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S31E04: The Elegant Universe: String's the Thing (2)Part 2, "String's the Thing," 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, and therefore the point at which our conventional model of reality breaks down.
Then it's string theory to the rescue as Greene describes the steps that led from a forgotten 200-year-old mathematical formula to the first glimmerings of strings—quivering strands of energy whose different vibrations give rise to quarks, electrons, photons, and all other elementary particles. Strings are truly tiny, being smaller than an atom by the same factor that a tree is smaller than the solar system. But, as Greene explains, they are able to combine the laws of the large and the laws of the small into a proposal for a single, harmonious theory of everything.
Genres:
Air Date:
Oct 28, 2003
Runtime:
55 minutes
Production:
Casts:
- Season 1
- Season 2
- Season 3
- Season 4
- Season 5
- Season 6
- Season 7
- Season 8
- Season 9
- Season 10
- Season 11
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- Season 13
- Season 14
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- Season 27
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- Season 30
- Season 31
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- Season 34
- Season 35
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- Season 39
- Season 40
- Season 41
- Season 42
- Season 43
- Season 44
- Season 45
- Season 46
- Season 47
- Season 48
- Season 49
- Season 50
- Season 51
