Now: The Physics of Time

Front Cover
W. W. Norton & Company, Sep 20, 2016 - Science - 352 pages

From the celebrated author of the best-selling Physics for Future Presidents comes “a provocative, strongly argued book on the fundamental nature of time” (Lee Smolin).

You are reading the word "now" right now. But what does that mean? "Now" has bedeviled philosophers, priests, and modern-day physicists from Augustine to Einstein and beyond. In Now, eminent physicist Richard A. Muller takes up the challenge. He begins with remarkably clear explanations of relativity, entropy, entanglement, the Big Bang, and more, setting the stage for his own revolutionary theory of time, one that makes testable predictions. Muller’s monumental work will spark major debate about the most fundamental assumptions of our universe, and may crack one of physics’ longest-standing enigmas.

 

Contents

Introduction
AMAZING TIME
The Entangled Enigma
Einsteins Childhood Regression
The Leaping
Contradictions and Paradoxes
Lightspeed Limit Lightspeed Loophole
Imaginary Time
The End of Time
Throwing Entropy under the
Alternative Arrows
A Cat Both Dead and Alive
Tickling the Quantum Ghost
Einstein Is Spooked
Backward Time Travel Observed
Beyond Physics

To Infinity and Beyond
BROKEN ARROW
An Arrow of Confusion
Demystifying Entropy
Mystifying Entropy
Time Explained
Our Unlikely Universe
The Universe Erupts
Cogito Ergo
Free Will
The 4D Big Bang
The Math of Relativity
Time and Energy
Proof That Is Irrational
Physics and
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About the author (2016)

Richard A. Muller is professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and the best-selling author of Physics for Future Presidents. For his outstanding work in experimental cosmology, he was awarded a 1982 MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, and also a share of the 2015 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics for the discovery of dark energy.

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