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| Courtesy WGBH |
Physicists' quest for the "theory of everything," now focused on string theory, poses unusual problems of imagination and visualization, even for specialists. Brian Greene '84 made a marked contribution toward public understanding in his book The Elegant Universe (which reviewer Alan Lightman called the "clearest and most comprehensive" popularization; see July-August 1999, page 25). Among the challenges: coming to terms with the six extra dimensions in Calabi-Yau spaces required by string theory, depicted above.
The image is from a Nova series based on Greene's book, airing on public television in late October and early November, and featuring Greene and Harvard physics professors Nima Arkani-Hamed, Peter Galison (a scientific historian, as well), and Cumrun Vafa, among others.
