NOVA - The Elegant Universe (2003)- This DVD did a great job of presenting string and membrane theory deserving of a full five stars as well as our attention. My only question is has string theory progressed on the issue of providing some testable new predictions which would prove the existence of strings and membranes? I am rooting for string theorists but at the same time can't turn my back on scientists who point out that physics is an empirical science. Until the string theory community produces some predictions which can be tested in the lab or by telescope, we must reserve some measure of healthy doubt. See Lee Smolin's book THE TROUBLE WITH PHYSICS.As far as this great DVD production was concerned I can't recall seeing such beautiful animation work on strings, membranes, and the beautiful curvature of space time in close proximity to gravitating bodies. If you look closely at the animation of the moon orbiting the earth as the earth orbits the sun you will see the modest space-time curvature produced by the earth as well as the primary curvature produced by the mass of the sun.Review of related book by Lee Smolin, THE TROUBLE WITH PHYSICSI am a mechanical engineer, so my mathematical understanding of physics doesn't go much beyond special relativity, introductory quantum mechanics and just an appreciation for what general relativity has to say about mass telling space how to curve.Lee Smolins book is written for the lay public as well as physicists and was a very interesting and eye opening read on the great number of string theories which abound. According to Smolins, string theory is very likely just a beautiful mathematical "bookkeeping" system which can relate current observations to each other and unify some of the forces of nature.The author is a onetime string theorist who has since left the field and insists after 30 years there have been no breakthroughs and certainly no predictions of any new particles or phenomena which can be tested. Based on what Smolins is saying it sounds to me like string theory amounts to a multi-dimensional curve fitting spline whose coefficients can be calculated and precisely tuned to rationalize just about everything we already know, but makes no new and testable predictions.He also says that it scarcely has the needed properties to call it a "theory of everything" and that far too much time is being spent on it by too many people caught up in its mathematical beauty and elegance, something he admits it has a great deal of. The idea of subatomic vibrating, open and closed rubber bands being the ultimate component of particles and energy is very appealing to many people.He also says that the string community spends time calculating these potentially infinite ("fit" coefficients) universes and the only test of their work is that it fits known prior phenomena. Furthermore, the only critical test a new string theory receives is peer review from a specialized community that is starting to believe that predictions of any new observations are not in the cards and we shouldn't be looking for them anyhow. When we stop requiring a theory to anticipate new observations we are no longer following the scientific method.Until I read this book I believed, based on my faith in physics, physicists and the scientific method, that string theory was the answer to everything and only required time for it to provide some testable predictions. It has had over 30 years time and research by a disproportionate percent of the physics community. I am now not so certain that it is a valid theory, especially after some of the strongest string theorists are telling us not to look for testable predictions.