String Theory: BBS, the Review

Walking around on college campuses, do you find yourself looking at the impressively ripped guns of the medical students with envy or admiration? Or thinking: Hey, they're med students, when do they have time to work out? They don't of course. Those biceps come from packing around and reading Weinstein et. al.'s Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology (5 lbs.) and similar weighty medical tomes.

You could do the same, of course, but maybe you don't want to spring for the $315, or maybe you think it's creepy carrying around a book on stomachs and snakes (or is it molluscs and livers?). There is another option now, a stylish and fashionable accessory that you can carry with pride, attracting the admiration of friends and tantalyzing the opposite sex, while still firming and defining those guns. And it's only eighty bucks. At four pounds, it has nearly the throw weight of those medical monstrosities without the unsightly and inconvenient bulk.

I'm talking, of course, about the new String Theory and M-Theory: A Modern Introduction by Katrin and Melanie Becker and John Schwarz.

What's the most important thing about a book? Let's start with the fundamentals: It has got to look good - look good in your hand, on the coffee table, or even on the bookshelf. A few old fogies, like your humble correspondent, may wax nostalgic about the once fashionable plain navy cloth book with gold lettering, but please! That day is dead and gone. Now, of course, a colorful plastic with an artisticially pleasing cover design is a must. BBS doesn't dissappoint. A stylish design in oranges, yellows and greens features abstractly stringy objects and geometries on the red, black, and gold Cambridge University Press background. It's even a family project: the cover painting is by the Becker sisters' mother, Ingrid Becker.

Looks are good, of course, but the rubber meets the road in performance. How does the new kid on the block stack up in that regard? Let's look at the stats:

Acceleration: 0 to 62 in 18.9 seconds. Not mind blowingly impressive, maybe, but I need a new car.

Maximum Speed: 600 km/s (as measured with respect to the local co-moving frame as determined from the cosmic microwave backgound. Take that Corvette!)

Displacement: The modest displacement of roughly 2.0 liters combines with a curb weight of 3.98 lbs to yield a truly impressive power to weight ratio.

Cornering: Eight, all right angled.

Exterior ballistics, range (shot put throw): 46 feet, or a bit further than I could throw a 16 lb shotput in high school.

Exterior ballistics, range (discus style throw): 35 feet, but the pages flapped.

Exterior ballistics, range (discus style throw, rubber band around book): 61 feet.

Terminal ballistics, penetration .22 caliber: To page 39, from the back.

Terminal ballistics, penetration, 50 caliber armor piercing incendiary round: Complete penetration, however book failed to ignite. The six copies of Wolfram's A New Kind of Science used as a backstop all did, however.

What about the content, you may ask? Oh that!

Well I have read the first Chapter, and it is a very nice essay, outlining much of modern string theory. Not completely without a tad of defensiveness, perhaps, as where it is rather snippily commented:

Some physicists believe that pertubative renormalizability is not a fundamental requirement to "quantize" pure general relativity despite its nonrenormalizability. Loop quantum gravity is an example of this approach. Whatever one thinks of the logic, it is fair to say that despite a considerable amount of effort such attempts have not yet been very fruitful.
..............(pg. 2 footnote)

The rest of the book has got to be good as well. Luboš Motl was one of the proofreaders.

Disclaimer: Despite what you may have read above, no actual books were harmed in the course of this review, except by Amazon/Airborne Home, who put a nasty dent in one of the covers.

I haven't seen a real review yet, but Lumo has some brief comments.

Update: I have corrected the references to "interior ballistics" to "terminal ballistics" in order to make it less obvious that I am talking through my hat.