The Elegant Universe

So did anybody else catch the first episodes of The Elegant Universe on the Nova series today?It isn't quite up to the level of Cosmos in my mind. I think part of it is that they're only doing three hours whereas Cosmos had 13 and it seems that they're a bit scared to get too technical. The old adage is that for every equation you use, you lose half your audience. But the converse of that is that for every equation you do away with, you lose half of your explanatory ability.That is, flashy graphics are neat and cool, but they don't really tell you anything. They needed to spend more time actually doing something with the graphics than the graphics in and of themselves.A good example was the bit about extra dimensions. It started off with a wonderful example: Greene is looking out the window at some power lines and he points out that from that vantage point, the lines look one-dimensional. You can't really detect any thickness of them. But if you get really close to them, say an ant's-eye view, you can see that there is a roundness to it...you can go forward and back as well as around the cable clockwise and anti-clockwise.Thus, we have an example of how the extra dimensions that string theory requires can be hidden from view: We're simply not in a good place to see them.But then they get all fancy and start talking about the extra six dimensions that string theory requires and the fancy graphics come and I swear he says this, "This is how it might look like." Excuse me? Is that really the case? Somehow, I don't think so. It's all nice colors and the way it looks like the petals of a rose unfurling through each other is nice, but somehow I think this is more to make people go "Oooooh!" rather than any sort of accurate description.I think the previous PBS miniseries, evolution, as well as Cosmos did a better job because each episode concentrated on a single thing. The Elegant Universe doesn't seem to reach a conclusion. True, the third hour is scheduled for November 4, which might make up for it, so perhaps I'm miffed that I'm being left hanging for the conclusion of the topic. When I watched Cosmos, I was left happy that a topic had been covered and eager to see what was coming next. With TEU, I'm left wondering if the third hour is going to answer the questions I still have.------------------
Rrhain
WWJD? JWRTFM!