, to determine that which it originally occupied.

~ Auguste Laurent

Auguste Laurent Atoms Chemical Reactions Chemistry Chemists Chess Dualism Opinion Science