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A review by zmb
The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory by Brian Greene
3.0
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, the sections on relativity and quantum mechanics are really excellent. And while it might help that I have at least a passing familiarity with the subject, I can't believe nobody told me in my Modern Physics class in college that everything travels through spacetime at the speed of light, and so if you travel through space faster you travel through time slower. That's incredibly useful and a great way of understanding special relativity, and he makes similar helpful points about general relativity and quantum mechanics.
But the string theory stuff...I get that it's early days - string theory is but 50 years old - and he has an admirable amount of hedging. And he makes the point forcefully that a theory that unites general relativity and quantum mechanics is absolutely necessary. But the explanations of why that theory should be string theory, and just what the consequences of string theory are, are somewhat lacking. I don't think that's the fault of the author, really - it's early days - but it does sort of diminish the usefulness of the book.
I poked around a little bit to see if there was any more experimental confirmation of string theory - the author was excited about the LHC and supersymmetry - but there doesn't appear to be much in the ~15 years since the book was published. It seems like the LHC in particular has been reasonably good for the Standard Model but not especially good for string theory. So this seems like quite a while to go without experimental results or really convincing mathematics to me. Maybe I'm just impatient, but I can't help but wonder what string theory physicists are up to these days...
But the string theory stuff...I get that it's early days - string theory is but 50 years old - and he has an admirable amount of hedging. And he makes the point forcefully that a theory that unites general relativity and quantum mechanics is absolutely necessary. But the explanations of why that theory should be string theory, and just what the consequences of string theory are, are somewhat lacking. I don't think that's the fault of the author, really - it's early days - but it does sort of diminish the usefulness of the book.
I poked around a little bit to see if there was any more experimental confirmation of string theory - the author was excited about the LHC and supersymmetry - but there doesn't appear to be much in the ~15 years since the book was published. It seems like the LHC in particular has been reasonably good for the Standard Model but not especially good for string theory. So this seems like quite a while to go without experimental results or really convincing mathematics to me. Maybe I'm just impatient, but I can't help but wonder what string theory physicists are up to these days...