The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene is a book about string theory - Superstrings, hidden dimensions, etc. - written for the layman. And in the field of superstring theory, most people are laymen. Physicists familiar with Calabi-Yau shapes are obviously not the target audience. This book is for people who are happy with a semi-accurate but understandable description of modern string theory and also for those who feel cool bandying terms like Calabi-Yau shapes about. Calabi-Yau!

While I am most definitely a physics layperson, I am not totally devoid of experience with esoteric physics. I had meself an obsession with antimatter and black holes, wanted to be a high energy theory guy or a cosmologist for a while, and have taken some college physics. So the first third of the book, in which Greene explained quantum mechanics and relativity, went by fairly slowly for me. But to his credit, Greene does make things very clear.

Greene is very obviously a proponent of string theory. This book is, to be a bit vulgar, a sales pitch for string theory to joe schmoe. Ignoring the actual scientific merits of string theory, Greene's book is very well written, and does translate many inherently mathematical discoveries and concepts into the vernacular. But the troubles start when one tries to use Greene's analogies and explication devices to think more deeply about string theory. The reader runs into one of two scenarios, possibly simultaneously: 1) The reader doesn't know enough about string theory to extend Greene's analogies. 2) While Greene's analogies make sense, the fundamental physical justification for string theory is still hard to accept.

Perhaps it is an inherent property of all new theories to sound as if they were made up ad hoc to fit circumstances. A lot of string theory's reconiliations of hard physical problems (such as quantum gravity) seem based upon the ability of string theory to define out the problem. Space at lengths below planck length not uniform? No problem. String theory states that it is literally impossible to go below planck length so no need to look at those troublesome spaces. Too many dimensions required for strings? No problem, they must be smaller than we can observe. Not enough dimensions? well let's add another one that is also so small we can't observe. Greene would probably smack me silly for saying such things but from a lay person's perspective, these are nagging questions.

It may very well be that these concerns are unanswerable without a high level of mathematics and physics. It certainly may be possible that these questions are completely unaswerable even with a mathematical understanding of the subject at hand. Neither scenarios, however, diminish Greene's achievement in popularizing an intensely obscure and complex topic. The Elegant Universe is elegantly written and serves a noble purpose of trying to bridge highly theoretical physics and practical events in our common lives. It may very well be the best anyone can do at the moment.

That and someone informs me that Brian Greene is pretty hot in person...