“Hooray for popularization!”
A while back I mentioned that I was really enjoying following the various TED Talks as they are being put online. (In fact, at this point, I’ve got an archive of over 230 of the talks as MP4 videos–around 12Gb–that I’m working my way through, either on the iPod during enforced waiting periods, or in my rare moments of slack time at a PC. I think I’ve seen about half of them now).
Well today they posted a talk from 2005 that I want to call your attention to: The universe on a string by Brian Greene.
There are a few reasons why this one should be singled out for some special attention:
- It’s one of the best popular explanations of superstring theory I’ve seen, doing a particularly good job with analogies to help explain what “more than three dimensions of space” mean outside of the strict mathematics. I think pretty much anyone off the street could follow Greene’s explanation, which is no mean feat for something as abstract as string theory.
- He has some great (and expensive looking) visualizations to assist his explanation. Aside from the genius of the “ant on the wire” shots, there’s also some pretty effective animations that really help with both curved spacetime, and “really tiny dimensions”. I always love to see great visualizations.
- He explains one of the goals of the Large Hadron Collider, again in a highly simplified way, but also one that explains how the device will help verify or rule out superstrings. This is quite timely, especially given all the articles I’ve been seeing lately with the “ZOMG! Turning it on might end the world!” stuff in them.
By the way, Alex Irvine is totally right about what the money quote from that last article is.
You can download the talk, or download just the audio (missing all those visualizations!), or just watch it right here:
1 comment for “Understanding Superstrings”