An ambitious three-hour NOVA television miniseries starring Columbia University string theorist Brian Greene will present one of the more complex and controversial fields of physics, super-string theory, to a broad, non-science audience. The program, based on Greene’s book, The Elegant Universe (Vintage Books, 2000), relies heavily on the multitalented physicist to explain in fairly simple terms not only superstring theory but quantum mechanics and general relativity.
Greene, who also has a background in theater, makes clear that string theory has yet to be tested experimentally and that it could, in fact, be entirely wrong. The show includes longtime string theory skeptic Sheldon Glashow of Boston University. In a background interview on the NOVA Web site (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant), Glashow said, “The string theorists have a theory that appears to be consistent and is very beautiful, and I don’t understand it.”
Greene notes that string theorists have reached the point where...
