The Elegant Universe


Caught the first episode of The Elegant Universe tonight. I was talking with Juliet on IM at the time, and got sucked in to the show (I don’t watch much TV, but NOVA ranks high up on my list).

Wow. Also realized just now that I had mentioned this documentary over a year ago. It’s been out for a while, and only today did I get around to viewing it.

Some really interesting stuff, but maddening at the same time. I found myself yelling at the TV a lot, trying to make sense of the various (and oftentimes incredulous) concepts that kept popping up.

That’s right. I was yelling at my TV. While watching a science documentary.

I ended up jotting a few things down, which I’d like to share. Keep in mind that I’m no physicist and that I’ve been sipping on a bit of scotch tonight.

  • String Theory is also known as M Theory.
  • According to String Theory, there are a total of 11 dimensions.
  • Strings can strech out into what are called membranes (or branes), which can grow as large as universes.
  • The world as we known it can theoretically exist on such a membrane, with parallel universes existing on nearby membranes.
  • One theory of the Big Bang is that it is the result of two nearby (and separate) membranes colliding.

There was a lot of other stuff (gravitrons, wormholes, sparticles) that were glossed over some. As I said – very neat and very interesting, but maddening in that I don’t know enough to really wrap my head around some of the details/particulars.

Here’s something really cool: you can view the entire show online. And almost as atonement for choosing the RealVideo format, it’s also available fullscreen.

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