The Elegant Universe

[Ijay (Ivan)]

Hi all

I noticed SBS2 has a program on Monday 27th September at 7:30 PM called 'The Elegant Universe:Einstein's Dream' It looks like it could be interesting

Cheers
IJ

[CraigS]

G'day Ivan !

"The Elegant Universe" by Brian Greene … one of the all time best books.

All about String Theory and M-Theory. Excellent material !
The content is unsurpassed.

The DVD, (of the TV series), is a little repetitive but the message was deeply profound for me when I first saw it.

Later in the series, beyond the "Einstein" episode coming up, keep an eye out for Ed Witten … my master !!

Good one, Ivan !

Let us know what you think of it when you've seen it.

Cheers

[Suzy]

I'm confused
Foxtel (as far as I know) only kept doing repeats of 3 episodes of "The Elegant Universe": "Welcome to the 11th Dimension", "Strings The Thing", and one which I had and is missing. Don't remember the title. Was there more to this series, or is this "Einstein" episode the one that I'm missing as a set of three?

[CraigS]

Suzy;

From Wiki ..

The Elegant Universe was adapted into an Emmy Award winning three hour program in three parts for television broadcast in late 2003 on the PBS series NOVA.

Einstein's Dream
Strings The Thing
Welcome To The 11th Dimension

The book is divided into three themes in the following parts:

Part I: The Edge of Knowledge
Part II: The Dilemma of Space, Time, and the Quanta
Part III: The Cosmic Symphony
Part IV: String Theory and the Fabric of Spacetime
Part V: Unification in the Twenty-First Century

I'll check out my DVD, which I purchased from JBHifi, when I get a chance (later today?).

Cheers

[Suzy]

Thanks Craig. Three eps is correct then.
Yipee, finally I'l get to catch my missing episode (I accidentally deleted it once ).

Ivan, thanks for the post!

[renormalised (Carl)]

Yep....good series and book

[Suzy]

I have the book too, just haven't it read it yet...

Brian Greene is such an amazing presenter isn't he?! He explains things so well, especially for people (like me) just starting out trying to grasp the complexity of it all. He holds attention well. And it doesn't hurt that he's easy on the eye to watch either. .

[M54 (Molly)]

Thanks Ijay for that.
For once I don't have to be somewhere on a Mon. night so I'm looking forward to seeing it.

[Ijay (Ivan)]

Thanks for the extra info Craig, hopefully they will show the entire series over the next few weeks. We'll see how it goes.

[CraigS]

Originally Posted by Suzy

I have the book too, just haven't it read it yet…

Suzy .. you're overloaded with reading material !!
What about the stargazing??

Brian Greene is such an amazing presenter isn't he?! He explains things so well, especially for people (like me) just starting out trying to grasp the complexity of it all. He holds attention well.

Well …. y'know … I'm not that fond of his presentation style (as per Elegant Universe DVD/TV Series). He may have gotten better since it was made.

The thing to note about him though, is that he is presenting highly sophisticated, purely theoretical physics content. Anyone who can do that without resorting to mathematics, and holds your attention, is a legend in my view.

'The Fabric of the Cosmos' book, is 570 pages of pure theory without one mathematical formula !!! Unbelievable !! Many thought exercises, which makes it far easier to relate to the concepts.

And this is from a guy who's the real deal .. I could post some of his papers and they are maths from the Abstract right thru to the last dot on the last page (so I don't bother).

The guy is a Rhodes Scholar, also. No slouch in the brain dept.

I think he's got a lot of respect for Ed Witten (my master). Which also makes him a legend, by default.

And it doesn't hurt that he's easy on the eye to watch either. .

Blllaaahhhh !! Yuk !! I'll leave that one up to you !!
I don't mind commenting on the female theoretical physicists, though !

Cheers
PS: Greene's books win hands down when compared with Kaku's books. Kaku's one-liners in the "How the universe works" series, are definitely growing on me. His books are like comic strip material when compared with Greene's, though. (IMHO, that is). I just think they're trying to appeal to different markets, hence the different style … so they're both really OK.
Krauss is an unknown to me. I'm curious to put him under the microscope sometime.

[renormalised (Carl)]

Lawrence Krauss....Craig, grab "The Physics of Star Trek"

[Ijay (Ivan)]

I must say that the only string theory I knew about was to hang a string outside the window. If the string is sideways it's windy, if it's wet it's raining and if it is dry it's going to rain.
Having watched the program last night and tried to decipher the ins and outs of theoretical quantum physics, I've come to the conclusion I'm with the dog.

But still interesting, bring on the next episode!

IJ

[Esseth (Alan)]

Just watched one of the episodes last night, and yeah it was quite interesting... one of the things i didnt really get before was why was string theory such a big deal, helped me understand that and the history was quite good as well.

[CraigS]

We have several threads running in parallel and there is a common theme amongst them, about theoretical physics.

Steven (sjastro) hit the nail on the head the other day, so I'd just like to share his words with this forum, I always feel fairly intimidated when coming across new physics concepts and these words really helped me.

Steven's Scale of Difficulty, in increasing difficulty of understanding by all means, not absolute.

(1) General Relativity;
(2) Quantum Mechanics;
(3) Quantum Electrodynamics: harder.
(4) Quantum Chromodynamics: harder still.
(5) Electroweak theory: harder still.
(6) Grand Unified Theories: All very difficult.
(7) String Theory, Superstring Theory etc: hardest of all.

What makes (7) so difficult is it incorporates a lot of pure mathematics which is outside the scope for many physicists and applied mathematicians.

Cheers