To build up to our upcoming meeting, in which we'll be discussing Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe, I'm kicking off a pre-meeting discussion thread. I'll be posting summaries of the sections of the book as I get through them myself, as well as notes, thoughts, questions, links to other info, or anything else that seems interesting or relevant related to this book.

Feel free to jump in on this thread with anything you want to say or add. Tell us what you are thinking as you read, argue with us if you think any of us are mistaken about something, post links, ask questions... participate however you like.

If you can't attend the actual meeting, but would still like to read along and discuss, you are more than welcome to jump in here at any time!

Here's the very beginning:

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The Elegant Universe: Preface

Summary: Motivated by aesthetic conviction, but lacking important specific knowledge about fundamental forces, Einstein failed to devise an underlying framework that would explain both Newtonian and Quantum physics as the logical extensions of a simple set of rules. Over the last fifty years, physicists have developed superstring theory to do just that. This book will attempt to explain to the general reader where superstring theory came from, what it is, and why the author believes it will prove successful. To make the book manageable while dealing with such an expansive field of study, it will be focused on ideas related to space/time. It will use analogy instead of mathematics to illustrate concepts.

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Here is a website someone set up with a timeline describing the history of the development of superstring theory that amusingly goes all the way back to the Babylonians developing the concept of 2 dimensional space for the purpose of accounting. It's a fun read in an of itself. Some of the links there are broken, but if you use the "Previous" and "Next" links in the upper right corner on that page, you'll get where you need to go.

Here is a link to the official PBS website for the television show produced around this book. The entire show can be viewed online.

Here is a link to a couple of interviews/discussions on the Charlie Rose show in which Brian Greene was interviewed or a participant.

I'm working on a summary of Part I of the book and should have that up here in a couple of days. In the meantime, feel free to contribute your thoughts. If you are further ahead, don't feel constrained by where I or others are, just go ahead and post.

Happy reading!

Moving on to Part I...

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The Elegant Universe: Part I - The Edge of Knowledge

Chapter 1 - Tied Up With String

Summary: Modern Physics is based on two mutually incompatible theoretical frameworks - general relativity which describes large scale events and quantum mechanics which describes very small scale events. Because most physicists study only one of the two, and because each framework describes its subject so well, attempts to reconcile their incompatibility languished for half a century. However, to understand extreme conditions, such as black holes or the big bang, in which very small things have a very large mass, it is necessary to reconcile these two frameworks.

Superstring theory achieves this reconciliation in a way that reveals general relativity and quantum mechanics as necessary consequences of each other. It also potentially establishes a framework for a grand unified understanding of everything.

The unifying features of string theory require dramatic changes to our picture of space, time and matter, and is the third such revision of the past century. The first was special relativity, which was a way of reconciling Newton's laws of motion with Maxwell's laws of electromagnetism, which disagreed over whether anything else could achieve the speed of light. The second was general relativity, which was a way of reconciling Newton's theory of gravity, which involves masses influencing each other instantaneously over vast distances, with the conclusion of special relativity that no influence can propagate faster than the speed of light. The third is string theory, which is an attempt to reconcile the conclusions of general relativity regarding curved space with the chaotic nature of the sub atomic universe as implied by quantum mechanics, and which requires recognizing more than the previously understood three spatial dimensions to do it.

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That covers roughly the first half of chapter one - more or less laying background. I'm working on a summary of the second half of chapter one, which describes the elementary particles in quantum mechanics, and will be important to an understanding of the discussion of strings to come.

I want to make sure I have a good general understanding of the set of elementary particles before I write about them here, but if anyone checking in on this thread knows anything about them, or wants to take a stab at summarizing their description, feel free to jump in!

If you have an hour and 15 minutes to spend in a worthwhile video, here is Richard Feynman giving a lecture on Elementary Particles and the Laws of Physics in 1986. It's a very good video:



(The first few seconds are silent - don't worry, there's nothing wrong with your audio... just wait until the titles are done, then the sound comes in...)

In order to finish reading the book before our meeting, I knuckled down and just read it through, and found I didn't have time to digest it into summaries and web notes, unfortunately. So I won't get to the rest of the book on this thread, but we will be talking about it all in the actual meeting tomorrow night, so I'll see you there!