I’ve heard about string theory for some time now, but I’ve never taken the time to learn more about it until now. I basically spent a good few hours watching free videos online, and now I’m telling you about what I did. You’re in for a treat.

First, you might find it interesting to watch these two YouTube videos on the first ten dimensions. They are great illustrations of the concepts found in the first chapter of Rob Bryanton‘s Imagining the Tenth Dimension (book, website). If you get lost after about the 5th or 6th dimension, don’t worry – I did too. Re-watching the later parts helps with understanding a little better, though.

Then comes the better part. If you have time to kill, watch NOVA’s 3-hour The Elegant Universe series on string theory and why it’s such an amazing prospect. There actually used to be only ten proposed dimensions, but after five different string theory ideas were introduced, all with very different math, Edward Witten came along and proposed an eleventh dimension to unite all these ideas.

It’s interesting to note how the strings in string theory actually closely resemble Laozi’s ancient idea of a Dao. If I didn’t hate math so much, I think I’d love to be a string theory physicist.