Brian Greene has the world on a string Or, physics for the rest of us

For hundreds of years, scientists from Newton to Einstein to Hawking have pondered the questions of time and space.

Brian Greene, a physicist and author of "The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time and the Texture of Reality," notes in the book's first sentence that time and space capture our imaginations like no other scientific subject. They are the metaphorical bricks and mortar of our reality, he says, "the fabric of the cosmos."

Greene will lecture at California State University, Monterey Bay's World Theater at 7 p.m. Sept. 30 as the President's Speaker Series resumes.

A media-savvy, charismatic personality, Greene is one of the world's leading theoretical physicists and a brilliant, entertaining communicator of scientific concepts. In his first book, "The Elegant Universe," he did for string theory what Carl Sagan did for astronomy: explain it in terms that anyone can understand.

Greene recounts how the theories of general relativity and quantum mechanics transformed our understanding of the universe, and introduces us to string theory, a concept that might be the key to a unified theory of the universe. "The Elegant Universe" has sold more than one million copies and became an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning NOVA special on PBS.

His second book, "The Fabric of the Cosmos," spent six months on the New York Times bestseller list and is currently being adapted into a four-part NOVA miniseries slated for broadcast next year.

In his talk at CSU Monterey Bay, he'll offer a view of human understanding of space and time. He takes a chronological approach, beginning with Newton, moving through Einstein and quantum physics and on to string theory and its hypotheses – that there are 11 dimensions, 10 of space and one of time; that there may be an abundance of parallel universes; and that time travel may be possible.

What physicists call strings are unimaginably small, vibrating, thread-shaped bits that, in theory, are the most basic building blocks of all matter. The strings vibrate differently and, like strings on a violin, produce different "notes" that determine the properties of matter and force, and together make the cosmic symphony that is our universe.

Wait. Don't bail out. This stuff is fun.

Basically, there are two kinds of physics. Albert Einstein is the hero of one – relativity – the physics that explains gravity and light speed and can even be used to help us understand everyday, commonplace occurrences. NASA, for instance, relies on equations of relativity for space travel. The other kind of physics is quantum mechanics, which explains the very, very small, the subatomic particles that physicists study with atom smashers.

The two may seem contradictory and we have not yet found a means to apply the same laws to the quantum (micro) world that can also apply to our larger world (which includes gravity as one of the forces we deal with). This is one of the fundamental conundrums of physics and many physicists have spent years trying to reconcile these two extremes.

However, string theory just might provide a solution. Using mathematical and physical equations derived from string theory, there is a possible way to create a uniform set of laws that apply from the extremely small to the extremely large, allowing us to better understand both the quantum world and the macro world in which we live.

Got that?

A graduate of Harvard and a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, Greene is a professor in both the physics and mathematics departments at Columbia University. His most recent book, "Icarus at the Edge of Time," is a futuristic retelling of the Icarus myth.

The lecture is free and open to the public. Reservations are requested and can be made online at csumb.edu/speakers or by calling the World Theater box office at 582-4580. The World Theater is located on Sixth Avenue on the CSUMB campus. Driving directions and a campus map are available at CSUMB.edu/map.

To view the NOVA series, "The Elegant Universe," visit https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/program.html “Willful ignorance of science is not okay. We are living through a radical cultural shift, one in which science and technology play an increasingly pervasive role in everyday life. . . . A scientifically literate public is, plainly, increasingly vital.” – Brian Greene