The Elegant Universe

This program was quite interesting. The way the program was displayed made it all the more interesting. String Theory is also very interesting to listen too. The whole three hours in my opinion were well worth it. I enjoyed listening to the ideas given by the physicists. Extra dimensions really boggle the mind. If you have the chance, watch this amazing documentary.

My local PBS station WHYY Philadelphia recently showed "The Elegant Universe." After three hours of watching it, besides having my brain hurt, I learned all about wormholes, quantum mechanics and parallel realities and alternate universes.

The last hour of the show was about "String Theory" Physics, a semi-new branch of physics which makes many of the the ideas of science fiction not only possible, but PROBABLE. With the "String Theory" it sounds like wormholes, alternate realities and alternate timelines ARE possible and it could just be a matter of time until we get the knowledge to use them.

Although it may not have given new information to someone familiar with the topic, I found the show VERY interesting and informative. It was very understandable to anyone who is just being introduced to this subject.

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.

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.