From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time Hardback - 2010

by Sean Carroll

A rising star in theoretical physics offers his awesome vision of ouruniverse and beyond, all beginning with a simple question: Whydoes time move forward?Time moves forward, not backward-everyone knows youcan't unscramble an egg. In the hands of one of today'shottest young physicists, that simple fact of breakfastbecomes a doorway to understanding the Big Bang, theuniverse, and other universes, too. In From Eternity toHere, Sean Carroll argues that the arrow of time, pointingresolutely from the past to the future, owes its existenceto conditions before the Big Bang itself-a period moderncosmology of which Einstein never dreamed. Increasingly,though, physicists are going out into realms that make thetheory of relativity seem like child's play. Carroll's scenario isnot only elegant, it's laid out in the same easy-to-understandlanguage that has made his group blog, Cosmic Variance,the most popular physics blog on the Net.From Eternity to Here uses ideas at the cutting edge oftheoretical physics to explore how properties of spacetimebefore the Big Bang can explain the flow of time weexperience in our everyday lives. Carroll suggests that welive in a baby universe, part of a large family of universesin which many of our siblings experience an arrow of timerunning in the opposite direction. It's an ambitious,fascinating picture of the universe on an ultra-large scale,one that will captivate fans of popular physics blockbusterslike Elegant Universe and A Brief History of Time.