For many years, I’ve been a big fan of string theory, also known as superstring theory. A year and a half ago, I discovered a fascinating television program on PBS Nova, The Elegant Universe, that changed the way I looked at life around me. 

The show was split into 3-1 hour segments, in which I only caught the last 2; I found myself frantically calling PBS to obtain the DVD. It was like no other science program that I had ever watched; It was creative, had stunning visual effects and examples, and kept my full attention throughout the entire 3 hours.

Starting with the most simple explanations of gravity, electromagnetism, and relativity; The Elegant Universe takes you on a journey through the understanding of string theory. This theory  proposes that everything you see around you is made up of tiny strands of energy, and everything that happens around you is the effect of this energy’s modes of vibration.

With ideas of the universe being one of many parallel universes and having many different dimensions; this series is sure to capture your attention, even if you’ve never had any interest in this before.

I was extremely pleased to find that this program was brought to the Internet, through PBS’s Nova The Elegant Universe, allowing anyone to watch the entire 3 hour movie split into 24 segments. Five minutes of this, and I promise you’ll be watching until it completes.

So much of these excellent programs are dying out, and being replaced by other things. TLC is a good example of this; I remember when TLC was an acronym for The Learning Channel, now it’s The Living Channel, and much of their interesting shows were transformed into reality TV. It’s wonderful to see that there are still educational programs of this nature on television, and now the Internet. 

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Entry was posted on Sunday, December 10th, 2006 at 4:33 am under Science and technology, Web2.0.

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