The Elegant Universe

My wife and I spent New Year's Eve watching the 3-hour DVD series, The Elegant Universe. We had seen snippets of the programme on Nova over the previous weeks, and we were so intrigued, we ordered the DVDs. They arrived a day or two before the 31st.

I know there a many people more sophisticated and more knowledgeable than I who may disagree, but I loved the series. [My son, Adam Smith Palmer, aka "physics boy", thought it would have been better if it hadn't moved quite so slowly, but we needed that pacing and level].

I always felt uncomfortable with the notion of "the big bang" theory of the creation of the universe because it didn't explain what was here before the big bang or what caused the big bang. This series, in a manner comprehensible to us, tells us what string theory and 'brane theory say and how they explain the potential existence of our 3-dimensional universe (4 dimensions if you include time) as a part of an 11-dimensional "bulk" or super universe. Even if it doesn't yield testable hypotheses, I find it satisfying in a philosophical sense.
[click here to order it from Amazon.com; and click here to order it from Amazon.ca].