I recently took a video course on superstring theory given by Professor S.
James Gates, Jr., then of the University of Maryland, and published by The
Great Courses. The course is intended for lay people and not PhD level
physicists or even undergraduate level physicists. However, I got my
physics PhD and then worked as an industrial "applied" physicist just before
the discovery of quarks and the development of the standard model, string
theory, superstring theory, and M theory. I just wanted to get more
familiar with the concepts involved and was curious about the current status
of superstring theory. Professor Gates did a good job of presenting the
material with lots of pictures and a minimum of mathematics (nothing beyond
the Pythagorean theorem generalized to n dimensions). Unfortunately, I
found this basic approach unsatisfying, although I am sure I am not up to a
full blown graduate level presentation. Also, the course was developed in
2005. This causes me to ask anyone on the list familiar with current
superstring theory:
1) Is superstring or M theory now well accepted by most theoretical
physicists, so we do, in fact, have a theory of everything? Or is
superstring/M theory still the only consistent mathematical development
which can both quantize gravity and integrate it with the other forces but
still lacks firm experimental verification?
2) Is there an "undergraduate" level "explanation" of superstring/M
theory somewhere in the middle between Pythagorean theorem level mathematics
and the full blown complex mathematics required for complete understanding?