The Future of String Theory -- A Conversation with Brian Greene
The physicist and best-selling author demystifies the ultimate theories
of space and time, the nature of genius, multiple universes, and more

String theory used to get everyone all tied up in knots. Even its
practitioners fretted about how complicated it was, while other
physicists mocked its lack of experimental predictions. The rest of the
world was largely oblivious. Scientists could scarcely communicate just
why string theory was so exciting--why it could fulfill Albert
Einstein's dream of the ultimate unified theory, how it could give
insight into such deep questions as why the universe exists at all. But
in the mid-1990s the theory started to click together conceptually. It
made some testable, if qualified, predictions. The outside world began
to pay attention. Woody Allen satirized the theory in a New Yorker
column this past July--probably the first time anyone has used
Calabi-Yau spaces to make a point about interoffice romance.

Few people can take more credit for demystifying string theory than
Brian Greene, a Columbia University physics professor and a major
contributor to the theory. His 1999 book The Elegant Universe reached
number four on the New York Times best-seller list and was a finalist
for the Pulitzer Prize. Greene is now host of a three-part Nova series
on PBS and has just completed a book on the nature of space and time.
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN staff editor George Musser recently spoke with him
over a plate of stringy spaghetti. Here is an abridged, edited version
of that conversation.

Read the rest at Scientific American
http://tinyurl.com/s0vg

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Kind Regards,
Robert Karl Stonjek.