The Elegant Universe

The Elegant Universe brings to light many ideas of the universe and existence. After watching this documentary, one can't help but take a step back and rethink their view on the existence of everything. There is a large cast of scientists, mathematicians and others on both sides of String Theory. It is continually brought into question as untested, untestable, and possibly dead wrong. The closest to proselytizing that anyone does is to explain that Quantum Physics, the set of mathematical ideas that give extremely good approximations of what happens to sub-atomic particles, has never made an incorrect prediction. Not so with String Theory; no one is willing to say, on-camera, that String Theory is the truth, and in so doing, the piece retains a certain respectful distance from the subject.

The Elegant Documentary -

Don't watch this movie ... if you're an egotistical know-all student of physics. This much less than one percent (miniscule fraction) of the population may find that this show just tells them what they have already learned and already know.

Do watch this movie! - If you're one of the massive majority of people that fall into the greater than 99% of the population that does not study or already have a sound knowledge of the theories of physics including Relativity, Quantum, String and M-theory.

What a brilliantly architected documentary. Starting with some helpful historical background you will be lead step by elegant step into a Universe of pure magic - and dimensions beyond. I have always had a huge appreciation of Mathematics. This movie can easily give you an insight into what an exquisitely beautiful language mathematics is without making you feel like you're about to fail the grade.

The show is repetitive at times as the original format was a mini-series split over three shows. It therefore makes sense to give us polite little reminders of the principles being presented. I found this immensely helpful as it kept reminding me of the multitude of questions and possible answers that make up this amazing tapestry of our very existence.

We are all (and everything around us) is vibrational-energy with a natural tendency towards harmony. This movie may blow your mind - or at least help you realize that the universe is far far bigger than that which we see around us (even with the Hubble Telescope) and far far smaller than the protons and neutrons within the atoms we learned about in high-school. M-theory holds many magnificent magnitudes of 'possibility'.

It just seemed so appropriate that all of this elegance should by it's very nature move (by admission by the many brilliant scientists presenting) out of the realm of Science and into the realm of Philisophy.

You do not have to be religious at all to feel like this movie brought you one step closer to God.

Bravo Brian Greene. Well done indeed.

P.S. If you're interested in feeling even more comfortable and at home in your place in the Universe and would like some more insight into the 'possibilities' Quantum mechanics blended with Spirituality (of all things) can bring then I highly recommend that you also watch "What the Bleep!? - Down the Rabbit Hole". Yes I know they make a few silly mistakes by suggesting a Shaman may not be able to see a boat if he hasn't seen one before (my eyes process light reflections just fine - I see things everyday that I've never seen before) and brain cells are cells in the body that actually don't divide. But if you can get over these little hurdles and put down the things you don't like and hang on to those that you do - there is a lot to like about this film.

Then watch "The Secret" (2006 documentary about The Law of Attraction - search for IMDb title "tt0846789"). This information just might change your life profoundly - forever. If you search deeper you might even find the Universe is talking to us with thought (if you'll listen) - and some are - and that is truly incredible. There is a modern day Jesus/Mohammad/Buddha (those, among others, that history suggests have communicated with the non-physical) alive today and she lives in Texas. I know some of you know what I'm talking about.

I do not consider myself religious by any traditional definition but I have never felt more at home or as comfortable in the Universe as I do now.

I was very disappointed with this series. It had lots of cool graphics and that's about it. The level of detail it went into was minimal, and I always got the feeling the audience was being patronized -- there was a lot of what seemed to me as "This is extremely cool but we're not going to explain it in further detail because you won't get it anyway. Let's just show you some pretty pictures to entertain you." The host would drop interesting-sounding words such as "sparticles" and "super-symmetry" without any attempt at explaining what it was. We had to look it up on Wikipedia.

Furthermore, I know quite a bit about superstrings (for a layman) and I found their explanations were convoluted and could have been so much better. They could have chosen MUCH better examples to explain concepts, but instead, the examples they used were confusing and further obscured the subject.

Additionally, I got so sick of the repetitiveness. They could easily have condensed the series into one episode if they had cut out all the repetition. They must have shown the clips of the Quantum Café about 8 times. The host kept saying the same things over and over and over again. I can't remember how many times he said "The universe is made out of tiny little vibrating strings." It's like they were trying to brainwash us into just accepting "superstrings are the best thing since sliced bread."

Finally, the show ended off with an unpleasant sense of a "competition" between Fermilab and CERN, clearly biased towards Fermilab. This is supposed to be an educational program about quantum physics, not about whether the US is better than Europe or vice versa! I also felt that was part of the patronizing -- "Audiences need to see some conflict to remain interested." Please. Give me a little more credit than that.

Overall, 2 thumbs down :-(

Ladies and gentlemen: the show begins with this documentary film. It's structured in three chapters, each one chronologically arranged. The first presents the classical physics and links to Einstein. The second studies in depth the quantum physics and enters in String theory. The last reveals the Everything theory... The difficult concepts used here are introduced in a very simple way, with daily objects; although you must believe them without checking by yourself -if you are not a scientist- (and even if you are a scientist!!). The film is not a masterpiece by its fabulous technique or the way it's produced; what really imports is the story, and WHAT A STORY!!!

Depending on where you come from and where you are going to, there is something for everyone. There are people that keep up with the latest information on the universe; for those people, this is a great program to show where the public is. It also is nice to have what you already know restated so you can look at it from a different angle. For people that slept through school or attended the Stone Age, this is maybe a shocker for the last time you looked. Then there are people that see this as a wakeup call for the first time.

The program is designed to give you basic information about the latest theories on how the universe works and goes beyond Einstein to attempt to tie all the theories up into a single elegant bundle (Superstrings.)

The visuals help and having a different media allows one to retain information better. However, the format leaves something to be desired. Redundancy goes beyond reinforcing to boredom. The sound byte format leaping from one person to another, when it is just as possible to stay with one person for a completed thought, is like watching a used car commercial. Anyone concept could be a whole program in itself (and probably is.) They show formula and say here it is two seconds later it is gone, and they are off on another subject.

In any event, you will not look at the universe in the same old way.