Overview

Human beings have a strong desire to travel through time. Although scientists are not yet taking out patents on a time machine, they are investigating whether it is possible under the laws of physics. In Newton's three-dimensional world this would have been inconceivable. But with Einstein's theory of relativity a fourth dimension time enters the frame. Is it really inconceivable that we can travel along the timeline In this book Richard Gott offers an intellectually expansive, witty and engaging study of the viability of time travel, which takes us from the dream of time travel itself in H. G. Wells's path-breaking novel THE TIME MACHINE to cutting-edge research into astrophysics and quantum teleportation. He explores the scientific, social and moral implications of time travel, and looks at recent remarkable experiments in which fundamental particles were actually sent into the future.

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9780753813492

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Reviews

This amazing book makes difficult scientific concepts accessible to the layman not by simplifying them but through analogy. J Richard Gott explains the different forms which time travel might take by extensive reference to films such as Back to the Future and Somewhere in Time and thoughtful viewers of these films and others used as illustrations may well be drawn to this book to explore the feasibility of time travel, in the context of theories from Einstein and others. This is not just a book for sci-fi film fans, however; anyone with a general interest in science will find it rewarding. Gott argues that time travel has already taken place; astronauts have aged slightly less while in space than people left on earth. An astronaut travelling from earth to a star 500 light years away at a speed slightly less than the speed of light would age only 25 years on the round trip though 1000 years would have passed on earth. Gott also examines theories of the origins of the universe in the context of current scientific thinking and looks at time travel in terms of science's ability to predict the future. An extremely creative scientist and a brilliant communicator, he uses non-technical language wherever possible and presents many concepts in both written and diagrammatic form, explaining that readers whose left brain dominates will respond better to text, while those who are right-brained will understand pictures better. The theories and ideas presented here are often extremely complex but this is nevertheless an exceptionally readable and enjoyable book. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

Richard Gott is Professor of Astrophysics at Princeton University and has written on time travel and other subjects for Time, Scientific American, New Scientist and Nature. He is one of the world's experts on parallel universes, string theories and cosmic origins.

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