In Search of Time : The Science of a Curious Dimension

by Falk, Dan

• ISBN13: 9780312374785
• ISBN10: 031237478X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-11-11
• Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books

Summary

Time surrounds us. It defines our experience of the world; it echoes through our every waking hour. Time is the very foundation of conscious experience. Yet as familiar as it is, time is also deeply mysterious. We cannot see, hear, smell, taste, or touch it. Yet we dofeelitor at least wethinkwe feel it. No wonder poets, writers, philosophers, and scientists have grappled with time for centuries. In his latest book, award-winning science writer Dan Falk chronicles the story of how humans have come to understand time over the millennia, and by drawing from the latest research in physics, psychology, and other fields, Falk shows how that understanding continues to evolve.In Search of Timebegins with our earliest ancestors' perception of time and the discoveries that ledwith much effortto the Gregorian calendar, atomic clocks, and "leap seconds." Falk examines the workings of memory, the brain's remarkable "bridge across time," and asks whether humans are unique in their ability to recall the past and imagine the future. He explores the possibility of time travel, and the paradoxes it seems to entail. Falk looks at the quest to comprehend the beginning of time and how timeand the universemay end. Finally, he examines the puzzle of time's "flow," and the remarkable possibility that the passage of time may be an illusion.Entertaining, illuminating, and ultimately thought provoking,In Search of Timereveals what some of our most insightful thinkers have had to say about time, from Aristotle to Kant, from Newton to Einstein, and continuing with the brightest minds of today.

Author Biography

Dan Falk has written about science for The Boston Globe, The Globe and Mail, The Walrus, Astronomy, Nature, and New Scientist, and has been a regular contributor to the CBC Radio programs Ideas and Quirks and Quarks. His awards include a Gold Medal for Radio Programming from the New York Festivals and the Science Writing Award in Physics and Astronomy from the American Institute of Physics. His first book, Universe on a T-Shirt, won the 2002 Science in Society Journalism Award from the Canadian Science Writers’ Association. He lives in Toronto, Canada.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. xi
Introduction	p. 1
Heavenly Clockwork: Time's natural cycles	p. 9
Years, Months, Days: The quest for the perfect calendar	p. 30
Hours, Minutes, Seconds: Dissecting the day	p. 52
In Time's Grasp: Time and culture	p. 79
The Persistence of Memory: A bridge across time	p. 101
Isaac's Time: Newton, Leibniz, and the arrow of time	p. 126
Albert's Time: Spacetime, relativity, and quantum theory	p. 152
Back to the Future: The science of time travel	p. 180
In the Beginning: The search for the dawn of time	p. 204
Beyond the Big Bang: The frontiers of physics and the origin of time's arrow	p. 225
All Things Must Pass: The ultimate fate of life, the universe, and everything	p. 245
Illusion and Reality: Physics, philosophy, and the landscape of time	p. 272
Notes	p. 297
Bibliography	p. 317
Index	p. 323
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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