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The Elegant Universe, Now Available Online
Photon Ghoul writes "PBS has made available online all three hours of the NOVA program on unified theory. Formats are QuickTime and RealVideo with each hour broken up into eight chapters each." I watched the whole thing, and while it's clearly for a lay audience (no math required), it was fun and informative. I was pleased to note that dissenting views on whether string theory was science were presented, and even brief discussion of what constitutes science.
I loved this program when it aired. BUT, the coolest thing on the planet will go to the fist d00d or gal who puts a torrent available for each or all episodes ;) What a thing to do on a Friday night.
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
Still, I'd rather buy the $32 DVD set. Hey its good television. Support PBS!
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
Dude, NOVA should be on everyone's *geek* list of TV shows to watch. I will gladly spend $32 (DVD + book) to support this program. Along with it and Frontline makes PBS worth watching.
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
This program seems to be the new hip intellectual thing to talk about at my school (highschool)... really shows how dumb people are I think... Not that I didn't enjoy it, it's great "infotainment", it's just that anyone with any calc knowledge can go a much longer way into understanding this stuff if they look at better sources (the book for one)...
One thing that even the people at NOVA have misinterpreted, and I wish they hadn't, is that there is a difference between applied science and pure science. They are not the same.
I am a pure mathematician and my passion and work is in pure science. What I do is explore pure mathematics. None of my work will most likely ever be directly appliable to experiment. But, some day the work that I do, along with many other mathematicians will provide the foundation, the pure science, which physics will be able to use for experimental understanding. Without pure scientific understanding, experimentation can never be anything more than observation.
What 'string theory' should be more properly stated as is 'string hypothesis'. It is certainly not yet a true theory and it is certainly not yet a law. Currently, it is purely a hypothetical explanation and possible prediction model. That does not make it any less powerful or less important. Some day it may prove to be the 'bridge' that is needed to complete one more piece or pieces of the grand puzzle. Although, alone it does not need to be experimentally verifiable. And it is certainly not philosophy.
I think that the fact that they had to pack so many effects into the show to keep today's audience interested is mainly a reflection of the sad state of the MTV generation's attention span.
Actually, I was fine with the visual effects that demonstrated the physics priniciples. Computer graphics are available; why not use them. What stood out to me was the need to keep something, anything moving on the screen at all times. Thus, all the strange sliding panels contantly shuffling back and forth in the background behind the various extra-smart scientists as they talked.
The producers must have reasoned that the target audience was so used to being fed spinning logos, scrolling textbars, subsecond edit cuts and webpage-like clutter, that if they saw nothing but someone sitting still talking, then they'd assume the TV must somehow be broken.
I'm surprised that the slash-dot group really liked this series. I know I found it frothy, heavy on the ol' special effects (I had the feeling that SOMEONE in the production team got a new non-linear editing system and just absolutely had to play with every possible feature). The first installment was by far the strongest.
I've disliked Nova increasingly over the past few years - all the re-enactments (Gallileo for example) - they've gotten all touchy-feely. I have this awful thought that liberal-arts people, who are intrinsicly afraid of technology, would rather do dramas than do hard looks at science.
Its been said that scientists don't really understand a subject until they can explain it in laymen's terms--IOW, no math, no complex concepts.
Nothing disturbs me more than blind loyalism towards some unrealistic and over-idealistic notion of one's nationality.
Mathematics is not science. It is mathematics. Math is its own thing, and unless you take an extreme Platonic foundation of mathematics... math is not explored, it is created. That is, math is simply about pure mental constructions, and doesn't necessarily have any connection to the "outside world" or "reality".
:)
As a fan of math myself (I am currently playing with non-well-founded axiomatic set theory), it irks me when people claim that math is a science, or has applications as its purpose. Similarly, it is bothersome when people bring religious concepts such as the Platonic Realm into math.
The very intent of math is to have certainty, not faith in the external existence of mathematical objects - somehow independent and trancendental apart from our minds.
Who knows, maybe these theories do exist independently from our thought, but we can't confirm this. However, we can confirm our own thought's existence, and therefore math should be founded on such a thing.
String Theory is either a religion or philosophy in that it makes a claim about reality based on nothing other than faith. It is just as valid a science as creationism. I do find String Theory to be more interesting though as it makes use of interesting math
However, I've never heard mention of the above theory since, including in "The Elegant Universe" (unless I somehow missed it). Yes, String Theory requires 11 dimensions total, but (apparantly) all of the 7 "extra" dimensions beyond the 3-phsycical and 1-time dimensions are "all curled up" and very small. In contrast, the 4th-physical dimension mentioned in "Cosmos" is the size of the entire universe.
So the question is: is the theory of the 4th-physical dimension and the "hypershpere universe" as presented in "Cosmos" still believed to be true?
If you reply, do so only to what I explicitly wrote. If I didn't write it, don't assume or infer it.