He’s a good writer, and provides pretty good analogies for some of the more difficult physical properties that are not intuitive. I didn’t realize at what level gravity and quantum mechanics actually broke down at—an almost nonsensical small one. I’m not at all satisfied in the way string theory is suppose to solve the problem. But the most frustrating thing is how many resources, how much time and money these guys are pouring into a theory that has no experimental evidence and may not actually be provable. Very early on, he claims some assumptions of theories that haven’t been proved, and the rest of the theories in the book are based on those assumptions (for example, the existence of the graviton, that super symmetry is correct, etc). Overall, it definitely makes Sabine Hossenfelder’s point in Lost In Math hit harder.

n  n

Do I understand string theory? Not sure.

Do I understand M theory? A little bit but don't ask for any algebraic reasoning.

Do I know exactly what a Calabi-Yau is? Not really but I think they look a little like the hair balls from my cat.

This is the second time I've equated quantum physics and all its detours to a hair-ball. That's because I can study a hair ball and still have no idea what it is for and why they exist. String Theory and the elusive TOE is in the same category. I could go on my entire life not knowing about them but now that I do, I need to know why. Newton, Einstein, Feynman, Hawking, and my cat can't all be right. Or can they?

That is essentially the dilemma of string theory and the book. Greene does a great job of putting everything in layman's term but there is a point which he must exceed the intellectual ionosphere and soar into the incalculable. I really like this type of book. The challenge is the fun. But rest assured when the scientists get their act together and write an Idiot's guide to The Unified Theory Of Everything, I'll be the first in line.

P. S. Hair balls and string theories have something else in common. Once you tore one apart, you can never get your hands clean.

Bu kitaptan önce "Zamanın Kısa Tarihi"'ni okumuştum, ve o kitapta da Sicim Teorisi bölümünden hiç bir şey anlamamıştım. Bu sefer daha çok şey anladım ama gene de Sicim Teorisinin kanıtları vs kısımlarından pek bir şey çıkaramadım : )). Bu demek değil ki kitap kötü vs. Kitap gayet güzel ve genel ve özel görelilik kısımlarını hayatımda ilk defa tam olarak anladım (anlamamda interstellar filmini iki kez izlemiş olmamın da paydası var).

Kitap herkese hitap ettiğini iddia ediyor ama bence evren nasıl çalışır sorusunu merak etmeyenler boş yere okumasın. Ben merak ediyordum ama şu anda kafam biraz daha karışık: )

I've been diving into some physics books to try to catch up on scientific knowledge that hasn't been a part of my lexicon for a long time. It hasn't been a straightforward or easy journey, but I'm getting there. Greene's book on String Theory has definitely provided that well-balanced mix between a scientific and detailed book and an accessible and digestible narrative. There were plenty of metaphors and examples throughout that simplified what to me at least was a very complex topic, and I find this is a good foundational book for someone dipping their toes in physics.

As a theory, nonetheless, I must stress that this is not an answer to the big question, but a potential "theory of everything". It hasn't been proven - in fact, it might have been quite battered down in recent years. Therefore, take everything with a grain of salt and a critical mind that a science book should ultimately stimulate.

I will admit, though, that despite the accessible and interesting character of The Elegant Universe, I find myself forgetting quite a lot of what it contained... I suck. I do recommend it because, again, I felt like it provided a lot of the foundation to understand physics in our time, but I am not sure I personally attained a greater understanding. You'll let me know how it works for you.

To evaluate a review of this book, you must know about the background of the reviewer. I had college physics classes in the early 80s, and have read a number of “modern” pop physics books in the past couple of decades. I understand, in many aspects, the basics of physics pre-string theory. But this new stuff? I understand some of the definitions, but that’s about it. Greene’s book is very good at giving descriptions and examples and analogies for aspects of physics it is trying to explain. And for the older concepts, it does a great job. The newer concepts, string theory and beyond, are explained in the same way, with the same care. I found these concepts more difficult to understand, but I suspect that’s my problem, not the fault of the author. I found the book well organized, and the examples often memorable. However, I didn’t get the level of understanding I was hoping for concerning recent advances in physics. I would consider reading more by this author, but may be looking for a lower grade level.

I cannot imagine a better spokesperson for string theory. Brian Greene writes of string theory like a Shakesperean poet might write of roses. He is a fervent believer and weaves a sweet tale that may very well convince you that we are on the doorstep of the Grand Unified Theory.

A through, mostly accessible, and always biased intro to string theory. Some concepts are merely described without any attempt at proof or background, but perhaps this is inevitably in a book trying to introduce laymen to the vanguard of complex mathematics. Consider balancing Greene’s staunch pro-string theory attitude with something a bit more conservative, such as Lee Smolin’s ‘The Trouble with Physics.’



Questions
# How gravitons mesh with the warping of spacetime?
# What’s renormalization and how does it eliminate infinities?
# Why is energy related to mass by c? Is it functioning as time here or a deeper constant that happens to restrain light propagation and relate energy and mass?
# Zero-mass graviton? Doesn’t it move and vibrate and have energy?
# Why does general relativity break down with turbulent spacetime?
# Can we harness electron-positron collisions (photon creation) to do anything cool? Like a traveling billiard ball collision?
# Why does quantum mist have opposite effects on EM and strong/weak fields?
# What implications do extra time dimensions have?
# Have we detected Hawking radiation from low mass black holes yet?
# Hilbert spaces? Hamiltonian? Group theory? Perturbation theory? Hodge number? Homology cycles? Dynamical topology? Feynman diagrams? Minkowski? Kahler space? Ricci-flatness? Schrodinger eqn? Dirac eqn? Klein-Gordon eqn? Gauge symmetry? Noncommutative geometry?

Conclusions
# string theory seems too jerry-rigged to work and too top-heavy and fad-driven to be fun (I want insightful leaps not number crunching!)
# quantum mechanics is still wide open (plan on working out the fundamentals)
# Smolin’s Black Hole Multiverse Evolutionary theory is awesome and convincing and I want to read more
# math can help grant insightful leaps that are difficult to make on pure intuition and I plan on beefing my math skills
# cosmology is also interesting and I’d like to study it further
# mark my words, something very cool will come out of the Holographic Principle

Readers who have not discovered Greene should no waste one minute more!

Това е феноменална книга! Въпреки, че е написана на достъпен език, самата теория на струните е трудна за разбиране, ако въобще може да бъде разбрана в дълбочина. Пространствата на Калаби-Яу просто не мога да си ги представя, както и куп други неща. Въпреки това, книгата е много добра, а Брайън Грийн е страхотен разказвач. Пет звезди!

A few months ago, when I was reviewing What Remains to be Discovered by John Maddox, I was convinced that the world is "unknowable."

Now, thanks to The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene, I've done a flip-flop.

As Maddox says in his concluding chapter, "Unwilling or unable to accept the seemingly paradoxical behavior of single particles, such as electrons moving through both of two slits at the same time, for example, he [Albert Einstein] sought instead a set of equations whose elegance and symmetry would command respect, and by which even paradoxical phenomena would be explicable. Einstein's quest was no doubt impelled by his great success with the general theory of relativity (otherwise the theory of gravitation), which first won attention through its elegance. As the world now knows, it was a fruitless search. Quantum phenomena are often wrongly described as paradoxes for no better reason than that they conflict with the expectations of common sense, which themselves spring from human senses that have been honed by natural selection for telling what the macroscopic world is like. It is disconcerting that phenomena on the small scale are at odds with expectation, but there is a wealth of experimental data for which no other explanation is possible. How else than by experiment can reality be described?" (p. 373)

In my review, I noted, "...a non-scientist, like myself, might well dream the impossible dream of a science that goes beyond science, a means of learning about 'reality' and describing it without depending on experiments."

Remarkably, Greene answers that key question "How else than by experiment can reality be described?" While experiment has its limitations, based on what can be measured and how, indirect techniques can give us glimpses of what lies beyond, leading to new hypotheses which can also be verified, with a high degree of confidence, by indirect techniques. The vastness of the cosmos provides clues to the physical structure of matter smaller than quarks (the components of electrons, protons, and other subatomic particles) and provides ways of verifying hypotheses that are beyond the limits of our most advanced laboratories.

In Green's book, the universe is "elegant" and knowable, in ways man believed before the discoveries of quantum physics. When confronted with new previously unexplained phenomena, he turns to such principles as symmetry, beauty and logic to gain new insight. At the end of the dark tunnel of unknowability, he sees a "multi-verse" consisting of many universes; he sees black holes not just as the ugly ends of dying stars, but rather as seeds for other universes; he see a multi-verse in which those universes that have the most black holes are the most likely to survive and spawn new universes in a cosmic evolution scheme, based on survival of the fittest of universes.

Just when I was getting used to the idea that the world is unfundamentally unknowable -- that our brains evolved to help us cope with the world of ordinary experience and simply aren't equipped to grasp the bizarre realms of the very small and the very large -- along comes a book that inspires me with renewed faith that we can know -- based on a classical belief in beauty and symmetry -- like a revelation from the 17th or 18th century.

This book is convincing, lucid, powerful, mind-expanding.

I had been aesthetically wallowing in the concept of unknowability -- convinced that the greatest advances in the 20th century came from acknowledging the limitations of the human mind, proving what cannot be known. That attitude led me to a high appreciation of the works of Stanislaw Lem (see my review at www.seltzerbooks.com/lem.html) and to a whole range of authors, starting with Plato, who emphasized that the value of the pursuit of wisdom was all in the process, that nothing can be known with any certainty. It is good to seek truth; but to believe that you have found truth is bad. The value comes from the seeking itself.

In the days of Emerson and Swedenborg, the world and our senses and our ability to understand seemed perfectly suited to one another. Then modern science led us to see a disjunction between the world perceived in ordinary experience and the realm of the extremely small and the realm of the extremely large, both of which were revealed by advanced instruments; and led us to conclude that the limits of our instruments were the limits of our ability to understand. Now it appears that we can leap beyond those limits, arriving at new levels of understanding about the workings of the physical world, both at the sub-particle level and at the cosmic level.

I won't attempt to explain Greene's explanations. I don't presume to have grasped it in great enough detail to do it justice. Read the book itself. He writes with the authority of one of the leaders in the field of string theory, but with a clarity and patience and ability to explain complex matters simply that rivals the efforts of the very best popularizers of science.

Basically, quarks consist of "strings", and the "vibrations" of these strings determine their energy, mass, and other characteristics. These vibrations have "frequency" or rhythm, which leads me to think of this change of perspective in terms of Yeats: the focus is now on the dance rather than the dancer. The dancers come and go and combine and recombine; come into existance and annihiate and come into existence again in new forms. Yes, there are physical limits to what we can know about the dancer; but our knowledge of the dance can extend far beyond and lead us to important new conclusions.

Strangely, such a change in the underlying concepts of physics leads to a new appreciation for old authors. I can't help but think of Frazier, Jung, and Joyce, and their attempts to grasp the flow and rhythm of all of human culture. I think of the multiple natural and mental rhythms of Virginia Woolf's Waves. I think of resonance and harmonics and extraordinary effects that can come from small changes, like a bridge breaking up because of the rhythm of the wind that strikes it; and I think of transistors and how they capitalize on how, in electronics, small changes can result in large effects. I also think of the theme of music and rhythm as an important element in how the mind works and how the world works in Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach. I think of Steven Pinker's books where he gains insight into the workings of the human mind by analyzing how we use language and the rules of grammar, and I wonder if there might be a "grammar" or "rules of choreography" for the cosmic dance. I may even develop a new appreciation for the art of dance. Greene himself alludes to the ancient notion of the "music of the spheres."

And wonder of wonders, I feel myself motivated to tackle Heidegger's Being and Time. Contrary to the ruminations of Hamlet, being and not being may not be opposites, or may not be the only alternatives. To become or not to become? To become what from what? There may be a range or field of becoming, a pattern of becoming and interacting in the rhythm of individual human life and of life in aggregate.

But don't be sidetracked by my vague speculations. Read the book. It could change your image of yourself and the world you live in.

Regardless of whether the string theory will ever be useful or not, this book remains useful. String theory might be an approach that doesn't work, but it remains a unique approach to describing the universe and a mathematically beautiful approach at that. Science needs new ways to describe the world time after time. Otherwise it becomes stagnant and fails to expand our understanding of things.

Greene does a good job of explaining the basics of it. Many popular science writers tend to oversimplify some things and only mention other things in vague passages. The oversimplified ideas lose half of their meaning and the rest become hard to notice even by people who already understand them. Green wants your full attention. He will not butcher scientific concepts to tell you half-truths you can understand easier. However, he does his best to make things as simple as possible for the reader. Greene is passionate and his writing shows that he cares about it. I think that makes the book even better.

It's a little difficult to review this book because I can't say I understood and retained everything that was presented. With that caveat, I think the author did a great job in explaining some very gnarly and unintuitive concepts to a non-physicist. The use of analogies was spot on and kept the narrative interesting even when my brain grasped at the edges of the ideas presented.

The book, as the name suggests, is primarily about the development, current state and future outlook of string theory -- a good contender for a theory that unifies the description of different forces, and hopefully has physical properties of the universe as emergent quantities. The ideas are fascinating, like challenging our notion of distance building on Heisenberg uncertainty principle. The book got me excited about the future of string physics and its bearing on cosmology, and hoping that we will see some potential evidence in the favor of the theory in our lifetimes.

I got this book five years ago, I think, and only got about fifty pages in before I got distracted. I picked up another of Greene's books recently, and decided that I'd better get through this one before I read that one, so I forced my way through it. What I could understand of it was really, really interesting. It's clear the author was doing his best to explain his field to a lay audience. I still had a hard time getting my head around parts of it, though-- I guess there's only so far you can simplify concepts like quantum foam and Calabi-Yau shapes.

I know there's a new edition of this book out, so I'm sure this one's out of date. At some point-- when my brain has recovered from trying to visualize hidden dimensions-- I'd like to pick it up and see what the updates look like. In the meantime, I plan on picking up some basic physics books so I don't feel quite so dumb the next time I try to read Brian Greene.

Overall: Recommended if you can wrap your head around it.