#carlo rovelli

[fatchance]

"Dante, too, encountered the greatest difficulty, in the form of three fierce wild beasts, before he had even crossed the fateful threshold of the Inferno. Like any traveler, he knew that the first step, abandoning the familiar paths, is the most difficult."

Carlo Rovelli, in White Holes, 2023.

[dreams-of-mutiny]

“This is time for us. Memory. A nostalgia. The pain of absence. But it isn't absence that causes sorrow. It is affection and love. Without affection, without love, such absences would cause us no pain. For this reason, even the pain caused by absence is in the end something good and even beautiful. Because it feeds on that which gives meaning to life.”

― Carlo Rovelli, L'ordine del tempo

[spacetime-singularity]

Black holes that go to the sea ☀️

[saltwaterandstars]

JOMP BPC - 27th February - Freebie

I can't recommend this book enough. It's a popular science book offering a brief overview of the key advances in physics over the last century or so. Things like the General Theory of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, things that non-physicists like me have heard of but don't really know anything about. But also, Carlo Rovelli writes so engagingly about how beautiful and moving and wonder-inspiring scientific exploration can be - and also how human it is. He writes about Einstein's struggles and doubts, for example, and about the place of humility and imagination in scientific progress.

It's a very brief book - 79 pages - and you could read it in one sitting, but I don't recommend that. It's divided into 7 short 'lessons' and the ideas in it are so rich and at times so strange that I think most readers would benefit from time to chew over each lesson before moving onto the next. I read one brief lesson every morning for 7 days and found my mind returning to each one throughout that day. This book was a real treat.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

The Rose - Annie French (Scottish Artist)

* * * *

The world is not a collection of things, it is a collection of events. A stone is prototypical 'thing': we can ask ourselves where it will be tomorrow. Conversely, a kiss is an 'event'. It makes no sense to ask where the kiss will be tomorrow. The world is made up of networks of kisses, not of stones. On closer inspection, in fact, even the things that are most 'thing-like' are nothing more than long events.

- Carlo Rovelli

[alive on all channels]

[fuoridalcloro]

“Il ricordo e la nostalgia. Il dolore dell’assenza. Ma non è l’assenza che provoca dolore. Sono l’affetto e l’amore. Se non ci fosse affetto, se non ci fosse amore, non ci sarebbe il dolore dell’assenza. Per questo anche il dolore dell’assenza, in fondo, è buono e bello, perchè si nutre di quello che dà senso alla vita.”

Carlo Rovelli - L’ordine del tempo

[edwordsmyth]

Carlo Rovelli

[francescacammisa1]

Noi esseri umani viviamo di emozioni e pensieri. Ce li scambiamo quando siamo nello stesso luogo e nello stesso tempo, parlandoci, guardandoci negli occhi, sfiorandoci la pelle. Ci nutriamo di questa rete di incontri e scambi, anzi siamo questa rete di incontri e scambi. Pensieri e emozioni che ci legano gli uni agli altri non hanno difficoltà ad attraversare mari e decenni, talvolta perfino secoli. Legati a esili fogli di carta oppure danzanti fra i microchip di un computer. Siamo parte di una rete che va molto al di là dei pochi giorni della nostra vita, dei pochi metri quadrati dove muoviamo i nostri passi.

Carlo Rovelli - L'ordine del tempo

Ph Helmut Newton

[caseyschili]

“We are a species that is naturally moved by curiosity, the only one left of a group of species (the genus Homo) made up of a dozen equally curious species. The other species in the group have already become extinct—some, like the Neanderthals, quite recently, roughly thirty thousand years ago. It is a group of species that evolved in Africa, akin to the hierarchical and quarrelsome chimpanzees—and even more closely akin to the bonobos, the small, peaceful, cheerfully egalitarian, and promiscuous type of chimps. A group of species that repeatedly went out of Africa in order to explore new worlds, and went far: as far, eventually, as Patagonia—and as far, eventually, as the moon.

It is not against nature to be curious: it is in our nature to be so.

One hundred thousand years ago our species left Africa, compelled perhaps by precisely this curiosity, learning to look ever farther afield. Flying over Africa by night, I wondered if one of those distant ancestors setting out toward the wide-open spaces of the North could have looked up into the sky and imagined a distant descendant flying up there, pondering on the nature of things, and still driven by his very same curiosity.”

-Carlo Rovelli, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

[princessofmistake]

Quando morì il suo grande amico italiano Michele Besso, Albert Einstein scrive in una lettera commovente alla sorella di Michele: «Michele è partito da questo strano mondo un poco prima di me. Questo non significa nulla. Le persone come noi, che credono nella fisica, sanno che la distinzione fra passato, presente, futuro non è altro che una persistente, cocciuta illusione».

(Carlo Rovelli, Sette brevi lezioni di fisica, Adelphi, Milano, 2014)

[toa-greatmind-nothingislittle]

17 for the book ask, please :)

A book that surprised me was “Seven Brief Lessons on Physics” by Carlo Rovelli! I never would have expected a nonfiction book to move me so much but my goodreads review was, “This is a book about science that makes you fall in love with the universe, life, and humanity. Just a little bit of existential dread on the end.”

[fatchance]

"We always make the mistake of thinking of ourselves as different from the world around us, of thinking that we are looking at it from the outside. We forget that we are like other things – that we, too, are like the things we look at.

Carlo Rovelli, in White Holes, 2023.

[dreams-of-mutiny]

“Because everything that begins must end. What causes us to suffer is not in the past or the future: it is here, now, in our memory, in our expectations. We long for timelessness, we endure the passing of time: we suffer time. Time is suffering [Love is suffering].”

― Carlo Rovelli, L'ordine del tempo

[black-hole--sun]

There Are Places in the World Where Rules Are Less Important Than Kindness, Carlo Rovelli

[unapinetaamare718]

“Mi fermo e non faccio nulla. Non succede nulla. Non penso nulla. Ascolto lo scorrere del tempo. Questo è il tempo. Familiare e intimo. La sua rapina ci porta. Il precipitare di secondi, ore, anni ci lancia verso la vita, poi ci trascina verso il niente... Lo abitiamo come i pesci l’acqua. Il nostro essere è essere nel tempo. La sua nenia ci nutre, ci apre il mondo, ci turba, ci spaventa, ci culla. L’universo dipana il suo divenire trascinato dal tempo, secondo l’ordine del tempo. La mitologia indù rappresenta il fiume cosmico nell’immagine divina di Śiva che danza: la sua danza regge lo scorrere dell’universo, è il fluire del tempo. Cosa c’è di più universale e evidente di questo scorrere?”

Carlo Rovelli (1956), L'ordine del tempo, 2017

Grazie alla mia compagna di corso Claudia per avermi tatuato questo regalo 🖤

[doctor-mccoys-sanity]

Carlo Rovellis books are magnificent. Read his chapter on general relativity and then before continuing that book am listening to “The Order of Time” and the way he writes physics in such a poetic manner is beautiful and I am obsessed.