Noted Physicist Brian Greene to Speak at NC State

One of the world’s leading physicists, Brian Greene, is coming to speak at North Carolina State University on Monday, January 23. Dr. Greene will be speaking at 6:00 PM in Stewart Theatre of the Talley Student Center on the topic “The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality.”

Dr. Greene has published two popular books on physics and string theory, The Elegant Universe, and The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality. Greene was also the host of the NOVA television series The Elegant Universe.

Dr. Greene is known for his skill in making complicated cutting-edge scientific concepts accessible for a general audience, so the lecture should be interesting and understandable for all.

Tickets for the event are $10 for general public and free for NC State students, faculty and staff. For more information, contact Ticket Central at (919) 515-1100, TTY: (919) 515-7371 or on the web at http://ticketcentral.ncsu.edu

The event is being sponsored by the Issues and Ideas Committee of the Union Activities Board at NC State in collaborating with the NCSU Physics Department, SAS Institute, University Scholars, University Honors, and Women in Science and Engineering (WISE).

1/18/2006 12:49:43 AM

Cool.

1/18/2006 12:55:11 AM

1/18/2006 1:03:10 AM

my fiance is very excited about this.

1/18/2006 1:03:55 AM

Woodfoot took my post

1/18/2006 12:05:18 PM

string theory seems so contrived to me

1/18/2006 12:38:36 PM

yeah it's not like those physicists know what they're talking about

1/18/2006 12:39:41 PM

NERDS!!!!!!!!!

The only thing I've ever heard about string theory came from a PBS show a year or so ago. It wasn't a very good show for explaining the theory. They basically presented it with the goal of making it so ambiguous that you 1) couldn't tell what the theory was and 2) couldn't prove anything they were saying one way or the other.

Their proof was basically "it's right because you can't prove it wrong" which never flew with me. I did only see the first of a two or three part series but they needed to do a much better job of conveying their ideas. Maybe this guy can do that.

[Edited on January 18, 2006 at 1:53 PM. Reason : -]

1/18/2006 1:40:15 PM

one of my history professors (history of science) said he has tried to understand string theory many times and that no one from our physics department can explain it well saying its not their department and its more of a mathematically derived theory that only mathematicians can explain... but the mathematicians only offer advanced & abstract equations and no more tangible word-based explanation.

1/18/2006 1:55:09 PM

haha Woodfoot totally took my post too

haha remember when his friend shot himself

1/18/2006 2:06:26 PM

String theory is the quantum field theory of extended objects. What's so bad about that? Take a little general relativity, stir in some standard techinques of quantum field theory and wrap the whole thing around some 6 or 7 dimensional space that allows the desired supersymmetries, then you're good to go.

1/18/2006 4:54:28 PM

^^^^ & ^^^ go see Greene, he'll help yall out

1/18/2006 9:15:02 PM

Quote :

"haha remember when his friend shot himself"

and they never mentioned it for like 4 seasons
and then when dylan went all psycho after his father died and he lost most of his trust fund
and david was the only one who really got through to him, and he was like "cause after (blonde dead guy) shot himself, you're the only one who treated me like a person and not a charity case" or some teen-melodrama shit like that

its amazing how much of that show i remember; considering i didn't even like it that much...

1/18/2006 9:18:12 PM

this is entertainment?

1/18/2006 9:29:20 PM

the sad thing is people know more about that show then string theory, or modern physics in general.

1/18/2006 9:32:08 PM

explain to me why i need to know anything about string theory or modern physics

seriously

that will be entertainment

1/18/2006 9:36:17 PM

because it will make you a more well-rounded and knowledgeable human being

1/18/2006 9:54:47 PM

no, thats why i "should" know about that

in my day to day life

what neeeeeeed have i for string theory?

1/18/2006 10:09:36 PM

ladies, does he make you horny? The last time I saw him, he made all the chicks in the audience horny. Im pretty sure most of these chicks didnt even know the lecture was about physics




[Edited on January 18, 2006 at 10:51 PM. Reason : hsdf]

1/18/2006 10:41:16 PM

Of course you have no "need" for the majority of everthing you'll learn at NCSU. I just think it is sad that people do not view scientists with the respect they view entertainment/sports stars... admitably this is a statement of taste...

1/18/2006 11:34:28 PM

^things have changed since teh old days. einstein was a celeb in his day. post war and for a long time, the math and sciences were very popular.

1/18/2006 11:43:17 PM

Quote :

"I just think it is sad that people do not view scientists with the respect they view entertainment/sports stars... admitably this is a statement of taste..."

its not taste thats at fault

its marketing

if scientists would hire pr firms and agents
they'd be celebrities

hell, look at the google guys

1/18/2006 11:50:28 PM

hahaha, what google guys?

1/19/2006 12:01:48 AM

society has us programmed to think that anybody can be a brilliant scientist if we work hard and do well in school.

natural athletic talent, on the other hand, is not something we can all achieve - that's why they get paid the big bucks to entertain the masses.

1/19/2006 12:16:30 AM

it's society's fault

1/19/2006 12:37:12 AM

The last time I saw this guy speak was at Governor's School in 1999.

1/19/2006 12:37:55 AM

^^I blame cheese.

1/19/2006 12:45:07 AM

oh shit i want to go see this

1/19/2006 1:18:55 AM

I got my tickets

1/19/2006 1:20:17 AM

they showed some movie of this tool in a Scholars Forum and it was kinda cool for a minute until I realized that NONE OF THE CRAP HE TALKS ABOUT MATTERS AT ALL.

1/19/2006 1:47:26 AM

yeah, the understanding of the nature of the universe doesn't matter at all.

1/19/2006 2:03:41 AM

string theory does not matter at all.

this guy will never produce any type of monumentally true facts that will change the way we look at things.

it's great geek-talk material though

1/19/2006 10:07:57 AM

FUCK THIS GUY, I WANT THE WHEEL CHAIR DUDE!!

1/19/2006 10:10:10 AM

"Let's do funky fresh physics yo"

1/19/2006 10:14:18 AM

Quote :

"society has us programmed to think that anybody can be a brilliant scientist if we work hard and do well in school."

i certainly don't believe that

that shit sounds like something you'd hear on an infomercial

1/19/2006 10:49:37 AM

I remember him being kind of a dick. Well, not a dick, but just sort of dismissive when I asked him a question.

1/19/2006 11:24:34 AM

Quote :

"string theory does not matter at all. this guy will never produce any type of monumentally true facts that will change the way we look at things. it's great geek-talk material though"

haha i love it when people who don't know what the hell they are talking about bring up the whole "IT'S NOT A FACT, IT'S ONLY A THEORY" shit.


ok, in science, we call ideas that we believe to be true after lots and lots of testing, etc, theories.
it takes a lot of evidence to call something a theory.

1/19/2006 12:01:49 PM

Quote :

" if scientists would hire pr firms and agents they'd be celebrities "

I almost asked for my PY208 TA's autograph, because he had a picture he made on APOD.

1/19/2006 12:48:10 PM

^^Maybe they should rename it "String Idea" then.

1/19/2006 3:24:26 PM

Maybe they should rewrite the entirety of advanced theoretical physics in words that the common idiot can understand.

1/19/2006 3:25:57 PM

Quote :

"ok, in science, we call ideas that we believe to be true after lots and lots of testing, etc, theories. it takes a lot of evidence to call something a theory."

not to mention that many things believed to be fact is really just the accepted theory at the time until it is proven false.

1/19/2006 6:16:09 PM

^^ They show that on PBS, but no one watches PBS.

1/20/2006 1:55:47 AM

Did anybody go, how was it?

1/24/2006 7:41:04 PM

dude was brilliant. plain and simple.

1/24/2006 9:11:35 PM

some of us saw him talk for free

cause we're just hard like that

ballers

1/24/2006 9:20:24 PM

Quote :

"it takes a lot of evidence to call something a theory"

Not true. In fact, String Theory is an example of how something can be called theory without a lot of evidence. Brian Greene himself said that String Theory was not tested yet,. He even said he does not know when it will be testable.

1/25/2006 1:38:13 AM

So who can report on what he said?

^ makes it sound like they are making things up

1/25/2006 9:59:54 AM

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/

basically this

enjoy

1/25/2006 10:18:37 AM

Many "theories" are very speculative. Many physicsists do not consider String Theory physical at the moment precisely because it yields no testable predictions, or "postdictions" for that matter. Anyway, that doesn't really matter because there is no other theory except for strings which even begins to seriously explain what strings does. There is no other finite theory of quantum gravity.

I like Greene's intuitive pictures, he does a really good job of watering down theoretical physics for the masses. I think he is a bit to ambitious on self-consistency of string theory though. He goes so far as to claim that string theory will through pure mathematics explain which geometry underlies the universe. In his talk in Dabney he suggested "no dimensionless adjustable parameters" would be needed in the final version of the theory. In contrast, current physical theory is based on numerous finely tuned parameters which are just put in by hand. He imagines a physics which arises basically just from logical necessity. I think this is unwarranted for a number of reasons,

1. it ignores the whole history of things, we've always had certain numbers which were
adjusted to make the equations work.

2. by his own admission, strings is more like a theory of theories. Why should one be preferred?
it is better to think of string theory like quantum field theory, it is a framework. To describe
particular physics you'll likely need to specify a particular string model then proceed.

In short, science does not remove questions, rather it just rephrases them. Ultimately I don't think science will ever really explain why we are here, or why the universe exists at all. It might get better at describing the creation event though, and that is part of what makes strings so cool.

1/27/2006 10:41:57 PM

+ =

[Edited on January 27, 2006 at 11:27 PM. Reason : ]

1/27/2006 11:27:18 PM