22 May 2007

Tonight I attended the last event in the CUNY Graduate Center’s Science and the Arts series. This one was String Theory for Dummies and as far as I am concerned was the most successful of the series. They started off with a ventriloquist who, along with his dummy, introduced the event then gave a brief overview of string theory. During his performance some old woman got up and went over to the director to complain about the content of the show. He was followed by a magician who gave a commentary on string theory illustrating it with string tricks. It was during that performance that the old woman could be heard out in the hall yelling at the co-director that she had come to learn about string theory. Shortly thereafter two campus cops came in and stationed themselves down in front on either side of the stage. After the event Kin saw me and said he had been sitting in the last row and could hear her loud and clear. She became the but of jokes for the rest of the night. Next up was a kid who is the Web Editor for Discover magazine who played four of the finalist videos from their contest to explain string theory in two minutes or less. The last video, which was one of my favorites but not my top choice, was introduced by the author who is from NYC and is the winner of the contest. The main attraction was Jim Gates, a theoretical physicist from the University of Maryland who works on string theory but isn’t convinced that it is the greatest thing since sliced bread. He explained the theory without getting into the mathematics behind it. The old woman left during his presentation. At the end the ventriloquist came back for the Q&A. He and Gates worked well together.

When I arrived home I could see the Moon sliding down the ecliptic one thumb-width behind Saturn. There was a ring of lit up cloud around the Moon but Saturn was bright enough to shine through the haze.

Starry Night Starter graphic