2011-02-14
Author: David Toomey
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 039307837X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 400
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Book Description
The story of physicists' quest to answer a mind-boggling question: How can we travel through time? Since H. G. Wells' 1895 classic The Time Machine, readers of science fiction have puzzled over the paradoxes of time travel. What would happen if a time traveler tried to change history? Would some force or law of nature prevent him? Or would his action produce a "new" history, branching away from the original?In the last decade of the twentieth century a group of theoretical physicists at the California Institute of Technology undertook a serious investigation of the possibility of pastward time travel, inspiring a serious and sustained study that engaged more than thirty physicists working at universities and institutes around the world.Many of the figures involved are familiar: Einstein, Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne; others are names known mostly to physicists. These are the new time travelers, and this is the story of their work--a profoundly human endeavor marked by advances, retreats, and no small share of surprises. It is a fantastic journey to the frontiers of physics. Some images in the ebook are not displayed owing to permissions issues.
Author: David Toomey
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 039307837X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 400
View
Book Description
The story of physicists' quest to answer a mind-boggling question: How can we travel through time? Since H. G. Wells' 1895 classic The Time Machine, readers of science fiction have puzzled over the paradoxes of time travel. What would happen if a time traveler tried to change history? Would some force or law of nature prevent him? Or would his action produce a "new" history, branching away from the original?In the last decade of the twentieth century a group of theoretical physicists at the California Institute of Technology undertook a serious investigation of the possibility of pastward time travel, inspiring a serious and sustained study that engaged more than thirty physicists working at universities and institutes around the world.Many of the figures involved are familiar: Einstein, Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne; others are names known mostly to physicists. These are the new time travelers, and this is the story of their work--a profoundly human endeavor marked by advances, retreats, and no small share of surprises. It is a fantastic journey to the frontiers of physics. Some images in the ebook are not displayed owing to permissions issues.
Author: Nicolae Sfetcu
Publisher: MultiMedia Publishing
ISBN: 6060331947
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 22
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Book Description
About the possibility of time traveling based on several specialized works, including those of Nicholas J. J. Smith ("Time Travel"), William Grey (”Troubles with Time Travel”), Ulrich Meyer (”Explaining causal loops”), Simon Keller and Michael Nelson (”Presentists should believe in time-travel”), Frank Arntzenius and Tim Maudlin ("Time Travel and Modern Physics"), and David Lewis (“The Paradoxes of Time Travel”). The article begins with an Introduction in which I make a short presentation of the time travel, and continues with a History of the concept of time travel, main physical aspects of time travel, including backward time travel in the past in general relativity and quantum physics, and time travel in the future, then a presentation of the Grandfather paradox that is approached in almost all specialized works, followed by a section dedicated to the Philosophy of time travel, and a section in which I analyze Causal loops for time travel. I finish my work with Conclusions, in which I sustain my personal opinions on the time travel, and the Bibliography on which the work is based. Keywords: time travel, grandfather paradox, causal loops, temporal paradoxes, causality CONTENTS Abstract Introduction History of the concept of time travel Grandfather paradox The philosophy of time travel Causal loops Conclusions Bibliography Notes DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.17802.31680
Author: Ryan Wasserman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198793332
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 240
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Book Description
Ryan Wasserman presents a wide-ranging exploration of puzzles raised by the possibility of time travel, including the grandfather paradox, the bootstrapping paradox, and the twin paradox of special relativity. He draws out their implications for our understanding of time, tense, freedom, fatalism, causation, counterfactuals, laws of nature, persistence, change, and mereology. The Paradoxes of Time Travel is written in an accessible style, and filled with entertaining examples from physics, science fiction, and popular culture.
Author: Nikk Effingham
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198842503
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
There are various arguments for the metaphysical impossibility of time travel. Is it impossible because objects could then be in two places at once? Or is it impossible because some objects could bring about their own existence? In this book, Nikk Effingham contends that no such argument is sound and that time travel is metaphysically possible. His main focus is on the Grandfather Paradox: the position that time travel is impossible because someone could not go back in time and kill their own grandfather before he met their grandmother. In such a case, Effingham argues that the time traveller would have the ability to do the impossible (so they could kill their grandfather) even though those impossibilities will never come about (so they won't kill their grandfather). He then explores the ramifications of this view, discussing issues in probability and decision theory. The book ends by laying out the dangers of time travel and why, even though no time machines currently exist, we should pay extra special care ensuring that nothing, no matter how small or microscopic, ever travels in time.
Author: Corona Brezina
Publisher: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc
ISBN: 1508180474
Category : Young Adult Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 64
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Book Description
The topic of time travel provides tantalizing conundrums to consider for STEM experts and sci-fi creators alike. Most scientists and mathematicians agree that time travel by humans is probably impossible, yet they have not been able to offer conclusive proof. This book describes how the very nature of time remains a fascinating and complex subject, whether viewed from the perspective of Einstein's relativity or the nanoscale realm of quantum physics. Readers will recognize notable fictional works in literature, film, and television in which time travel serves as a useful plot device as well as a means of examining human history and contemporary social issues.
Author: David Wittenberg
Publisher: Fordham University Press
ISBN: 0823273342
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
This book argues that time travel fiction is a narrative “laboratory,” a setting for thought experiments in which essential theoretical questions about storytelling—and, by extension, about the philosophy of temporality, history, and subjectivity—are represented in the form of literal devices and plots. Drawing on physics, philosophy, narrative theory, psychoanalysis, and film theory, the book links innovations in time travel fiction to specific shifts in the popularization of science, from evolutionary biology in the late 1800s, through relativity and quantum physics in the mid–20th century, to more recent “multiverse” cosmologies. Wittenberg shows how increasing awareness of new scientific models leads to surprising innovations in the literary “time machine,” which evolves from a “vehicle” used chiefly for sociopolitical commentary into a psychological and narratological device capable of exploring with great sophistication the temporal structure and significance of subjects, viewpoints, and historical events. The book covers work by well-known time travel writers such as H. G. Wells, Edward Bellamy, Robert Heinlein, Samuel Delany, and Harlan Ellison, as well as pulp fiction writers of the 1920s through the 1940s, popular and avant-garde postwar science fiction, television shows such as “The Twilight Zone” and “Star Trek,” and current cinema. Literature, film, and TV are read alongside theoretical work ranging from Einstein, Schrödinger, and Stephen Hawking to Gérard Genette, David Lewis, and Gilles Deleuze. Wittenberg argues that even the most mainstream audiences of popular time travel fiction and cinema are vigorously engaged with many of the same questions about temporality, identity, and history that concern literary theorists, media and film scholars, and philosophers.
Author:
Publisher: PediaPress
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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Author: Kip Thorne
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393351386
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 336
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Book Description
A journey through the otherworldly science behind Christopher Nolan’s award-winning film, Interstellar, from executive producer and Nobel Prize-winning physicist Kip Thorne. Interstellar, from acclaimed filmmaker Christopher Nolan, takes us on a fantastic voyage far beyond our solar system. Yet in The Science of Interstellar, Kip Thorne, the Nobel prize-winning physicist who assisted Nolan on the scientific aspects of Interstellar, shows us that the movie’s jaw-dropping events and stunning, never-before-attempted visuals are grounded in real science. Thorne shares his experiences working as the science adviser on the film and then moves on to the science itself. In chapters on wormholes, black holes, interstellar travel, and much more, Thorne’s scientific insights—many of them triggered during the actual scripting and shooting of Interstellar—describe the physical laws that govern our universe and the truly astounding phenomena that those laws make possible. Interstellar and all related characters and elements are trademarks of and © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s14).
Author: John-Michael Kuczynski
Publisher: John-Michael Kuczynski
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 734
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Book Description
Papers on the philosophy of mind and philosophical logic. Topics covered include probabilistic causation, the nature of formal truth, the role of language in thought, conceptual atomism, simulated vs. actual intelligence, and the nature of emotion.
Author: John-Michael Kuczynski
Publisher: John-Michael Kuczynski
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
Papers on the philosophy of mind. Topics include the relationship between linguistic and cognitive competence; conceivability in relation to possibility; simulated vs. actual thought; functionalism; program-causation in relation to mental causation; the Turing Test; the Language of Thought hypothesis; and the nature of personal identity.
