Book Review: The Elegant Universe

© 1999 by Brian Greene

Or as I like to call it, The Incredibly Complex Super Convoluted Universe

This is my second go-through with this book. The first time, way back in 2001, I liked it. Understood probably around 75 percent of it. I was working IT at the time in NYC and my jerk desk supervisor saw me reading it one day in the cafeteria and he was impressed. I think his estimation of me inflated much like the early universe 10^-36 seconds after the Big Bang. Okay, bad physics reference. But I enjoyed it back then.

Being a keeper, The Elegant Universe was thrown in the physics stack of books. Boxed up. Moved 35 miles to a new home. Stored in an attic for ten years. Retrieved by me a few months ago. And now, fifteen years later, re-read.

This time around, much more rusty, I think I understood about 60 percent of it. The opening chapters on Relativity and Quantum Mechanics provided a good overview. Unfortunately, every pop sci book contains a Relativity and Quantum Mechanics overview, so I’m kinda Relativity and Quantum Mechanics overview’d out. But Greene does a good job here, as well as his introductory chapters on string theory.

What is string theory? I dunno. I don’t know if there’s a consensus out there either. Apparently, in order to reconcile Relativity with Quantum Mechanics, you need to do away with point particles (elementary particles such as quarks and leptons, which make up protons, neutrons, electrons, and a whole soup of others). Point particles lead to irrational infinities when one does the math behind singularities, such as those found at the center of a black hole or the thing that banged in the Big Bang. Or so I’ve read.

Strings, being one-dimensional entities, do away with these infinities. Problem is, you need about ten other dimensions to make them work. I felt Greene did a decent enough job juggling analogies to help the layman understand this. The Garden Hose Universe, for example. These ten extra dimensions are curled up in our universe and are too small to be detected, like viewing a garden hose a hundred yards away. It will look like a line. But actually, there’s another dimension, a curled one if you follow the circumference of the garden hose. Can’t see it at a hundred yards, but it’s there. So it is with the ten required dimensions of string theory.

From about two-thirds on, though, right after a big section on Calabi-Yau multidimensional spaces, he kinda lost me. The whole R and 1/R thing needs a dedicated re-reading. As does the whole “space tearing flop transitions” chapter. But I did dig some mind-tingling speculations that perhaps our three dimensions (length, width, height) are actually curled, too, the curling starting to happen 15 billion light years away (that’s the farthest we can currently see). Or that the singularity in a black hole is actually a newborn genetically mutated (the physical constants of that universe, that is) universe, unable to be seen by us. And this, in turn, leads us to wonder if our own universe is in a black hole. And the whole Calabi-Yau thing intrigued me, too. Picturing those crazy multidimensional shapes at every nanoscopic point in space, wheeling off into ten (sometimes eleven) dimensions, well, that might just be the koan for me to attain satori.

Like all pop sci books that don’t include equations, because publishers fear equations, The Elegant Universe seemed more a book about the “about” of string theory than actually string theory. That is, I learned a lot about the history of string theory, those who developed it, how the various theories interrelate (the mysterious M-theory), but no so much about what an actual string is and does. At least, on a simplified level for non-string theorists like myself.

Picture a starfish, only one with six limbs instead of five.

Each limb is labeled a different string theory:

Type I

Type IIA

Type IIB

Heterotic O

Heterotic E

11D Supergravity

And the starfish itself is labeled:

M-theory

This is figure 12.11 in Greene’s book. I like it. It simplifies a complicated subject. I just wish there were something like seven hundred more illustrations. But then I guess it would be called The Elegant Universe Illustrated or The Comic Book Guide to the Elegant Universe for Dummies or something. And I would buy it, too.

Grade: B+

Oh, and I’m putting it back in the box in the attic to read sometime around 2031, and I also want to read Greene’s two follow-up physics books.

Great Wolf the Third

For the past three winters the wife, the little ones, and I do an overnighter at Great Wolf Lodge waterpark in Pennsylvania. As a teen and a young twentysomething, I went to a lot of these waterparks, particularly down the Jersey Shore, with various packs of friends in varying states of consciousness. Had a blast every time, and it seems like centuries ago.

Haven’t done much of that for twenty years, until these recent Great Wolf experiences. Oh, how a body ages!

If you’ve never been there, Great Wolf Lodge is nestled in the Poconos, a massive, three-story log cabin affair that must hold, I’d guess, three hundred rooms that look like your pretty standard hotel room. Except for the oppressive wolf theme. Attached to it is a pretty large indoor waterpark, consisting of something like a half-dozen water slides for single, double and no tubes, two “white water rapids” type slides, a heated pool, a rope ladder, a wave pool, a hot tub for adults, a bar, a kiddie pool and kiddie slides, and a lazy three-foot deep river that you can float along on in peace.

This is not, unfortunately, a paid endorsement of Great Wolf Lodge

We usually spend four hours in the water park the first day and four hours the second. This year we got there a little late and only spent three and a half hours swimming and sliding on Day One. But I made up for it staying a little bit later on Day Two. The wife had to leave early to attend a business / charity dinner in NYC (Police Commissioner Bratton was supposed to attend but didn’t for some reason), so I shepherded the little ones myself for an extra two hours.

I am today paying the price for that.

Also, I never get a good night’s sleep there. I don’t know why. Well, actually I do. Being, hmm, a tad bit overweight, and generally being dehydrated – whether through all the exercise, the chlorine, the pizza and soda or beer afterwards – I tend to snore somewhat loudly. The wife has developed a tolerance for this but my daughters, not so much. Every time Little One awakens me and every time I fail to get back to sleep for fear of keeping them up. This time she woke me at midnight, and I tossed and turned and tossed and turned and surfed the web on my cell phone until five in the morning. I got out of bed and laid on the couch. I pulled out the couch into a folding bed. Nothing helped, nothing worked. When dawn’s fingers gingerly parted heavy drapery, I finally nodded off.

To be awakened nearly immediately by the dark form of Little One at my side. “Daddy, you’re snoring again!”

“Deal with it,” I mumble, turning over for two more hours of blessed sleep. (Though perhaps I dreamed that last exchange.)

So I’m like a zombie on Day Two. Double-team insomnia with Day One muscular fatigue upon my late-forties semi-sedentary body and, well, you can get some idea of the wreck I am in today.

Other than that, though, mainly for the sake of the girls’ memories, it’s entirely worth it. Plus I get some quality reading done when the ladies go out for ice cream during Story Time. This year I read about the Peloponnesian War, Quantum Geometry, and the King James Psalms. In years past I explored mathematical series, Middle Eastern archaeology, and the history of the New York Mets. That middle time of evening when the little ones and the wife have passed out from all the day’s excitement is my favorite time at Great Wolf.

Thanks to those who make it possible!

I Don’t Like Anyone Running for President

And I don’t like it.

After ten years a nominal liberal (thanks, Rutgers!), I had a couple of major deep-seated conversions in the 90s. One result is that I have never voted Democrat since. So, Hillary and Bernie are not even considerations.

Six months ago, I was very interested in hearing more of Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson. Well, Fiorina never gained traction, never made connections with potential voters. I liked her message, her strength, her delivery, but I could understand this disconnect. As far as Dr. Carson is concerned, well, over the first two or three debates he showed that, while a brilliant and honorable man, he does not have the temperament to be President.

Nor does Donald Trump, for diametrically opposing qualities. Watching the debate tonight I can’t but help see him as abhorrent and an embarrassment. Not strong, not sincere, neither principled nor dignified. And with that Middle School bully personality, God help us all if he ever gets access to our nuclear codes.

Cruz has a “practiced sincerity” that rubs me the wrong way. Yeah, I buy it that he’s the most conservative of the remaining Republicans. But I don’t like the dirty tricks his campaign uses and, with a wife attached to Goldman Sachs, I’m not so sure he’s the outsider he touts himself to be.

Rubio doesn’t seem trustworthy either. I don’t think the man presenting himself at these debates and in interviews and campaign appearances is the man who’s spent the past couple of years in the Senate. In other words, he’s squishy, RINO-ish, part of the dreaded “establishment”, or at least trying to become part of it. Originally I liked his speech and speaking style (how refreshing after eight years of George Bush to have a Republican who can speak naturally!), but now his robotic spewing of talking points annoys me.

Kasich is just too liberal, so he’s a non-consideration.

Before Chris Christie dropped out, I swore up and down to anyone who’d listen (mainly the Mrs.) that I’d never vote for him. Rightly or wrongly, I view him as the major factor Obama got re-elected in ’12, what with all the pal’in’ ’round and bearhugging between the two in the aftermath of Sandy right before the election. Sadly, I don’t get the satisfaction of not voting for him.

So I don’t like anyone running for president in 2016.

I haven’t decided what I plan to do come November. My vote statistically doesn’t matter. I could go third party protest vote (provided there is a third party out there that meets me at least halfway) or I could abstain from voting for the first time in 28 years. I dunno. Something I’ll have to keep on the backburner of my mind.

Well, hopefully I haven’t offended all my few but loyal readers out there. Politics truly is hyped more than it need be, and is used more often than not to divide us, rile us up, scare us and anger us. I find the occasional day that goes by where I don’t listen to the radio or watch TV or surf online is actually, honestly, a happier one for me. Remember, this November, we are voting for the person who occupies only one third of our government, and that for a maximum of eight years.

Now that the eleventh Republican Debate of 2016 is over I feel like I need to take a shower.