Vishal Goel’s Reviews > The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory > Status Update

I also felt that although Brian took the direction of explaining each concept of relativity and quantum mechanics with the help of some normal world analogies, he mostly focused on explaining the “what” of the concepts. He did not go into the “how”, as in how scientists reached conclusions that led to these theories. Some detail about the real world experiments behind them would have been great.

I think Brian explained difficult concepts of special and general relativity and quantum mechanics including the double slit experiment, the uncertainty principle and quantum experiment well with examples (although the H-Bar analogy was cringe), the concepts of Quantum Field theory, messenger particles and Gauge symmetry felt quickly glossed over.

“Einstein realized that hundreds of years of experimental confirmation notwithstanding, special relativity implied that in some subtle way Newton’s theory was broken and that its repair required coming to grips with the question of the true and full nature of gravity”.

Brian is methodical and gives nice long explanation of difficult concepts with examples while also keeping the element of mystery and prose.

“Einstein proclaimed that all objects in the universe are always travelling through spacetime at one fixed speed - that of light… time slows down when an object moves relative to us because this diverts some of its motion through time into motion through space.”