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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.
Three...
Two...
One...
They are now holding a fundraiser to cover the multimillion dollar bandwidth costs of three hours of video on SLASHDOT.
I guess I'll have to wait for an ascii version ...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Stumbled upon the show when it aired. As the post states it was a little basic in some parts, but they really lay string theory out. It was the first time I really felt like I had at least a little grasp of the subject.
The 3D animated scenes around the host were also quite good.
Casual Games/Downloads
In that case, let me tell you how it ends...
******* SPOILER WARNING *******
Eventually, the sun gets really, really hotter and starts to expand. It gets bigger and bigger until it eats up all the other planets. Then, in a fit of bulimic rage, it collapses on itself and turns into a big black hole! And then we all get sucked into it until Robert Forster saves us.
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
Michio Kaku's Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps and the Tenth Dimension is a really fascinating introduction into some of the theoretical physics that looks promising to develop a grand unified theory.
One of the best points of the program was when they discussed whether or not string theory could ever be verified experimentally. If it couldn't, most of the physicists had to put it in the category of philosophy rather than science. Interesting how science and philosophy intersects at times.
I also liked the part where they explained 'brane theory. I had been reading about it, but could never quite visualize it. The animation really worked for me.
Just remember, no matter how elegant the theory or fascinating this series is, it is just a theory. A big leap of faith. For it to be worth anything, there must be an experimentally verifiable result.
Personally, I hope we are getting close.
When The Elegant Universe aired here locally, PBS followed it by another noteworthy program called Einstein's Wife, which questions wether Einstein was alone in his creation of the Theory of Relativity as well as several other papers, or if he was in fact aided by his first wife Mileva who was as insightful into the universe as Einstein himself.
This program gives an interesting look into the human side of Einstein (never imagined him as a romantic), as well as a lot of issues of the day. While it doesn't delve into the physics, it does serve to illustrate Einstein's life in a much different manner than I've previously seen. It's a fascinating program and well worth a look.
Einstein's Wife
Karma: 0 (But I wield a mean +10 Vorpal Apathy)
I loved ths book that this series is based upon, and it complimented Kaku's Hyperspace to guide me to a better understanding of Life, The Universe and Everything. (Yes, despite what you may have seen on TV, I know next to nothing about complex quantum theory).
/. reader, but for lamers like me, it was awesome.
I watched the Nova series with my stepson, and it reminded me of watching Cosmos with my parents. The production values were fantastic, too. This show may be beneath the average
Part I:o va-The.Elegant.Universe-Part.I-Einsteins.Universe- SctV-avi.torrent
o va-The.Elegant.Universe-Part.II-Strings.the.Thing- SctV-avi.torrent
s /537/PBS-Nova-The.Elegant.Universe-Part.III-Welcom e.to.the.11th.Dimension-SctV-avi.torrent
http://www.logged.org/suprnova/torrents/528/PBS-N
Part II:
http://www.logged.org/suprnova/torrents/530/PBS-N
Part III:
http://www.oinkfrickinbaaa.co.uk/suprnova/torrent
Remove the spaces from the urls, I don't know why they're there.
I was an undergraduate student of Brian Greene's (honors freshman mechanics) at Cornell. I was very impressed by the Nova special, as having read The Elegant Universe several years ago, I found the special explained many elements of M-theory more clearly. In person, he was quite affable, and even seemed to take my freshman idol worship in stride. I'm happy to see he's gotten the kind of popular (ok, *more* popular than usual) admiration he deserves.
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I've seen Bill Nye specials that are more keen on science than this piece of junk... I expected to see it on Fox.
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.
Part I
Part II
Part III
More downloaders, the better!
It was EXCELLENT.
It is a must download if you missed it because they explain string theory and what might have occured at the moment of the big bang or even if there was one. Nice explanations and good visual examples.
One of the best Pbs shows in years.
Now all we need is a once a week, one hour show about leading edge Sciences and Technology.
Too bad none of those links seem to work... heres a few that work (direct torrent file links):
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
The spaces are there because you chose "Plain Old Text" when you posted.
And third URL doesn't even work, so here are some working and proper links:
Part I
Part II
Part III
The unofficial
Argh just noticed the 3rd link is the one that doesnt work.. here fixed:
Part 3
Sorry about that.
Oh and just one more thing: If possible, still buy the DVD when it comes out, support PBS.. It comes out in january and im gonna buy it
That goes to show that pretty bright minds are working on Free Software, doesn't it? And suggests what could be a very interesting (though probably quite busy) Slashdot interviewee... I will admit I'm curious to know what drew him to that level of participation in Free Software.
Having participated as a "pure mathematician", I guess he might be well-placed to explain that one can do science without a need for immediate applications or even ties to "experiment".(I saw the man once in Park City, Utah -- no, he wouldn't remember me -- busy with a PowerBook, and at the time helping launch another noteworthy open project, the UC Davis Math Archive.)
Slashdot editors?
Timeo idiotikOS et dona ferentes
I also liked the part where they explained 'brane theory. I had been reading about it, but could never quite visualize it. The animation really worked for me.
Yes they really did a tremendous job really bringing everything to life in visual terms. Most people find it hard thinking in terms of 4 dimensions, let alone 11. The whole series had a very professional presentation and did a good job of being interesting, while not resorting to cheap Cheech and Chong LSD effects.
While I have no real background education in physics, I naturally have the strong human curiousity of where we're from and where we're going. I watched this show in awe. It really did a great job of demonstrating all of the history and evolution of the theories as well as how to really understand what string theory is all about.
PBS and NOVA really earned their keep on this one.
This was a superb series! I enjoyed it thoroughly, as did most of my colleagues.
:)
I snagged the 3 episodes on my hand-dandy video capture box and mastered a DVD from them, compressing the 3 hours onto 1 DVD.
I'm glad they're making the whole thing available online; it makes me feel better about giving my buddy a copy of my DVD...
He missed the second episode - the series had such a loooong (2:48) introduction, he thought they were re-airing the 1st episode again and turned it off! I told him no - there were 2 different episodes aired back-to-back
All-in-all, while I agree it was a bit "lay" (non-technical) in nature, it did explain a few things I hadn't known about previously, so I did enjoy watching it.
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
I watched this show and I was all hyped up to see it. The first hour discussed almost nothing but review. Don't get me wrong, though I have two math degrees my physics knowledge is only very general from reading and one (goofy) freshman physics course. I guess you could say I've read enough to be dangerous :)
The show does give an overview of string theory but it's definitely the PG version. When they were talking about M-Theory (which I read about in Hawking's most recent book) they had these big old letter M's popping out of people's mouths! I was thinking: "Ok, this is PBS, maybe they have a bit too much of that 'Sesame Street' or 'Electric Company' (remember that show?) influence."
The visuals were good, and that kind of intuition is helpful. For instance, at the plank scale they had a drum beat to the chaotic dance of the cosmic substrate (or whatever you call it) and I loved it. Also, they had a little broken clock indicating that you can't tell before from after nor left from right because things are so shaky down there. So here's the one substantive thing I walked away from the show with: String theory calms the action at this 10^-43 scale. I wish I wish I wish they would have told me a little more about HOW!
I think Sagan's "Cosmos" had a tad more dignity. I enjoyed "The Elegant Universe" and don't regret watching it but probably won't watch it again.
Possible responses, take your pick:
- Yeah! How the hell is WBGH going to pay for Nova if we're able to skip the commercials? Oh, wait...
- Think of all the money WBGH is losing because of third-party mirrors instead of paying for a metric truckload of streaming connections? Er...
- That content isn't yours! It belongs to PBS, who are paid by... um...
Seriously, if you're feeling guilty go find your local public television station's URL and give them some money. If you're feeling really guilty, a lot of them in their efforts to raise money will tell you exactly how much it costs to air a single episode of such-and-such (Nova in this case). Donate enough money to cover all of it and I can't see how you wouldn't be justified in mirroring it yourself.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.
"The Elegant Universe" is about string theory, sure... but rather than being as accurate and descriptive as possible, they opt to squander three hours on needless (and logically irrelevant) special effects.
I found not only the special effects distracting and annoying but even the flashy way they filmed non-SPFX scenes. They even tried to do funny things with the editing of the interviews with the professors!
I happen to know one of the string theorists who appeared on the show. I was talking with him about what he thought of the finished product a few days after the final episode was shown. Both he and I agreed that while the rapid-fire editing and SPFX were not to our liking, we were both impressed that someone at least spent a fair chunk of dough to make this show. And he told me that he was hearing that a lot of kids (I assume he meant younger kids -- not college students) liked the show and that it got them interested in string theory.
We could certainly debate whether those kids actually learned anything or whether they were just dazzled by the pretty pictures but I have to say that it's been quite awhile since anyone put up a chunk of dough to make a program about science. The show may not have been to my liking but if it can at least make people think that we're doing interesting and exciting stuff, perhaps it does serve an important purpose. I guess it all comes down to who their target audience is. And with Nova these days, one can never really be sure.
GMD
watch this