TheElegantUniverse

For months I slowly chipped away at this book. I read 100% of it. I understood (and I’ll be generous with myself) 40% of it. And I’m smart! I can only imagine if the common man were to pick this up. And yet this book was WRITTEN for the common man!! I think it is time to quote Homer Simpson and say “there’s so much I *don’t* know about astrophysics!!”

Jokes aside, hats off to Greene for taking impossible-to-understand concepts and getting them across 40% of the way. It starts with Einstein and relativity, then quantum mechanics, then presents the eternal paradox between the two. Obviously the solution is vibrating, amorphous string existing in eleven dimensions (and potentially “out of time.”) Sure.

It was an interesting reading experience. Each chapter starts off like a fresh leaf, eases in with some common sense, then eventually goes batshit off the rails trying to get you to visualize a fourth physical dimension. (To which I say “Calabi-Yau? Calabi wow!”)

I came away from this book knowing this: if Superstring theorists really do discover the Theory of Everything, it won’t mean a damn thing to anyone because no one will be able to understand the principles that got them there. Still, I like the idea (put forward by some respected scientists) that black holes are actually Big Bangs leading to other Universes. And that *that* Universe is basically the “child” with *some* of the characteristics of its parent universe – e.g. this one. That’s some pure Star Trek shit right there.