How to Build a Time Machine: The Real Science of Time Travel

by Brian Clegg

Overview

A pop science look at time travel technology, from Einstein to Ronald Mallett to present day experiments. Forget fiction: time travel is real.

In How to Build a Time Machine, Brian Clegg provides an understanding of what time is and how it can be manipulated. He explores the fascinating world of physics and the remarkable possibilities of real time travel that emerge from quantum entanglement, superluminal speeds, neutron star cylinders and wormholes in space. With the fascinating paradoxes of time travel echoing in our minds will we realize that travel into the future might never be possible? Or will we realize there is no limit on what can be achieved, and take on this ultimate challenge? Only time will tell.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250024220
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/16/2013
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	8.10(w) x 5.40(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

BRIAN CLEGG is the author of Ten Billion Tomorrows, Final Frontier, Extra Sensory, Gravity, How to Build a Time Machine, Armageddon Science, Before the Big Bang, Upgrade Me, and The God Effect among others. He holds a physics degree from Cambridge and has written regular columns, features, and reviews for numerous magazines. He lives in Wiltshire, England, with his wife and two children.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Chapter 1 A Glittering Metal Framework 1

Chapter 2 It's All Relative 8

Chapter 3 Time Past 34

Chapter 4 Time's Arrow 48

Chapter 5 The Time Travellers' Convention 68

Chapter 6 Back To The Future 76

Chapter 7 Warp Factor Four 99

Chapter 8 Entangled Web 117

Chapter 9 Phantoms of Time 148

Chapter 10 Interstellar Engineering 170

Chapter 11 Alice through the Wormhole 187

Chapter 12 The Mallett Machine 228

Chapter 13 Killing Grandfather 237

Chapter 14 Fact or Fiction? 262

Notes 277

Index 291

Editorial Reviews

In ‘How to Build a Time Machine' we start each chapter with an affirmation; ‘Yes, time travel is possible …'. There's clarification, ‘ifs', often detailed historic references; consequences; and then the practicalities – at which point you might have the feeling that it's not possible after all. But then there's the ‘Or is it?', and one cannot but take the bait and turn the page (loop). To name but a few, what does the following have to do with time-travel?: near-light speed travel; an infinitely long cylinder built from dust - or a less ambitious one (!) built from Neutron stars; Wormholes; Paradoxes; Black/White Holes; Antimatter; Dark Energy…? If you're like me when presented with such a list - appetite whet to the point of drooling - this is a book written with you in mind! One last and very important point: Clegg is both a writer and a Physicist; and it's as a writer – one who is able to communicate physics to the non-specialist – and that makes this book so very enjoyable. The hard stuff is there; between the lines; but we're not asked to deal with it – Clegg leads us through, in his own imitable style! There are just two equations: Einstein's E=MC2 (of course!), and Maxwell's – the latter because they're so "beautifully spare and simple looking". Perfect.” —Dr. Peet Morris of Oxford University

From the Publisher

Not quite a how-to, but a survey of the science behind time travel--if anyone ever invents it.

British pop-science writer Clegg (Inflight Science: A Guide to the World From Your Airplane Window, 2011, etc.) notes that time travel is not just a trope of science fiction any more. Increasingly, serious physicists accept that travel to the future and back, or to the past and back, is theoretically possible. The laws of physics provide a few interesting options, and examining them provides an opportunity to look at some interesting corners of modern science. Einstein's theories of special and general relativity describe how motion and gravity affect objects and people. Movement at high speeds, or in powerful gravity fields, changes the rate at which time flows. GPS systems have to adjust for discrepancies between clocks in orbit and those on the ground. These effects can slow time down so travelers can visit distant futures without living through all the years between. Of course, there are problems with these theories: Gravitational fields strong enough to slow time also create tidal forces that can rip matter apart. Other theoretically feasible methods of time travel require building structures such as cylinders of infinite length--hardly a practical option. Clegg also dissects schemes such as going into the past and playing the stock market armed with foreknowledge of what will rise or fall. He covers most of the themes advanced by science fiction, plus some of the more adventurous scientific minds, generally avoiding math or tricky technical details.

A solid overview of some of the quirkier corners of physics, with an entertaining connection to pop culture.

Kirkus Reviews