Time: A Traveler's Guide - Hardcover

Pickover, Clifford A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195120426 ISBN 13: 9780195120424

Publisher: OUP USA, 1998

Synopsis

In Time: A Traveler's Guide, Clifford A. Pickover strives to answer the most challenging questions scientists and philosophers ask. What is time? Is time travel possible? Is time real? Does it flow in one direction only? Does it have a beginning or an end? What is eternity?

For centuries, these questions have intrigued mystics, philosophers, and scientists. Today physicists would agree that time is one of the strangest properties of our universe. This book allows readers to travel through time and space, and they needn't be experts in physics. By the time readers finish this book they will understand such seemingly arcane concepts as space-time diagrams, light cones, time machines, cosmic moment lines, transcendent infinite speeds, Lorentz transformations, causal linkages, superliminal and ultraliminal motions, Minkowskian space-times, Gödel universes, closed timelike curves, and Tipler cylinders.
This book is a resource for science fiction writers and readers, a playground for computer hobbyists, an adventure and education for beginning students in physics or philosophy.

About this title

Review:

The thought that humans might one day be able to harness time, travelling freely from one age to another, has been a fixture of science fiction for years. Science fact is beginning to catch up to the long-held dream: in this entertaining survey, researcher-writer Clifford Pickover observes that current theories of physics support--or at least do not rule out--the possibilities of time travel.

In chapters that mix whimsical science-fiction scenarios with brief essays on matters of fact, Pickover takes a leisurely stroll through various chrono-cosmological theories and discusses their attendant virtues, flaws, and inherent paradoxes. One modern notion, Kurt Gödel's addendum to Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, posits a rotating universe in which it is possible for a traveller to move between states of time and return to the present (assuming, of course, that there is such a thing as the present); the theory depends on a universe that rotates slowly, which seems not to be the case, but, as Pickover points out, it nevertheless provides a mathematical basis for time travel--which, he suggests, is a fine and worthy start. Pickover peppers his well-illustrated text with learned asides on such matters as light-cone diagrams, rocket clocks, string theory, parallel universes and other topics real and speculative. What he turns up in the course of his narrative is fascinating--and fuel for anyone who entertains dreams of inter-dimensional wandering. --Gregory McNamee

Review:

the irrepressible and prolific Clifford Pickover gives us Time: A Traveler's Guide. He romps joyously through at least four perfectly respectable scientific routes to time travel: relativity, particle physics, quantum mechanics and psychology. (New Scientist)

About this edition

• Publisher: OUP USA
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0195120426
• ISBN 13: 9780195120424
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304