I just got through watching the first hour of a PBS NOVA special about string theory, and will probably watch the second two after I type this. I watched this... on the Internet. That's the first point I wanted to make...it's absolutely amazing that I can watch a 3-hour documentary, in its entirety, online. The Internet is a depository of a great number of things.

The second point is the subject matter itself. If you couldn't already tell by some of the subject matter of the comic, I find some of physics just fascinating...or at least the science-fictiony kind of stuff. A lot of it is still too mathematical and over my head to really get into it. The hour I just watched gives an overview of the events leading up to string theory, such as Einstein's General Relativity and the quest for a GUT and the like. This stuff I've actually heard before, so it was easy enough to follow along (which is to say, if you haven't heard this, you can watch it only if you can pay close attention). But my "defining moment" came toward the end of the hour, where they basically said "How can we explain bot general relativity and quantum mechanics? Well, string theory...these little vibrating bands of energy that make up every particle". And I was like, "Wait, what?". From 60 to 0 in 1.5 seconds. I was following along quite nicely until they got to the point. Well, I've still got two-thirds to get through. Who know, there's a good chance some of this'll end up somewhere in the comic, in some distant future....
posted by Tim at 2:02 AM