Nova: The Fabric of the Cosmos

Amazon.com Physicist-author Brian Greene, whose Nova presentation The Elegant Universe made string theory comprehensible to the armchair scientist, returns with the four-part Fabric of the Cosmos, an even more whiz-bang approach to current ideas in physics. Imagine the final section of 2001: A Space Odyssey interrupted by talking heads and voiceover narration, and you'll get a grasp for the baffling realm Greene and his cadre of brainiacs enter here: theories of quantum physics, "entanglement" (that one'll mess with your mind), and the possibility of a multiverse, a set of universes beyond our own visible one. Various explanations for the Big Bang are also explored. Greene, a humorous if somewhat awkward presenter, knows perfectly well he is dealing with stuff that goes beyond the knowledge of the average viewer, so he offers many examples and demonstrations, and the information is reliably intriguing. Not so intriguing is the show's overall style, which is so full of pulsating graphics and cutesy metaphors that it might prove headache-inducing. Too bad the makers of this series didn't trust the information contained here, because it's pretty exciting on its own. --Robert Horton Product Description Brian Greene is going to let you in on a secret: We've all been deceived. Our perceptions of time and space have led US astray. Much of what we thought we knew about our universe-that the past has already happened and the future is yet to be, that space is just an empty void, that our universe is the only universe that exists-just might be wrong. THE FABRIC OF THE COSMOS, a four-hour series based on the book by renowned physicist and acclaimed author Brian Greene, takes US to the frontiers of physics to see how scientists are piecing together the most complete picture yet of space, time and the universe. With each step, audiences will discover that just beneath the surface of our everyday experience lies a world we'd hardly recognize, a startling world far stranger and more wondrous than anyone expected. Interweaving provocative theories, experiments, and stories with crystal-clear explanations and imaginative metaphors like those that defined the groundbreaking and highly-acclaimed series THE ELEGANT UNIVERSE, THE FABRIC OF THE COSMOS promises to be the most compelling, visual, fun, and comprehensive picture of modern physics ever seen on television. Review MIT physicist Alan Guth made a profound insight into the very first moments of the universe more than three decades ago, when he was just a junior scientist. Working late into the night, he came up with a new explanation for the initial, rapid expansion of the universe. He scrawled a note at the end of his careful calculations and drew a box around it: spectacular realization. In recent years that insight, along with other work, has led modern physics to a provocative, and hotly debated, interpretation of reality: Our universe is just one among many. There are not only other universes out there - in those other universes, there are other versions of us, each going about their own lives. This mind-boggling, controversial idea is just one of the ideas presented through a combination of storytelling, clever video editing, and computer animation in a new, four-part Nova series, The Fabric of the Cosmos, that kicks off tonight on Channel 2 at 9 p.m. The series, based on the book of the same name by Columbia University physicist Brian Greene, zooms in on a different topic in each episode. Tonight s show deals with the nature of space itself. Then, Greene takes us on an increasingly weird tour, digging into time before zooming into the tiniest quantum realm, where the rules of nature get freaky. The final episode highlights the strangest idea yet - that there are multiple universes out there. In the world of popularizing science, this series is a big, splashy event. Greene, a veteran popularizer of science, has experience in ably demystifying very complicated physics for a general audience. A natural showman, he s aided in the series by top-notch computer animation and a cadre of top scientists, who help him introduce everything from Einstein s initial insights into the nature of space and time, to the discovery that won the Nobel prize in physics this year - the surprising and initially hard-to-swallow finding that the universe s expansion is speeding up. The show is teeming with easy-to-grasp analogies that strip away most of what people find hard about science, with physicists not only explaining ideas, but also why they are exciting, delightful, or strange. Tonight s episode in particular ends on an unsettling note, bringing up the possibility that our world, our reality, is merely a holographic projection. The most exciting moments come when Greene takes us to the edge of modern physics, to debates that are still unfolding. The most human come when the physicists are left to tell their own stories, providing a glimpse of how big, daunting ideas came to be.
ASIN: B0056031LE
VSKU: 4EKGRJ00CV8P_ns
Condition: Good
Binding: DVD