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- Herausgeber: Icon Books
- Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
Time travel is a familiar theme of science fiction, but is it really possible? Surprisingly, time travel is not forbidden by the laws of physics - and John Gribbin argues that if it is not impossible then it must be possible. Gribbin brilliantly illustrates the possibilities of time travel by comparing familiar themes from science fiction with their real-world scientific counterparts, including Einstein's theories of relativity, black holes, quantum physics, and the multiverse, illuminated by examples from the fictional tales of Robert Heinlein, Larry Niven, Carl Sagan and others. The result is an entertaining guide to some deep mysteries of the Universe which may leave you wondering whether time actually passes at all, and if it does, whether we are moving forwards or backwards. A must-read for science fiction fans and anyone intrigued by deep science.
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Praise for Six Impossible Things
‘[A]n accessible primer on all things quantum … rigorous and chatty.’
Sunday Times
‘Gribbin has inspired generations with his popular science writing, and this, his latest offering, is a compact and delightful summary of the main contenders for a true interpretation of quantum mechanics. … If you’ve never puzzled over what our most successful scientific theory means, or even if you have and want to know what the latest thinking is, this new book will bring you up to speed faster than a collapsing wave function.’
Jim Al-Khalili
‘Gribbin gives us a feast of precision and clarity, with a phenomenal amount of information for such a compact space. It’s a TARDIS of popular science books, and I loved it. … This could well be the best piece of writing this grand master of British popular science has ever produced, condensing as it does many years of pondering the nature of quantum physics into a compact form.’
Brian Clegg, popularscience.co.uk
‘Elegant and accessible … Highly recommended for students of the sciences and fans of science fiction, as well as for anyone who is curious to understand the strange world of quantum physics.’
Forbes
Praise for Seven Pillars of Science
‘[In] the last couple of years we have seen a string of books that pack bags of science in a digestible form into a small space. John Gribbin has already proved himself a master of this approach with his Six Impossible Things, and he’s done it again … [Seven Pillars of Science is] light, to the point and hugely informative. … It packs in the science, tells an intriguing story and is beautifully packaged.’
Brian Clegg, popularscience.co.uk
Praise for Eight Improbable Possibilities
‘We loved this book … deeply thought provoking and a book that we want to share with as many people as possible.’
Irish Tech News
‘[Gribbin] deftly joins the dots to reveal a bigger picture that is even more awe-inspiring than the sum of its parts.’
Physics World
‘A fascinating journey into the world of scientific oddities and improbabilities.’
Lily Pagano, Reaction
‘Gribbin casts a wide net and displays his breadth of knowledge in packing a lot into each chapter … a brief read, but one that may inspire readers to dig deeper.’
Giles Sparrow, BBC Sky at Night Magazine
NINE MUSINGS ON TIME
Science Fiction, Science Fact and the Truth About Time Travel
JOHN GRIBBIN
CONTENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Gribbin’s numerous bestselling books include In Search of Schrödinger’s Cat, The Universe: A Biography, 13.8: The Quest to Find the True Age of the Universe and the Theory of Everything, and Out of the Shadow of a Giant: How Newton Stood on the Shoulders of Hooke and Halley.
His most recent book is Eight Improbable Possibilities: The Mystery of the Moon, and Other Implausible Scientific Truths. His earlier title, Six Impossible Things: The ‘Quanta of Solace’ and the Mysteries of the Subatomic World, was shortlisted for the Royal Society Insight Investment Science Book Prize for 2019.
He is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University of Sussex, and was described as ‘one of the finest and most prolific writers of popular science around’ by the Spectator.
For Teresa, who understands the importance of time
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks once again to the University of Sussex for continuing to provide facilities including a warm place to work and plenty of coffee. My interest in the nature of time and time travel goes back many years, and has led to fruitful discussions with many friends and colleagues, too numerous to list here, but I would particularly like to mention Paul Davies from the world of science and Douglas Adams from the world of fiction. The rest of you know who you are!
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Astounding magazine cover
Ourania
H.G. Wells
Arthur Eddington
Gregory Benford
Newton’s prisms experiment
Isaac Asimov
Frank Tipler
Jodie Foster in Contact
Fred Hoyle
Julian Barbour
David Deutsch
Robert Heinlein
Buddy Holly
xv‘Come thou, let us begin with the Muses who gladden the great spirit of their father Zeus in Olympus with their songs, telling of things that are and that shall be and that were aforetime.’
Hesiod, in his Theogony
‘It is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize; they wondered originally at the obvious difficulties, then advanced little by little and stated difficulties about the greater matters, e.g. about the phenomena of the moon and those of the sun and of the stars, and about the genesis of the universe.’
Aristotle, Metaphysics
PREFACE
Musing on the Muses
I have been fascinated by time travel since I started reading – I was going to say, since I started reading science fiction, but some of my earliest reading memories revolve around Jules Verne (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea) and H.G. Wells (The Time Machine), quickly followed by anything and everything by Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov, with monthly doses of Astounding magazine,* under the editorship of John W. Campbell, long before it metamorphosed into Analog. One of the great things about Astounding was that each issue included a fact article, describing genuine scientific discoveries that were of a kind to appeal to a science fiction fan. Verne, Wells, Clarke and Asimov, of course, were all authors who included a healthy dose of real science in their stories. They became, along with Astounding, my personal muses, the inspiration for my career writing about science that sometimes sounds like fiction, and (eventually) fiction based on science – a highlight of my career was when I first had a story published in Analog, although by then Campbell was no longer with us.
xviii
Astounding magazine cover
Penny Publications/Dell Magazines
xixOver the course of that career, I have often returned to the themes of time and time travel, and it seems like a good idea to pull the threads together in one tapestry. This is not a reprint collection, but a reworking of highlights, some of which may be familiar to you and others which may come as a surprise, with new material as well as updating. The whole, I hope, is greater than the sum of its parts, and I have enjoyed writing it almost as much as I enjoyed seeing my first short story in Analog.
The idea of my personal five muses gave me a pattern for the project. It reminded me of the nine Muses of Ancient Greece: Clio, Euterpe, Thalia, Melpomene, Terpsichore, Erato, Polymnia, Ourania and Calliope. They were the goddesses that embodied science, literature, and the arts; if any of them have been looking over my shoulder, it must surely be Ourania, the inventor of astronomy and the Muse of astronomical writings.
But the Muses were – or are – pretty versatile. Two of them invented the theory of learning, three invented musical vibrations, four invented the four dialects of Ancient Greek, and five invented the five human senses. You will have noticed that this already adds up to more than nine; each Muse had several roles. Indeed, there is still more – seven Muses invented the seven chords of the lyre, the seven zones of the celestial sphere, the seven planets known to the Ancients, and the seven vowels of the Greek alphabet. As a tribute to them, and because I couldn’t fit everything into five themes, I have distributed my own thoughts about time, and in particular time travel, across nine essential topics – nine musings on time.
John Gribbin, April 2022
xx
Ourania
Sepia Times/Getty
* During its long history, Astounding appeared with several different variations on longer names, but always as Astounding something, before metamorphosing into Analog in 1960. For simplicity I will always refer to it by the short title.
