The New Time Travelers: A Journey to the Frontiers of PhysicsW. W. Norton & Company, 26.6.2007 - 391 sivua The story of physicists' quest to answer a mind-boggling question: How can we travel through time? Since H. G. Wells' 1895 classic The Time Machine, readers of science fiction have puzzled over the paradoxes of time travel. What would happen if a time traveler tried to change history? Would some force or law of nature prevent him? Or would his action produce a "new" history, branching away from the original?In the last decade of the twentieth century a group of theoretical physicists at the California Institute of Technology undertook a serious investigation of the possibility of pastward time travel, inspiring a serious and sustained study that engaged more than thirty physicists working at universities and institutes around the world.Many of the figures involved are familiar: Einstein, Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne; others are names known mostly to physicists. These are the new time travelers, and this is the story of their work--a profoundly human endeavor marked by advances, retreats, and no small share of surprises. It is a fantastic journey to the frontiers of physics. |
Sisältö
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS | 9 |
PROLOGUE | 13 |
INTIMATIONS OF SPAGETIME | 23 |
EINSTEINS RADICAL IDEA | 38 |
UNPHYSICAL TIME MACHINES | 76 |
PASTWARD TIME TRAVELSERIOUSLY | 94 |
PARADOX | 134 |
COSMIC STRINGS AND CHRONOLOGY PROTECTION | 169 |
A PARADE OF TIME MACHINES | 230 |
TIME TRAVEL IN ANOTHER KIND OF SPACETIME | 249 |
EXPLAINING THE APPARENT ABSENCE OF TIME TRAVELERS | 263 |
TIME MACHINES AT THE ENDS OF TIME | 278 |
EPILOGUE | 303 |
NOTES | 309 |
GLOSSARY | 340 |
BIBLIOGRAPHY | 351 |
Muita painoksia - Näytä kaikki
The New Time Travelers: A Journey to the Frontiers of Physics David Toomey Rajoitettu esikatselu - 2011 |
New Time Travelers: A Journey To The Frontiers Of Physics David Toomey Esikatselu ei käytettävissä - 2007 |
Yleiset termit ja lausekkeet
allow astronomers atoms big bang billiard ball black hole called causality century Chapter chronology protection Chronology Protection Conjecture closed timelike curves collapse cosmic strings created cylinder described Deutsch dilation dimension Earth effect Einstein electromagnetic electron emerge event horizon Everett exist exotic matter experiment extraterrestrial fact false vacuum forces future galaxies Gassendi Gassendi's assistant geodesic geometry Gödel Gott gravitational field Hawking Hinton idea imagine infinite interpretation jinn light cone machine mass means measure Morris moving multiverse nature negative energy Novikov observed paper paradox particles past pastward time travel Penrose perhaps Physical Review Planck possible present principle problem produce quantum gravity quantum mechanics radiation reason reference frames right mouth rotating Sagan Schwarzschild science fiction self-consistent signal singularity solution space spacecraft spacetime special relativity speed of light Stockum suggested surface theory Thorne Thorne's thought tion Tipler trajectory Traversable Wormholes universe vacuum fluctuations Visser Warps waves Wheeler worldline
Suositut otteet
Sivu 5 - Tell me a story. In this century, and moment, of mania, Tell me a story. Make it a story of great distances, and starlight. The name of the story will be Time, But you must not pronounce its name. Tell me a story of deep delight.