About Time: Cosmology, Time and Culture at the Twilight of the Big Bang

by Adam Frank Narrated by David Drummond

Overview

The Big Bang is all but dead, and we do not yet know what will replace it. Our universe's "beginning" is at an end. What does this have to do with us here on Earth? Our lives are about to be dramatically shaken again-as altered as they were with the invention of the clock, the steam engine, the railroad, the radio and the Internet.



In About Time, Adam Frank explains how the texture of our lives changes along with our understanding of the universe's origin. Since we awoke to self-consciousness fifty thousand years ago, our lived experience of time-from hunting and gathering to the development of agriculture to the industrial revolution to the invention of Outlook calendars-has been transformed and rebuilt many times. But the latest theories in cosmology-time with no beginning, parallel universes, eternal inflation-are about to send us in a new direction.



Time is both our grandest and most intimate conception of the universe. Many books tell the story, recounting the progress of scientific cosmology. Frank tells the story of humanity's deepest question-when and how did everything begin?-alongside the story of how human beings have experienced time. He looks at the way our engagement with the world-our inventions, our habits and more-has allowed us to discover the nature of the universe and how those discoveries, in turn, inform our daily experience.



This astounding book will change the way we think about time and how it affects our lives.

Editorial Reviews

The End of the Beginning owes in its own origins to a question that "a girl in the third row" asked in a 2007 physics class taught by its author, astrophysicist Adam Frank. The question was simple: "But professor, what happened before the Big Bang." Dr. Frank's answer required the rest of class and then blossomed into this book with its twin, interlocking narratives, one looking forward, the other looking back. With a cogent narrative, he describes how we have experienced time in different ways over centuries, eventually bringing us forward to the most radical jump of all, the leap beyond the Bang of the Big Bang. Cutting-edge physics rendered in ways that we can understand.

From the Publisher

"A phenomenal blend of science and cultural history." ---Kirkus Starred Review

JANUARY 2012 - AudioFile

Our lives are shaped by our understanding of time, and as that understanding changed over the eons, so did we. From an agrarian appreciation of the seasons through industrialization to today's digital world, time shapes the way we act and work. Now, with emerging theories of cosmology, our ideas of time are about to be reworked again. It’s weighty stuff, and listening to this book requires concentration. David Drummond offers a reading that relieves the ponderousness of the author’s writing without losing the work’s gravity. His even tone carries listeners along but won’t put them to sleep. The pacing is jarred a bit by the inclusion of the chapter subtitles. Little would have been lost by leaving them out, and the flow of the reading would have been improved. R.C.G. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940170777570
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	09/30/2011
Edition description:	Unabridged

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