"It looks strange and it looks strange, and it looks very strange, and then suddenly it does not look strange at all, and you cannot understand what made it look strange in the first place."

Poet Gertrude Stein, quoted by great physicist and master of the English language John Archibald Wheeler, quoted by his pupil and master physicist Kip S Thorne. (I love this chain.)

Absolutely the rule of genuine discovery, and the secret to becoming a discoverer. Embrace strangeness.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1901.06623

#JohnArchibaldWheeler #KipSThorne #DorothyParker #discovery #EmbraceStrangeness #noAI

Good Will Hunting in reverse: the real-life story of Peter Putnam, promising physicist turned janitor.

HT @cdarwin

https://nautil.us/finding-peter-putnam-1218035/

#PeterPutnam #GoodWillHunting #NautilusMagazine #AmandaGefter #TheoreticalNeuroscience #ScienceMastodon #ScienceStories #JohnArchibaldWheeler #GayHistory #NeuralModels #LongReads #PrincetonUniversity #RobertFuller #HistoryOfPhysics #HistoryOfScience

The One-Electron Universe Theory is an idea proposed by physicist John Archibald Wheeler
in a phone call to Richard Feynman in 1940. It suggests that every electron in the universe is actually the same single electron, traveling back and forth through time.

#science #sciencefacts #oneelectronuniverse #johnarchibaldwheeler #richardfeynman #electron