The Elegant Universe - Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory

A new edition of the NY Times bestseller_now a 3-part Nova special: a fascinating and thought-provoking journey through the mysteries of space, time, and matter. Now with a new preface (not in any other edition), reviews the enormous public reception of the relatively obscure string theory_made possible by this book and an increased number of adherents amongst physicists_Elegant Universe "sets a standard that will be hard to beat" (NY Times Bk Rev). Greene, one of the world's leading string theorists, peels away layers of mystery surrounding string theory to reveal a universe of eleven dimensions, where the fabric of space tears & repairs itself, and all matter_from the smallest quarks to the most gargantuan supernovas_is generated by the vibrations of microscopically tiny loops of energy. Physicists and mathematicians throughout the world are working on one of the most ambitious theories ever proposed: superstring theory. String theory, as it is often called, is the key to the Unified Field Theory that eluded Einstein for more than thirty years. Finally, the century-old antagonism between the large and the small-General Relativity and Quantum Theory-is resolved. String theory proclaims that all of the wondrous happenings in the universe, from the frantic dancing of subatomic quarks to the majestic swirling of heavenly galaxies, are reflections of one grand physical principle and manifestations of one single entity: microscopically tiny vibrating loops of energy, a billionth of a billionth the size of an atom. In this brilliantly articulated and clear book, Greene relates the scientific story and the human struggle behind twentieth-century physics' search for a theory of everything. Through the masterful use of metaphor and analogy, Elegant Universe makes some of the most sophisticated concepts ever contemplated viscerally accessible and thoroughly entertaining, bringing us closer than ever to understanding how the universe works.