If a problem is too difficult to solve, one cannot claim that it is solved by pointing at all the efforts made to solve it. Hannes Alfven More Quotes by Hannes Alfven More Quotes From Hannes Alfven We have to learn again that science without contact with experiments is an enterprise which is likely to go completely astray into imaginary conjecture. Hannes Alfven conjecture contact enterprise Gravitational systems are the ashes of prior electrical systems. Hannes Alfven electrical ashes Scientists tend to resist interdisciplinary inquiries into their own territory. In many instances, such parochialism is founded on the fear that intrusion from other disciplines would compete unfairly for limited financial resources and thus diminish their own opportunity for research. Hannes Alfven discipline opportunity science I have always believed that astrophysics should be the extrapolation of laboratory physics, that we must begin from the present universe and work our way backward to progressively more remote and uncertain epochs. Hannes Alfven physics should way In order to understand the phenomena in a certain plasma region, it is necessary to map not only the magnetic but also the electric field and the electric currents. Space is filled with a network of currents which transfer energy and momentum over large or very large distances. The currents often pinch to filamentary or surface currents. The latter are likely to give space, as also interstellar and intergalactic space, a cellular structure. Hannes Alfven distance space order Students using astrophysical textbooks remain essentially ignorant of even the existence of plasma concepts, despite the fact that some of them have been known for half a century. The conclusion is that astrophysics is too important to be left in the hands of astrophysicists who have gotten their main knowledge from these textbooks. Earthbound and space telescope data must be treated by scientists who are familiar with laboratory and magnetospheric physics and circuit theory, and of course with modern plasma theory. Hannes Alfven science hands knowledge I was there when Abbe Georges Lemaître first proposed this [Big Bang] theory. ... There is no rational reason to doubt that the universe has existed indefinitely, for an infinite time. .... It is only myth that attempts to say how the universe came to be, either four thousand or twenty billion years ago. Hannes Alfven time science years We should remember that there was once a discipline called natural philosophy. Unfortunately, this discipline seems not to exist today. It has been renamed science, but science of today is in danger of losing much of the natural philosophy aspect. Hannes Alfven discipline philosophy science It is only myth that attempts to say how the universe came to be, either four thousand or twenty billion years ago. Hannes Alfven infinite-time twenties years I have never thought that you could obtain the extremely clumpy, heterogeneous universe we have today, strongly affected by plasma processes, from the smooth, homogeneous one of the Big Bang, dominated by gravitation. Hannes Alfven today science thinking Most people today still believe, perhaps unconsciously, in the heliocentric universe. Every newspaper in the land has a section on astrology, yet few have anything at all on astronomy. Hannes Alfven astrology land believe I have no trouble publishing in Soviet astrophysical journals, but my work is unacceptable to the American astrophysical journals. Hannes Alfven conflict science ideas To try to write a grand cosmical drama leads necessarily to myth. To try to let knowledge substitute ignorance in increasingly larger regions of space and time is science. Hannes Alfven ignorance writing drama The technologists claim that if everything works [in a nuclear fission reactor] according to their blueprints, fission energy will be a safe and very attractive solution to the energy needs of the world. ... The real issue is whether their blueprints will work in the real world and not only in a "technological paradise."... Opponents of fission energy point out a number of differences between the real world and the "technological paradise." ... No acts of God can be permitted. Hannes Alfven differences real science I have no trouble publishing in Soviet astrophysical journals, but my work is unacceptable to the American astrophysical journals. Hannes Alfven peers conflict ideas Since religion intrinsically rejects empirical methods, there should never be any attempt to reconcile scientific theories with religion. An infinitely old universe, always evolving, may not be compatible with the Book of Genesis. However, religions such as Buddhism get along without having any explicit creation mythology and are in no way contradicted by a universe without a beginning or end. Creatio ex nihilo, even as religious doctrine, only dates to around AD 200. The key is not to confuse myth and empirical results, or religion and science. Hannes Alfven religious science book
