By Frazier Moore
The Associated Press

NEW YORK - What could account for how the universe ticks?

Could it be love? Money? Or, maybe, infinitesimal quivering strands whose vibration patterns define all the universe's forces and matter?

That last one is the hot, new Theory of Everything, otherwise known as string theory. And now Brian Greene, long absorbed in the quest to tie up all its loose ends, has tackled a challenge almost as impressive: He helps viewers understand what string theory is.

One of the world's leading physicists, Greene untangles strings in a NOVA called "The Elegant Universe," based on his 1999 best seller of the same title. It airs on PBS Tuesday from 8 to 10 p.m., with a final hour airing Nov. 4 at 8 p.m.

"The Elegant Universe" is full of clear talk, lively visuals and whimsical demonstrations. And it's mercifully free of math.

"For thousands of years," Greene says, "people have wondered what the universe is made of, how it came to be and what its future looks like. But recent breakthroughs are giving us some very sharp insights into those questions."

The first moments of "The Elegant Universe" find Greene at the front door of the Princeton, N.J., house where Albert Einstein lived and worked. And where, with Einstein's passing a half-century ago, he left unfulfilled his dream of finding a unified theory that could govern everything in the universe.

In his earthshaking theory of general relativity, published in 1916, Einstein argued that the three dimensions of space and the single dimension of time are woven into an orderly, smooth fabric of "space-time," against which gravity asserts itself like someone on a trampoline.

Then, in the 1920s, another camp of physicists had a breakthrough they called quantum mechanics. This theory proved useful at the subatomic level, a realm it characterizes as jittery and unpredictable.

But, to put it mildly, the two theories were at odds.

String theory, says Greene in the film, proposes that "everything in the universe, from the tiniest particle to the most distant star, is made from one kind of ingredient: unimaginably small, vibrating strands of energy called strings."

Turns out the subatomic billiard balls we learned about in school might be composed of even smaller animated pasta. "As they vibrate in a multitude of different ways, they are making not notes but all the constituents of nature."

A sort of "cosmic symphony," string theory can signal a major shift in thinking.