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Product Description ------------------- Brian Greene is going to let you in on a secret: We've all been deceived. Our perceptions of time and space have led US astray. Much of what we thought we knew about our universe-that the past has already happened and the future is yet to be, that space is just an empty void, that our universe is the only universe that exists-just might be wrong. THE FABRIC OF THE COSMOS, a four-hour series based on the book by renowned physicist and accled author Brian Greene, takes US to the frontiers of physics to see how scientists are piecing together the most complete picture yet of space, time and the universe. With each step, audiences will discover that just beneath the surface of our everyday experience lies a world we'd hardly recognize, a startling world far stranger and more wondrous than anyone expected. Interweaving provocative theories, experiments, and stories with crystal-clear explanations and imaginative metaphors like those that defined the groundbreaking and highly-accled series THE ELEGANT UNIVERSE, THE FABRIC OF THE COSMOS promises to be the most compelling, visual, fun, and comprehensive picture of modern physics ever seen on television. .com ---- Physicist-author Brian Greene, whose Nova presentation The Elegant Universe made string theory comprehensible to the armchair scientist, returns with the four-part Fabric of the Cosmos, an even more whiz-bang approach to current ideas in physics. Imagine the final section of 2001: A Space Odyssey interrupted by talking heads and voiceover narration, and you'll get a grasp for the baffling realm Greene and his cadre of brainiacs enter here: theories of quantum physics, "entanglement" (that one'll mess with your mind), and the possibility of a multiverse, a set of universes beyond our own visible one. Various explanations for the Big Bang are also explored. Greene, a humorous if somewhat awkward presenter, knows perfectly well he is dealing with stuff that goes beyond the knowledge of the average viewer, so he offers many examples and demonstrations, and the information is reliably intriguing. Not so intriguing is the show's overall style, which is so full of pulsating graphics and cutesy metaphors that it might prove headache-inducing. Too bad the makers of this series didn't trust the information contained here, because it's pretty exciting on its own. --Robert Horton P.when('A').execute(function(A) { A.on('a:expander:toggle_description:toggle:collapse', function(data) { window.scroll(0, data.expander.$expander[0].offsetTop-100); }); }); Review ------ MIT physicist Alan Guth made a profound in into the very first moments of the universe more than three decades ago, when he was just a junior scientist. Working late into the night, he came up with a new explanation for the initial, rapid expansion of the universe. He scrawled a note at the end of his careful calculations and drew a box around it: spectacular realization. In recent years that in, along with other work, has led modern physics to a provocative, and hotly debated, interpretation of reality: Our universe is just one among many. There are not only other universes out there - in those other universes, there are other versions of us, each going about their own lives. This mind-boggling, controversial idea is just one of the ideas presented through a combination of storytelling, clever video editing, and computer animation in a new, four-part Nova series, The Fabric of the Cosmos, that kicks off tonight on Channel 2 at 9 p.m. The series, based on the book of the same name by Columbia University physicist Brian Greene, zooms in on a different topic in each episode. Tonight s show deals with the nature of space itself. Then, Greene takes us on an increasingly weird tour, digging into time before zooming into the tiniest quantum realm, where the rules of nature get freaky. The final episode highlights the strangest idea yet - that there are multiple universes out there. In the world of popularizing science, this series is a big, splashy event. Greene, a veteran popularizer of science, has experience in ably demystifying very complicated physics for a general audience. A natural showman, he s aided in the series by top-notch computer animation and a cadre of top scientists, who help him introduce everything from Einstein s initial ins into the nature of space and time, to the discovery that won the Nobel prize in physics this year - the surprising and initially hard-to-swallow finding that the universe s expansion is speeding up. The show is teeming with easy-to-grasp analogies that strip away most of what people find hard about science, with physicists not only explaining ideas, but also why they are exciting, delightful, or strange. Tonight s episode in particular ends on an unsettling note, bringing up the possibility that our world, our reality, is merely a holographic projection. The most exciting moments come when Greene takes us to the edge of modern physics, to debates that are still unfolding. The most human come when the physicists are left to tell their own stories, providing a glimpse of how big, daunting ideas came to be. For example, Peter Higgs, an English physicist, recalls the anxiety he felt several decades ago, when he pulled over to the side of the highway before giving a talk because he was anxious about how his idea would play with the esteemed audience. The series is a beautiful demonstration of how exciting ideas - even complicated ones with no practical application - can powerfully capture the imagination of virtually anyone. In its effort to appeal to people of all ages and backgrounds, there are elements that can verge on silly - setting a particular scene in an art museum, night club, or Albert s (as in Einstein) Diner. The computer animation plays a much-needed explanatory role, but at times, it can also seem like a crutch. Ethereal universes and galaxies seem always to be streaming by. But what verges on cheesy to one viewer is most likely the visual hook or clue that will help ease people - including younger viewers, or people who may find the topic daunting - over the hump of watching a four-hour show about physics. The show is a delight, especially at a time when science is often portrayed as something that must be immediately useful. --By Carolyn Y. Jonhnson for The Boston Globe The 4-part miniseries based on Greene s latest book of the same name is a remarkable journey into the jarring world of theoretical physics. I must admit that I was somewhat daunted by the task of watching these episodes could I really spend 4 hours of my life being entertained by physics?! Actually yes I could. The program is astonishingly entertaining, had a great pace, and was jam-packed with excellent graphics and an extremely well-written script. In addition to the screen-saavy Brian Greene, there are cameo appearances by many expert physicists (including several of my twitter pals) that keep the program moving and highly cohesive. I was rather tickled to be able to interview the man himself, I had several questions about the process of having one s book turned into a major television production. It turns out that serendipity played a role in the journey to the screen. Several years ago, a producer from NOVA attended a lecture Greene was giving on a previous book, The Elegant Universe . Unbeknownst to him, the producer pitched the idea of a NOVA special on The Elegant Universe to Paula Apsell (Senior Executive producer of the program), and Apsell approved. This first special aired on NOVA in 2003 to great accolades (including a Peabody award), and once Fabric of the Cosmos was written Greene approached Apsell about the possibility of creating another production. Greene represents a rather unique character in academia. In addition to having a professorship at Columbia University, his work is evident in books, television and even a musical production (his children s book Icarus at the Edge of Time was adapted for stage). He s a likeable and compelling character on-screen, which in this production involves a lot of complex physics lingo but also a good deal of humor. The metaphors and graphics used in the program to describe everything from the gravitational pull on the surface of a black hole to the fullness of empty space and the concept of the space/time continuum are extremely well conceived. Over 1000 animations were produced by a team led by Jonathan Sahula at Pixel Dust studios, and writing was done by a team at NOVA although Greene had a hand in all aspects of production. He admits to being very particular about the details, tinkering with the graphics until the production team was teetering on its eleventh hour deadlines. I may never do this kind of thing again he says, I wanted to make sure it was the best it could be . As a her of two young children ages 4 and 6, Greene admits that spreading his time between his many professional endevours and his family is not always easy. For the moment he s happy to work the balance of academia and family life, and to allow further books, productions and other projects to exist in the future (which according to Fabric of the Cosmos could actually be in the past but I digress). My final question for Greene was about many aspects of theoretical physics that are covered in the series. As a biologist, I m happy to celebrate the creatures, places and processes that are tangible to my everyday life. However, I find it difficult to conceptualize my world as a hologram or to entertain the notion of a parallel universe where I may exist but as an altered version of myself. At times while watching the show I felt a little panicked, wanting to hide in my happy place or switch the channel to some kind of reality program that wouldn t make me feel so miniscule and insignificant. I wanted to know Greene s perspective on this as one of the minds constantly engaged in these ideas. Rather than feeling insignificant, Greene feels empowered by the fact that humans (lowly as we may be) have the power to understand so much. --By Carin Bondar for Scientific American It turns out that Brian Greene isn't all that different from you or me. Sure, he's a top-flight theoretical physicist, on the faculty of the ultra-prestigious Columbia University. And yes, he specializes in string theory, which uses such advanced and difficult math that even many physicists can't follow it. In one crucial way, however, Greene really is like the rest of us. "If I just look at mathematical equations," he says, "I don't feel I truly understand what's going on. I have to create a running visual in my mind."(Read about The Fabric of the Cosmos.) Those visuals turn out to be a very good thing for all of us non-physicists since the pictures Greene paints for himself he's also painting for us. He's done it with words, in his bestselling books The Elegant Universe, The Fabric of the Cosmos and The Hidden Reality. And now, for the second time, he's turned one of those books into a video series: The Fabric of the Cosmos has been running on PBS through November. You can still see all four segments on the web, but hurry. Failing that, they're available on iTunes, or on NOVA's website. No matter how you catch the series it's worth it. NOVA's computer-graphics wunderkinds combined with Greene's brilliance at explaining concepts that would normally make your head explode bring surprising clarity to ideas that contradict common sense at every turn. Empty space, for example, isn't really empty, and it isn't just a passive container in which galaxies and planets and light beams move around: it warps and undulates; it stretches and squeezes; it crackles with its own invisible energy that affects everything within it. Time, meanwhile, doesn't necessarily flow from what-was through what-is and toward what-will-be. It may not flow at all: past, present and future could all be right here, right now it's just our perception, plus the laws of thermodynamics, that make it seem some other way. And by the way, what we call the universe may be just one of a zillion parallel universes, some like ours, some totally different, but all of them eternally cut off from each other. (Read about the Higgs boson, the 'God' particle.) There's also the riddle of quantum mechanics, invented in the early 20th century to make sense of how subatomic particles behave. The great physicist Richard Feynman once said of quantum theory: "Don't ask how it can be like that. Nobody knows how it can be like that!" Greene, nonetheless, takes a stab at explaining things. Imagine, he says, that we could shrink down to the size of particles. Imagine further that we're in an otherwise familiar situation a bar, but one in which the patrons obey quantum principles. That attractive woman you're chatting up? She's suddenly on the other side of the room, and you (or Greene himself, who is onscreen most of the time) are sitting on a different stool. The mix of familiar setting and crazy action which become vividly real through those seamless special effects makes a far more powerful impression than some old-fashioned diagram or animation could ever do. The Fabric of the Cosmos is in many ways the direct heir of Carl Sagan's popular Cosmos series, produced by NOVA in the 1980's and Greene is quick to acknowledge Sagan's influence. "He was a trailblazer, and he's been a model for me. Lots of us who are interested in explaining science to the public view Carl as an iconic hero." It wasn't just Sagan's genius at explanation that laid the groundwork for scientist-popularizers like Greene and his astronomical counterpart, Neil deGrasse Tyson. It was Sagan's willingness to go where no scientist had gone before specifically, late-night TV, where he was a frequent guest on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. --By Michael D. Lemonick for Time See more ( javascript:void(0) )