Time Travel

One of the world's most outstanding astrophysicists provides a state-of-the-art investigation into the possibility of time travel. 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.

One of the world's most outstanding astrophysicists provides a state-of-the-art investigation into the possibility of time travel. 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.

AN OBSERVER BOOK OF THE YEAR From the acclaimed author of The Information and Chaos, a mind-bending exploration of time travel: its subversive origins, its evolution in literature and science, and its influence on our understanding of time itself. Gleick's story begins at the turn of the twentieth century with the young H. G. Wells writing and rewriting the fantastic tale that became his first book, an international sensation, The Time Machine. A host of forces were converging to transmute the human understanding of time, some philosophical and some technological — the electric telegraph, the steam railroad, the discovery of buried civilisations, and the perfection of clocks. Gleick tracks the evolution of time travel as an idea in the culture — from Marcel Proust to Doctor Who, from Woody Allen to Jorge Luis Borges. He explores the inevitable looping paradoxes and examines the porous boundary between pulp fiction and modern physics. Finally, he delves into a temporal shift that is unsettling our own moment: the instantaneous wired world, with its all-consuming present and vanishing future.

AN OBSERVER BOOK OF THE YEAR From the acclaimed author of The Information and Chaos, a mind-bending exploration of time travel: its subversive origins, its evolution in literature and science, and its influence on our understanding of time itself. Gleick's story begins at the turn of the twentieth century with the young H. G. Wells writing and rewriting the fantastic tale that became his first book, an international sensation, The Time Machine. A host of forces were converging to transmute the human understanding of time, some philosophical and some technological — the electric telegraph, the steam railroad, the discovery of buried civilisations, and the perfection of clocks. Gleick tracks the evolution of time travel as an idea in the culture — from Marcel Proust to Doctor Who, from Woody Allen to Jorge Luis Borges. He explores the inevitable looping paradoxes and examines the porous boundary between pulp fiction and modern physics. Finally, he delves into a temporal shift that is unsettling our own moment: the instantaneous wired world, with its all-consuming present and vanishing future.