This was quoted without a cite in a Scientific American blog I read it in an aggregator, so I couldn’t get my hands on the URL. It’s recent.
:: paraphrased here::
Heisenberg was asked what questions he would ask God…::\paraphrase::
“I would ask God two questions: ‘Why quantum mechanics, and why turbulence. I think he will have answer for the former.’”
The wiki article on turbulence claims the quote has been attributed to both Heisenberg and Horace Lamb:
[QUOTE=wiki]
According to an apocryphal story, Werner Heisenberg was asked what he would ask God, given the opportunity. His reply was: “When I meet God, I am going to ask him two questions: Why relativity? And why turbulence? I really believe he will have an answer for the first.” A similar witticism has been attributed to Horace Lamb (who had published a noted text book on Hydrodynamics)—his choice being quantum electrodynamics (instead of relativity) and turbulence. Lamb was quoted as saying in a speech to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, “I am an old man now, and when I die and go to heaven there are two matters on which I hope for enlightenment. One is quantum electrodynamics, and the other is the turbulent motion of fluids. And about the former I am rather optimistic.”
[/QUOTE]
I have seen the version of quote attributed to Horace Lamb - given he was professor of Mathematics at my old university, and there is still a turbulence research group there, we like that attribution. (I spent many many hours of my life in the Horace Lamb lecture theatre, on both sides of the teaching process.)
Horace Lamb’s major contributions were fluids, so the quote makes more sense coming from him.
So for those of use lacking in the physics department. What exactly where they trying to say?
“Turbulence is really fucking complicated.”
They were saying that both <insert modern physics field here> and turbulence seem crazy, but that <insert modern physics field> at least appears to be operating under some set of rules, which could in principle be understood, but turbulence is just plain whacked out.
Do believe that the study of turbulence is operating under such an assumption? And whether the natural phenomenon itself is whacked out (ie, the Lamb statement as a whole, by your reading of it)?
Just interested.