How to Build a Time Machine - Hardcover

Davies, Paul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670030635 ISBN 13: 9780670030637

Publisher: Viking Adult, 2002

Synopsis

An award-winning physicist delves deeply into the science behind time travel, speculating that recent developments in physics make the sci-fi scenario a scientific possibility.

About this title

About the Author

An internationally acclaimed theoretical physicist, Paul Davies has explained the mysteries of science to a huge audience through his bestselling books and radio broadcasts. In 1995, Davies won the prestigious Templeton Prize for his work on the philosophical meaning of science, and he was recently awarded the Kelvin Medal by the UK Institute of Physics. Davies is based in Australia, but spends a good deal of his time traveling, teaching, and lecturing all over the world, especially in the United States.

Reviews

Is time travel possible? If so, what manner of machine would one need to traverse this fourth dimension? Covering ground similar to J. Richard Gott's Time Travel in Einstein's Universe, this slim, tongue-in-cheek treatise invokes the primary tenet of Einstein's special theory of relativity that both time and space are elastic to illustrate that time travel, while impractical, is definitely possible. The time travel mechanisms Davies (The Fifth Miracle) envisions are dramatically different from the devices that SF authors H.G. Wells and Ray Bradbury have employed in their fiction. All that's needed to travel to the future, noted theoretical physicist Davies asserts, is a little help from gravity and a spaceship that can reach speeds just under the speed of light. Traveling to the past is a trickier task, however, and Davies spends the bulk of his book explaining the components needed to construct a wormhole (a black hole "with an exit as well as an entrance"). Despite the author's penchant for diagrams and his habit of highlighting and repeating his major points, readers will struggle to accept some of his more difficult and extreme propositions such as the existence of an exotic matter possessing antigravitational properties, which is vital to his construction of a wormhole. While Davies's discussion of the paradoxes inherent in time travel and of the physical laws that seem to prevent it is both thought provoking and accessible, his limited focus on wormholes may disappoint those hungering for a broader discussion of time travel technology.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Is time travel possible? Yes, says Davies, who recently retired (in his early 50s) as professor of mathematical physics at the University of Adelaide in Australia to concentrate on his writing. But "a moment's thought uncovers some tricky questions." Whereupon he discusses lucidly and engagingly both the concepts of physics that establish the possibility of time travel and the tricky questions. You could reach the future "by simply moving very fast." For visiting the past, the most popular proposal is a wormhole, "a sculpture in the structure of space that provides a shortcut between two widely separated spaces." There may be "cosmic taboos," though, that make time travel forever elusive.

Editors of Scientific American

A time-traveling machine can be constructed--provided one rotates a superdense cylinder of infinite length or locates a wormhole. Such are the contraptions contemporary physicists such as Frank Tipler and Kip Thorne (Black Holes and Time Warps, 1994) have conceived in their explorations of whether it's possible to build a time machine. Davies, also a physicist, has an impressive track record of writing popular titles about space-time (e.g., About Time, 1995), and he opens up the fascinating yet weird concept of time travel to readers new to the basic features of space-time. That does not mean his precis is simple, but it is lucid throughout, even sketching out the four technical parts required in a time machine that exploits quantum effects. And if a machine were actually built, many paradoxes would arise, which Davies explores in an inventive manner. An excellent explainer, Davies will well reward the curious bent on bending space-time. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Viking Adult
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0670030635
• ISBN 13: 9780670030637
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 128