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lehughesI was a math major / physics minor (FSU, 1973). I found the following books to be a very good intro to string theory. They are well written by someone who actually understands the topic, without going into really advanced math. String theory is an attempt to combine the very small (quantum physics) and the very big (relativity) into one coherent whole.
If you have trouble finding these here, you can buy from Amazon. If you have trouble getting Kindle for PC (it is blocked here in Google Play for some reason), google for “Kindle in Singapore” – once downloaded, it works fine here, including buying books. You just can’t download it from Google Play.
You might need some topology to follow the concepts of 11 dimensions in strings. Like relativity, which differs only in very minor ways from Newtonian physics at normal velocities, 3 dimensions (well, 4 for spacetime) are sufficient at normal scale. The other dimensions exist only in very, very small scale.
I’m not entirely sure how all this affects my life, other than being our current, amazingly elaborate and consistent “creation myth”. It is a lot more interesting to me than some tale about some giant guy getting the earth pregnant (or substitute your favorite creation myth here). So I don’t know that you really need to “believe” it as such (or not). It is definitely a fascinating way to spend a few weeks reading good books, and as a topic for discussion with like minded people. Who knows, maybe this time we got it right. I do really like the whole infinite parallel world concept – every bad decision I made along the way, somewhere I made the right one.
The last one gets more into the multiverse idea.
Regarding learning to program – that is a much more likely to be productive and rewarding topic, IMHO. I would recommend C#.Net as a language – you can target Windows, Android, iOS, Linux/GNOME, MacOS, etc. (with essentially the same code base, just redoing GUI). C# is a remarkably powerful, productive language – far better than Java. It is NOT just for Windows anymore. There is a really good book created by a group in Bulgaria that is teaching thousands of kids how to program. It is available free, or for US$1.99, nicely formatted nicely for Kindle. From bare beginnings to fairly advanced topics, with LOTS of examples. Highly recommended.
