Time Travel in Einstein's Universe: The Physical Possibilities of Travel Through Time

Time Travel in Einstein's Universe: The Physical Possibilities of Travel Through Time | J. Richard Gott | Science Fiction and Real Quantum Time

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Time Travel in Ein...

	Time Travel in Einstein's Universe: The Physical Possibilities of Travel Through Time J. Richard Gott Mariner Books, 2002 - 304 pages average customer review:based on 41 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

In this fascinating book, the renowned astrophysicist J. Richard Gott leads time travel out of the world of H. G. Wells and into the realm of scientific possibility. Building on theories posited by Einstein and advanced by scientists such as Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne, Gott explains how time travel can actually occur. He describes, with boundless enthusiasm and humor, how travel to the future is not only possible but has already happened, and he contemplates whether travel to the past is also conceivable. Notable not only for its extraordinary subject matter and scientific brilliance, Time Travel in Einstein's Universe is a delightful and captivating exploration of the surprising facts behind the science fiction of time travel.

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The story behind the hand of the moving finger that writes

"The moving finger writes and then moves on, nor all your piety can lure it back to retrace a line nor your tears wash out a word of it."

John Donne

Perhaps if Donne had written his immortal words AFTER having read this book, he MAY HAVE SAID "...unless of course, you have your Richard Gott time machine handy."

And like many other serviceable entries in the time machine genre of scientific speculation (like Paul Davies "How to Build a Time Machine"), Gott uses plain simple English with great illustrations to explain the three traditional theories of how time travel could be accomplished as well using the idea of time travel itself to speculate on the origins of the universe.

As to the three potential theories, Gott makes some good points:

1) Kurt Godel's suggestion that IF this were a rotating static universe, then time travel would be possible simply by going far enough into the future. Significantly, Godel was friends with Einstein over the course of the last fifteen years of Einstein's life. So, while Godel knew both Einstein and Einstein's physics, unfortunately his theory doesn't comport with physical observations that our universe is not rotating is expanding and not static as his theory would require. However, his theory does show that Einstein's physics do allow time travel, just not in the way Godel suggested.

2) The Tipler rotating cylinder...Proposed by Frank Tipler, if you could create and infinitely long cylinder in space and rotate it, one could travel along the access of rotation to move forward or backward in time. Unfortunately, to put it mildly, Tipler's cylinder is a tad bit beyond our current financial resources. (Just over a "few" billion, Congress nixed the Supercolliding Superconductor back in 1993 so they probably would be less excited about this project!).

3) Wormholes. The specialty of Star Trek lore wormholes were discussed at length in the Kip Thorne book "Black Holes and Time Warps." And although Thorne was the idea man beyond how Carl Sagan got Jody Foster to the middle of our galaxy in the movie "Contact," for his part Thorne is not optimistic that Black Holes could stay open to actually transport materials beyond a Planck length. In other words, modern string theory talks about basic building blocks of reality -- strings -- that are in size to a neutron as a neutron would be to our solar system. Even on weight watchers, the astronauts ("chrononauts") would have tough going.

Still the same, Gott noted that even though available for only subatomic transmissions, time travel could still explain how our universe was created.

SPOILER ALERT: IF YOU WANT TO HEAR THE GUY WHO INVENTED IT TO EXPLAIN STOP READING NOW.

But if you're willing to let me do it, here goes:

As noted, time travel -- even backwards -- can work at subatomic levels. The technical jargon is cosmic foam and apparently it happens all the time. To create the universe all that would need to happen is for a sufficiently compacted amount of matter to travel back in time so that it could become the Big Bang.

So in other words, depending on how you denominate it, time may be going now, about to begin somewhere or already be thirteen point seven billion years old.

Even if you read my explanation, read Gott's. He's a great accessible writer who has written perhaps the very best book on this issue.

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Science Fiction and Real Quantum Time

Gott explores the current possibilities for actual time travel in light of current physics and quantum mechanics. He summarizes the history of quantum physics, as providing insights into the concepts of time, and possibility of wormholes and other perturbations of Spacetime that might allow time travel. He reports on various experiments and lines of enquiry by various physicists, like Kip Thorne, who have investigated time and practical factors in time relationships and travel into the future or past. The concepts of relativity and war speed (speed of light) come into view here. Gott correlates various areas of current enquiry, including a rich survey of contributions science fiction has made to actually enquiry in quantum physics.)

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Good for this type of content

I searched extensively for a book that would explain current theories of time and the implications thereof that could be understood by a non-mathematical mind and one not trained in physics, and it was extraordinarily difficult. I ended up choosing this book, which is probably as close as one will get to what I was hoping for. The first and last chapters are actually the most accessible and interesting, the first being an overview of many fictional accounts of time travel (both movies and books) and the last a treatise on future prediction and probability, which I found most interesting and consoling. The chapters inbetween were the denser material in which the author discusses whether or not time travel to the past or the future could work and, inevitably, it deals with the theory of relativity, wormholes, black holes, etc. and how all that would function, all of which is confusing for a layperson like me. Nevertheless, this is, as I mentioned, the closest thing to a non-scientific explanation of what are at base purely mathematical constructs. It does get one thinking philosophically about what "time" is and about time travel in general. For example, if one can travel to the future, doesn't that imply that the future already "exists" as a "place" which one can visit? Mindbending reading and worth it for that reason alone.

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Stick to time travel and lose the statistics next book

Summary: Interesting read but when Gott left time travel physics to discuss statistics and probability theory the book became bland like author was padding his essential [time travel, nature of the universe, beginnings, etc & TOE-chasing] published papers with his other non-essential statistical theory work.

I find a mistake

According in pages 68 and 69. Astra must think Eartha 11.8 years instead of 10 years if her departure from alpha centauri is thought to be 8.2 years. I think the best replacement is Astra thinks that he departure from Alpha is simulaneous with Earhta on Earth 6.4 years from the start.

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