A Whoa From String Theory

Read a little book on string theory last weekend called, uh, The Little Book of String Theory. Written by a young man named Steven Gubser. It was my ideal read: tight, compact, action-packed. Well, not so much action-packed, though the author does through a couple of rock climbing analogies into the mix.

It was tight and compact. One idea thrown atop the next, building up to the current trends in string theory research. No unnecessary detours in the history of physics you read in every . single . book . on . pop . sci. You know, where you start out with the Big Bad Church persecuting Galileo to Einstein as a cut-up kid visualizing sitting atop a ray of light.

But I digress. Gubser kept it interesting because he wasn’t talking down to stupid ol’ me. I felt like a kid in his graduate class. Minus all the calc and differential equations, of course. And though I prefer fast-paced and current-trends in my pop sci books, I did find myself lost in quite a few places. Sometimes I went back and re-read, sometimes I just forged ahead.  Branes upon branes upon branes started to make my brain ache.

All-in-all, though, it was a good return to my youth and took my mind off all the craziness of the past two weeks.

And there were some koans, too! My favorite is found on page 44:

Time running at different rates in different places is gravity.

Meditate on that in a rice paddy. Want a little elaboration? Okay:

Time running at different rates in different places is gravity. In fact, that’s all gravity is, provided gravitational fields are not too strong. Things fall from places where time runs faster to where it runs slower. That downward pull you feel, and which we call gravity, is just the differential rate of time between high places and low places.

Whoa!