One of the most ambitious and exciting theories ever proposed - one that may be the long-sought "theory of everything" which eluded even Einstein. A masterful, lavishly computer-animated explanation from bestselling author-physicist Brian Greene who presents the nuts, bolts, and sometimes outright nuttiness of string theory.Also known as superstring theory, the startling idea proposes that the fundamental ingredients of nature are tiny strings of energy, whose different modes of vibration underlie everything that happens in the universe.
Episode 1 - Einstein's Dream
Introduces string theory and shows how modern physics, being composed of two theories that are ferociously incompatible, reached its schizophrenic impasse. One theory, known as general relativity, is fantastically successful in describing big things like stars and galaxies, and another, called quantum mechanics, is equally successful in describing small things like atoms and subatomic particles.
Albert Einstein, the inventor of general relativity, dreamed of finding a single theory that would embrace all of nature's laws.
Episode 2 - String's the Thing
Greene describes the serendipitous steps that led from a forgotten 200-year-old mathematical formula to the first glimmerings of strings - quivering strands of energy whose different vibrations give rise to quarks, electrons, photons, and all other elementary particles. Strings are truly tiny, being smaller than an atom by the same factor that a tree is smaller than the solar system. But, as Greene explains, they are able for the first time ever to combine the laws of the large and the laws of the small into a proposal for a single, harmonious theory of everything.
In the 1990s physicists realised that strings suffered from a pernicious flaw - an embarrassment of riches: there were five different versions of the theory, each totally out-of-sync with the others. We have one universe, so shouldn't there be one theory of everything?
Episode 3 - Welcome to the 11th Dimension
In 1995 Edward Witten of Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, aided by others, revolutionised string theory by successfully uniting the five different versions into a single theory that is cryptically named "M-theory", a development which required a total of eleven dimensions.
Witten has described string theory as "a part of 21st-century physics that fell by chance into the 20th century". In fact, the theory is so far ahead of experimental technique that there is as yet no way to verify whether strings are real or a figment of some very creative imaginations.
