{"id":1194,"date":"2008-04-23T14:36:35","date_gmt":"2008-04-23T18:36:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/?p=1194"},"modified":"2008-04-24T12:04:05","modified_gmt":"2008-04-24T16:04:05","slug":"understanding-superstring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2008\/04\/23\/understanding-superstring\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding Superstrings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-content\/images\/2005\/10\/professormembrane.gif\" alt=\"Professor Membrane\" title=\"Professor Membrane\" height=\"80\" width=\"80\"\/><strong>\u201cHooray for popularization!\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>A while back <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2007\/08\/30\/expose-yourself-to-hours-of-great-ideas\/\">I mentioned that I was really enjoying following the various TED Talks<\/a> as they are being put online. (In fact, at this point, I&#8217;ve got an archive of over 230 of the talks as MP4 videos&#8211;around 12Gb&#8211;that I&#8217;m working my way through, either on the iPod during enforced waiting periods, or in my rare moments of slack time at a PC. I think I&#8217;ve seen about half of them now).<\/p>\n<p>Well today they posted a talk from 2005 that I want to call your attention to: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ted.com\/index.php\/talks\/view\/id\/251\">The universe on a string<\/a> by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ted.com\/index.php\/speakers\/view\/id\/227\">Brian Greene<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>There are a few reasons why this one should be singled out for some special attention:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>It&#8217;s one of the best popular explanations of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Superstring_theory\">superstring theory<\/a> I&#8217;ve seen, doing a particularly good job with analogies to help explain what &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Superstring_theory#Extra_dimensions\">more than three dimensions of space<\/a>&#8221; mean outside of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Superstring_theory#The_Mathematics\">the strict mathematics<\/a>. I think pretty much anyone off the street could follow Greene&#8217;s explanation, which is no mean feat for something as abstract as string theory.<\/li>\n<li>He has some great (and expensive looking) visualizations to assist his explanation. Aside from the genius of the &#8220;ant on the wire&#8221; shots, there&#8217;s also some pretty effective animations that really help with both curved spacetime, and &#8220;really tiny dimensions&#8221;. I <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/tag\/visualization\/\">always love<\/a> to see great visualizations.<\/li>\n<li>He explains one of the goals of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.networkworld.com\/slideshows\/2008\/042208-hadron-collider.html\">Large Hadron Collider<\/a>, again in a highly simplified way, but also one that explains how the device will help verify or rule out superstrings. This is quite timely, especially given all the articles I&#8217;ve been seeing lately with the &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/gizmodo.com\/374066\/large-hadron-collider-wont-destroy-earth-of-course-not-say-scientists\">ZOMG<\/a>! <a href=\"http:\/\/io9.com\/379494\/the-large-hadron-collider-will-gobble-up-the-earth-or-maybe-just-france\">Turning it on<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/04\/15\/science\/15risk.html\">might end the world<\/a>!&#8221; stuff in them.<footnote>By the way, <a href=\"http:\/\/alexirvine.blogspot.com\/2008\/04\/new-york-times-this-morning-takes-up.html\">Alex Irvine<\/a> is totally right about what the money quote from that last article is.<\/footnote><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>You can <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ted.com\/index.php\/talks\/download\/video\/333\/talk\/251\">download the talk<\/a>, or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ted.com\/index.php\/talks\/download\/audio\/132\/talk\/251\">download just the audio<\/a> (missing all those visualizations!), or just watch it right here:<\/p>\n<p><center><br \/>\n<!--cut and paste--><object classid=\"clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000\" codebase=\"http:\/\/download.macromedia.com\/pub\/shockwave\/cabs\/flash\/swflash.cab#version=8,0,0,0\" width=\"320\" height=\"285\" id=\"VE_Player\" align=\"middle\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/static.videoegg.com\/ted2\/flash\/loader.swf\"><\/param><param NAME=\"FlashVars\" VALUE=\"bgColor=FFFFFF&#038;file=http:\/\/static.videoegg.com\/ted\/movies\/BrianGreene_2005_high.flv&#038;autoPlay=false&#038;fullscreenURL=http:\/\/static.videoegg.com\/ted\/flash\/fullscreen.html&#038;forcePlay=false&#038;logo=&#038;allowFullscreen=true\"><\/param><param name=\"quality\" value=\"high\"><\/param><param name=\"allowScriptAccess\" value=\"always\"><\/param><param name=\"bgcolor\" value=\"#FFFFFF\"><\/param><param name=\"scale\" value=\"noscale\"><\/param><param name=\"wmode\" value=\"window\"><\/param><\/object><br \/>\n<\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"excerpt\">\u201cHooray for popularization!\u201d A while back I mentioned that I was really enjoying following the various TED Talks as they are being put online. (In fact, at this point, I&#8217;ve got an archive of over 230 of the talks as MP4 videos&#8211;around 12Gb&#8211;that I&#8217;m working my way through, either on the iPod during enforced waiting periods, or in my rare&hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/2008\/04\/23\/understanding-superstring\/\">Read more &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[84,67,208,269,268],"class_list":["post-1194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-embed","tag-science","tag-things-to-listen-to","tag-things-to-watch","tag-visualization","xfolkentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5UQvw-jg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1194"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1194\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.chrismclaren.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}