Instead of doing work, I sat down and finally finished watching the rest of The Elegant Universe sitting on my hard drive (hence writing a simple SMIL file to err, string everything together). There were some good moments (the M-brane visualization was good), but over-all felt like a lot of repetition, not a lot of insight. Personal, I would have liked more talk about supersymmetry, compactification, how string theory impacts the standard model, and also touching on competing theories, like loop quantum gravity. This is a perspective of someone somewhat familiar with the ideas, but seeking deeper understanding on a layman’s level.
- Wikipedia:
- Qgravity.org – a site on quantum gravity, physics and philosophy
- MIT’s Lisa Randall: Two Branes are Better Than One
- String Theory Acquires Rival In Loop Quantum Gravity
- Throwing Einstein for a Loop
- String Theory: An Evaluation [PDF] – Peter Woit’s criticism of string theory, see also Is String Theory Even Wrong? and various responses
- tloh on Superstring theory and Michio Kaku