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About Time: Einstein's Unfinished Revolution
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 530.11
EAN: 9780684818221
Edition: 1st Simon & Schuster Pbk. Ed
ISBN: 0684818221
Label: Simon & Schuster
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 320
Publication Date: April 09, 1996
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Studio: Simon & Schuster
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Editorial Review:
An elegant, witty, and engaging exploration of the riddle of time, which examines the consequences of Einstein's theory of relativity and offers startling suggestions about what recent research may reveal.
The eternal questions of science and religion were profoundly recast by Einstein's theory of relativity and its implications that time can be warped by motion and gravitation, and that it cannot be meaningfully divided into past, present, and future.
In About Time, Paul Davies discusses the big bang theory, chaos theory, and the recent discovery that the universe appears to be younger than some of the objects in it, concluding that Einstein's theory provides only an incomplete understanding of the nature of time. Davies explores unanswered questions such as:
* Does the universe have a beginning and an end?
* Is the passage of time merely an illusion?
* Is it possible to travel backward -- or forward -- in time?
About Time weaves physics and metaphysics in a provocative contemplation of time and the universe.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - About Time
I liked this book. When I read the first pages, I thought that I had chosen the wrong book, but afterwards everything changed. Here you can find a light and clear review of many aspects of time.
It is not perfect, and some times it is not clear what the author means with "time reversal", etc, even if he tries to explain it several times. The theory about the proximity of Doomsday is also quite weak.
In spite of this, you find a clear view of time as it is currently known ... Read More
Rating:  - Entertaining, informative and very well written.
This, as the title states, is a book about time; all the possible aspects of time, from that of the Greek philosophers, through Newton's idea of time, to Einstein's relativistic view of time and beyond. The book is a blend of philosophy, physics and physiology, but heaviest on the physics aspects of time. Everyone thinks that they know what time is, but on closer examination it is not so clear what time actually is. Is it an illusion or just the interval between events? Does it flow, or is it only ... Read More
Rating:  - Everything is reversible?
This over-simplistic physics account which holds that universal time and entropy are reversible and that Poincare's recurrence theorem disproves the 2nd law of entropy increase in isolated systems (and Boltzman's statistical mechanics) ignores the fact that physics equations are idealizations and that mathematical equations are tautoligies that do not define direction or cause. These arguments generally ignore real world effects such as friction, noise, chaos (e.g. the 'many body' problem for gravity) and ... Read More
Rating: - Will CERN 2007 render this book obsolete?
After eight years in the waiting the CERN Hadron collider is set to resume testing in 2007. In so doing it will -- according to noted physicist Ed Witten -- have an opportunity to test some of the more gross predictions of cosmic string theory and in so doing perhaps re write notions of space and time itself.
That being said, Professor Davies book is up to his usually high standards of scholarship and communication in discussing that most pivtol of topics: time.
From recounting ... Read More
Rating: - Ok, But Not the Best
About Time discusses twentieth century developments in theoretical physics and their impact on our notion of time. Davies is a well known and prolific Australian science writer. I offer the following thoughts for potential readers.
Aimed at the general reader the book does not require a detailed knowledge of physics or mathematics. In light of the counter intuitive nature of modern theoretical physics, however, the uninitiated reader may require a little effort to get the gist of this intriguing ... Read More
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