The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene
Greene utilises beautiful analogies to describe abstract concepts in a digestible way, from special relativity and the photon clock, to the reappearances of George and Gracie and Slim and Jim—he makes learning these concepts fun, continuously linking back to previous chapters, or providing links to the chapters ahead, so you can view the larger picture.
First, Greene sets up the age-old clash of QM & GR, but before long (roughly chapter 6), he begins to dive into the core ideas of string theory. Despite the abstract ideas, I found Greene’s descriptions extremely helpful, as well as having a string that I could model with. Yet, this made me consider whether we’re held back conceptually. What if the real model of the universe was locked behind the limits of what we can perceive and understand?
Often I find the complex maths of higher-level physics overwhelming, and hearing of the use of computers and programming to do the calculations helped. In school, we tend to see the calculations of physics as the easy part and the explanations as the harder part—that’s why it’s so important to learn and understand the concepts fully —ripping away the maths and solely showing the concepts is a really good approach to open science to more people, and to set good foundations.
Personally, one of the most intriguing things were the Calabi Yau spaces.
Not only the story of combining maths and physics [some regard them as the same field but they’re not!], but the sheer complexity of them. Further, the idea of just cutting below the Planck length was such a shock! Strings just bouncing back and growing had never occurred to me—how are simple ideas chained back due to shame or doubt; is it better to outwardly say your ideas to not mislead, or to help science develop by outing them?
As well as this, 1/R and R radii strings having the same properties link to all black holes having “no hair”, with the same mass force charge and area they’re identical!
Specifically, I found the description of Einstein’s reluctance to accept Bohr’s probabilistic quantum mechanics intriguing. His loyalty to determinism (shown also in his insistence in the cosmological constant), shows that physics is affected by biases, and that even revered physicists sometimes cannot look past their own preferences.
This book is dated in aspects since it's ~30 years old, but it reflects the philosophical, neat view that the 90s held towards unifying theories, & physics in general. An idea being beautiful (like string theory) doesn’t mean it’s true—could this bias influence how it’s seen as evidence & the prevalence of that idea going forwards? Greene highlights how science is a creative process. For example, how string theory has the theory first, and the equations are so complex, they just have approximations. It really makes you think if it blurs the line between mathematical theory and description, and whether it’s more driven by logic, or imagination. It made me think of Karl Popper’s idea of falsifiability — can a theory that can’t be tested count as scientific?
This book being dated did, to an extent, help, as I had to further research topics to see if they were still relevant. For example, the idea of string-driven cosmic inflation hasn’t had much further evidence, and the LHC didn’t find any evidence of strings either.
I believe that, rather than using string theory as a legitimate answer, we should evaluate its strengths and weaknesses–and Greene’s book perfectly demonstrates the hopes of the time. The idea of supersymmetry being used yet again made me think of bias—how much of this is a good idea, and how much of it is a bias towards beauty?
“Black holes have no hair” as they’re only defined by charge, spin, mass.
Strings/branes could explain black-hole structure: wrapped branes resemble gravitational fields of extremal black holes.
Number of possible string vibrations = black-hole entropy; hints at a quantum description of gravity.
Hawking radiation explained by virtual particle pairs at the event horizon; temperature far too small to detect.
Raises the “information paradox”: if wavefunctions fall in, can information ever be restored?= later evidence was discovered to support this
Extremal branes might store information, suggesting a holographic link between surface area and internal data.
Laplacian determinism fails because of the uncertainty principle.
“Quantum determinism”; probabilities fixed by the wavefunction, not exact outcomes.
Black holes challenge both: they seem to destroy the wavefunction altogether.
Inflation solves the horizon problem by rapid early expansion; keeps temperature uniform.
Symmetry breaking: strong, weak and EM forces were unified at high temperature.
String theory offers an explanation for why only 3 spatial dimensions expanded—strings in 3D collide and annihilate most efficiently, freeing those dimensions.
Calabi–Yau shapes (extra curled dimensions) could rip, merge and reform during the Big Bang.
Strings might be “shards” of spacetime; their vibrations generate geometry rather than move through it.
Holographic principle; reality in 3D could be encoded on a 2D surface (like black-hole entropy).
Zero-branes & non-commutative geometry; space itself may not exist at the smallest scales; distances become meaningless.
M-theory unites different string theories through quantum connections.
Anthropic principle: our universe’s parameters suit life because we exist in one that allows it.
Smolin’s “cosmic natural selection”; universes reproduce through black holes; those optimized for black-hole production “survive.”
Suggests physics could evolve like biology; a philosophical bridge between science and metaphysics.
