Richard Feynman once quipped that "Time is what happens when nothing
else does." But Julian Barbour disagrees: if nothing happened, if
nothing changed, then time would stop. For time is nothing but change.
It is change that we perceive occurring all around us, not time. Put
simply, time does not exist. In this highly provocative volume,
Barbour presents the basic evidence for a timeless universe, and shows
why we still experience the world as intensely temporal. It is a book
that strikes at the heart of modern physics. It casts doubt on
Einstein's greatest contribution, the spacetime continuum, but also
points to the solution of one of the great paradoxes of modern
science, the chasm between classical and quantum physics. Indeed,
Barbour argues that the holy grail of physicists--the unification of
Einstein's general relativity with quantum mechanics--may well spell
the end of time. Barbour writes with remarkable clarity as he ranges
from the ancient philosophers Heraclitus and Parmenides, through the
giants of science Galileo, Newton, and Einstein, to the work of the
contemporary physicists John Wheeler, Roger Penrose, and Steven
Hawking. Along the way he treats us to enticing glimpses of some of
the mysteries of the universe, and presents intriguing ideas about
multiple worlds, time travel, immortality, and, above all, the
illusion of motion. _The End of Time_ is a vibrantly written and
revolutionary book. It turns our understanding of reality inside-out.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780199881895
Publisert
2020
Utgiver
Vendor
Oxford University Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter