The Elegant Universe

Name: The Elegant Universe
Genre: Documentary
Released: 2003-10-28
Rating: 7.9
Cast: Brian Greene, Steven Weinberg, Nima Arkani-Hamed

Overview

One of the most ambitious and exciting theories ever proposed—one that may be the long-sought "theory of everything," which eluded even Einstein—gets a masterful, lavishly computer-animated explanation from bestselling author-physicist Brian Greene, when NOVA presents the nuts, bolts, and sometimes outright nuttiness of string theory.

Episodes

S01E01 Einstein's Dream

October 28, 2003

Introduces string theory and shows how modern physics—composed of two theories that are ferociously incompatible—reached its schizophrenic impasse: One theory, general relativity, successfully describes big things like stars and galaxies, while another, quantum mechanics, is...

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S01E02 String's the Thing

October 28, 2003

Opens with a whimsical scene in a movie theater in which the history of the universe runs backwards to the Big Bang, the moment at which general relativity and quantum mechanics both came into play,...

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S01E03 Welcome to the 11th Dimension

November 4, 2003

Edward Witten of Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, aided by others, revolutionized string theory by successfully uniting the five different versions into a single theory that is cryptically named "M-theory," a development that requires a...

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