Scan barcode
A review by zachcarter
The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory by Brian Greene
4.0
After revisiting this ~10 years after I first discovered it, I think my appreciation for and skepticism of it both increased in pace with one another. I think the most compelling and intriguing (to me) unification born of string theory is the black hole/elementary particle connection: as a Calabi-Yau space undergoes a space-tearing conifold transition, a black hole becomes increasingly massless until you get transmutation (a Calabi-Yau phase transition) to a massless photon, which - per string theory - is just a single string vibrating in a fixed pattern! That to me is worthy of the title: Elegant.
As this was written after the relaunching of the second wave of excitement around string theory, you can tell Brian is really trying to sell it. At times, I found it a little annoying, focusing too much on what X or Y physicist has to say about the potential of the theory. Focusing more on the facts, the limitations, the successes, and the failures would have made it a bit more succinct and less of a “promotional” feeling.
But for what we knew in 1999, and looking at how much more we know now, I think this book held a lot of promise and hope for the future of theoretical physics, and works really well as a primer to some more recent scholarly work.
As this was written after the relaunching of the second wave of excitement around string theory, you can tell Brian is really trying to sell it. At times, I found it a little annoying, focusing too much on what X or Y physicist has to say about the potential of the theory. Focusing more on the facts, the limitations, the successes, and the failures would have made it a bit more succinct and less of a “promotional” feeling.
But for what we knew in 1999, and looking at how much more we know now, I think this book held a lot of promise and hope for the future of theoretical physics, and works really well as a primer to some more recent scholarly work.