We all live in time, but remarkably time itself remains one of the most mysterious aspects to our existence. Not even Einstein’s fabulous theories of Relativity can help us deeply understand what time is, why it even exists, or why humans and all sentient life experience it the way they do. This short book (25,000 words and 160 pages) is my attempt as an astronomer to provide both you and I a way of thinking about time. It will cover how our brains synthesize the experience of time and how this process can be short-circuited by injury and even meditation. We then take a step into the cosmos to examine how time occurs at the scales of galaxies and the universe. I will also show you how our most advanced theories about space, time, matter and energy all point towards the ultimate disintegration of time itself, and into things that are neither time-like or space-like. It is most definitely a subject just on the border of things that can be known, and things we may never know.
This book is now available at Amazon.com.
The Essential Book of Time: Master the Mysteries of Time in 12 Short Chapters (Sirius Concepts)
I encourage you to read widely on the subject of time by those few physicists, astronomers and brain-researchers who have studied this subject for the better part of their lifetimes, and have concrete things to say about it derived from hard data and experiments.
My other writings about time can be found in the following Blogs and FAQs.
What is ‘Now’? What is the duration of the present moment? How is it that this present moment is replaced by ‘the next moment’? Why do we experience time the way that we do? Is time a qualia like color or is it something more fundamental to the universe?
What is Space? Part I The intuitive notion that the universe has three dimensions seems to be an irrefutable fact. After all, we can only move up or down, left or right, in or out. But are these three dimensions all we need to describe nature? What if there are, more dimensions ? Would they necessarily affect us? And if they didn’t, how could we possibly know about them?
What is Space?- Part II Among the unresolved problems facing theorists is the nature of time, which has been recognized as inextricably bound up with space ever since Einstein posited a constant speed for light. In general relativity, it isn’t always obvious how to define what we mean by time, especially at the Planck scale where time seems to lose its conventional meaning.