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He's Got The World On A String

Not surprisingly, string theory still has some high-profile and well-respected detractors. Sheldon Glashow, a Nobel Prize-winning particle physicist at Harvard, was once so virulently skeptical that he questioned whether string theorists should even "be paid by physics departments and allowed to pervert impressionable students." Today, he has softened his views, primarily because he thinks string theorists have become humbler. But he's still skeptical. "String theory's biggest prediction is that gravity exists," he says. "That's good. That's a lot more than preceding theories could do. But it's not enough . . . I mean . . . there. I just proved it, too. I just dropped a pencil."

He has a point. Perhaps never in the history of physics has theory been so far ahead of experiment. String theorists, by and large, tend to be the kinds of fellows who scribble calculations on the backs of envelopes rather than the kinds who smash atoms. "I suppose I'm worried," says Glashow, "that someday there will be some exciting experiments to do, and there won't be anyone around who knows what experiments are."

A number of preeminent physicists share this concern. But most still believe that string theory is the wave of the future. So to speak. "I see all the things that are wrong with the present situation," says Steven Weinberg, a Nobel-laureate physicist at the University of Texas, "but I still think string theory is the only game in town."

String theorists are very excited about Greene's book, for both selfish and civic-minded reasons. Stoking the public's romance with science is extremely important to them -- particularly after Congress canceled funding for the world's largest underground supercollider in Waxahachie, Texas, which would have enabled scientists to come as close as they ever have to understanding the Big Bang.

"In the old days," explains Michio Kaku, a high-energy-particle physicist at CUNY, "when we wanted money, we'd go to Congress and say one word: Russia. They'd just open up their checkbooks and say, 'How much?' Now, for the first time in our lives, we physicists have to sing for our supper. But most scientists cannot speak the language of the land. They're bumblers when it comes to the English language."

A few good books, he thinks, plus a few eloquent popularizers, would go a long way toward putting food on the table. "Just as we're so close to the finish line," he sighs, "it'd be a crime if the public turned away from funding basic science."

Greene couldn't agree more. He talks about the need for the public to know what scientists are up to; he talks about providing a service to his fellow string theorists, who don't always have time to explain their exciting progress. But the most compelling explanations he gives for writing The Elegant Universe have nothing to do with the obligations he feels toward his profession or other scientists. They're personal.

"You know," he says, "I don't think physicists will ever give answers to true questions of meaning. But I do think that when one understands how the universe works on the deepest possible level, you understand questions of meaning with a previously unattainable clarity."

Greene has no plans to write another book. The Elegant Universe took a long time, and he says he's eager to pour all of his energy back into research. But there's always the tug of the world on the other side of the ivory tower, that same impulse that lured him out of his classroom four years ago to perform in Pinter's Betrayal, a bit of moonlighting he never told his colleagues or students about. (They would have liked it, too, since in Pinter's play, which starts with the final scene, time moves backward.) In May, true to form, he's doing a public lecture at the Guggenheim called "Strings and Strings," which makes use of an actual string quartet to metaphorically illustrate the principles of string theory.

"Doing only the technical stuff has never seemed to me to be enough," he admits. "Maybe because the breakthroughs don't happen sufficiently frequently, or maybe not. But there has always been a part of me that wanted to engage with the world on a different level." Greene smiles. "I guess," he says, "I like having a double life."