A Question of Time: The Ultimate Paradox

by Scientific American

Is time an illusion? Is time travel possible? Could time end? In this audiobook,  A Question of Time , we take an interdisciplinary look at the fourth dimension, exploring the latest thinking on the nature of time and the ways it dominates our physical and mental worlds.

Genres: Science, Audiobook, Nonfiction, Physics, Philosophy, History

190 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 30, 2012

About the author

Scientific American , as an institutional author, is a popular science magazine founded by Rufus M. Porter and controlled by Nature Publishing Group since autumn, 2008. Mariette DiChristina has been editor-in-chief since December, 2009.

Reviews

[BetseaK · Rating 4 out of 5]

This mixture of articles gives a good overview of scientific ruminations about various aspects of the concept of time. Regrettably and paradoxically, the style of some of the articles related to the objective (physical) time, though intended to make the underlying physics accessible to the layperson, makes the substance more obscure than really necessary. At least, so it seems to this layperson.
Overall, however, I found this eBook/issue of Scientific American fairly informative and for the most part interesting to read.

[Cav · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Time and memory shape our perceptions of our own identity. We may feel ourselves to be at history’s mercy, but we also see ourselves as free-willed agents of the future. That conception is disturbingly at odds with the ideas of physicists and philosophers, however, because if time is a dimension like those of space, then yesterday, today and tomorrow are all equally concrete and determined. The future exists as much as the past does; it is just in a place that we have not yet visited..."

A Question of Time was an interesting read at times. Other times, it was really dry, technical, and tedious.

The book is a compilation of articles from the Scientific American magazine. The editors say this of the book in the intro:

"This special issue of Scientific American summarizes what science has discovered about how time permeates and guides both our physical world and our inner selves. That knowledge should enrich the imagination and provide practical advantages to anyone hoping to beat the clock or at least to stay in step with it."

So, some of the articles presented are pretty thought-provoking and interesting, but others; not so much. Quantum Physics is talked about a lot in here, and we all know how unwieldy writing about that can be. There is a lot of talk about Alpha, Beta, Planck lengths, Quasar spectrum analysis, and so on. Not really my cup of tea, TBH...

If you are someone who likes books that take deep dives into datasets, and carefully note every miniscule value and variability, then you might appreciate this book more than I did. Call me a dilettante if you will, but I prefer to have my science books presented in an easily accessible manner, with as few cosmic equations as possible.

The essays presented here are:
Real Time by Gary Stix
That Mysterious Flow by Paul Davies
Is Time an Illusion? by Craig Callender
A Hole at the Heart of Physics by George Musser
How to Build a Time Machine by Paul Davies
Time and the Twin Paradox by Ronald C. Lasky
Times of Our Lives by Karen Wright
Remembering When by Antonio Damasio
Clocking Cultures by the Editors
A Chronicle of Timekeeping by William J. H. Andrews
From Instantaneous to Eternal by David Labrador
Ultimate Clocks by W. Wayt Gibbs
How Time Flies by John Matson
Inconstant Constants by John D. Barrow and John K. Webb
The Myth of the Beginning of Time by Gabriele Veneziano
What Keeps Time Moving Forward? by John Matson
Atoms of Space and Time by Lee Smolin
Could Time End? by George Musser

********************

While there is much valuable data presented here on the current state of particle and theoretical physics, I was looking for something a bit more down to earth. Some of the essays here did tick that box, but many others did not.
A mixed bag.
2.5 stars.

[Ernesto Lopez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Muy interesante pero algo suelto.

Es una buena recopilación de artículos de Scientific American respecto a lo que conocemos y especulamos del tiempo. Algunos son bastante densos en física y otros son más filosóficos. Es muy interesante pero a veces llega a ser repetitivo entre los mismos artículos.

[Kunal Sen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brilliant collection of scientific essays on Time, that covers a wide range of perspectives, from biology to physics. The most interesting of these are the ones that are about how Time fits into physics. Time, as a concept and as a physical quantity, always baffled scientists, especially since Einstein started questioning the absolute sense of time and simultaneity. The debates have become more intense as some physicists started questioning the very existence of it as a fundamental entity.

There are may excellent books on this subject. One book that stands out is Carlo Rovelli's The Order of Time, for its philosophical and poetic depth. However, most of them, including Rovelli's, is written from the perspective of one physicist, reflecting that individual's view of Time. This book is distinct in that sense, since it is written by various physicists, looking at the problem from many different and opposing perspectives. I have not come across a better coverage of this complex and enigmatic topic.

[Tom Walsh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Semi-successful Discussion Difficult for this Layman.

I like to challenge my Liberal Arts educated Brain with occasional ventures into discussions of scientific issues. Most often I come away amazed by the complexity of the research into Physics, Biology and Neuroscience but I keep trying. This was another of those times, excuse the pun.

A simple concept like Time has brought the greatest Minds of Western Science to their proverbial knees and their efforts are well documented here, though I have to admit I came away with only an appreciation of how not-simple the concept of Time is.

The experience of mental gymnastics was still enjoyable. Four Stars.

[Shawn Deal · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are all really where done. This was a great collection of articles about time. Learned a lot and it really got me thinking.

[Remo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Compendio de artículos divulgativos sobre el tiempo, el que miden los relojes. Desde la historia de la medición del tiempo mediante clepsidras y relojes atómicos hasta la gravedad cuántica y el concepto que SIEMPRE me ha fascinado: ¿Es el tiempo continuo o discreto? También hablamos de cosmología, el inicio y el final del tiempo (en un Universo sin materia, ¿tiene sentido el concepto de tiempo?), algo de relatividad (el tiempo y la paradoja de los gemelos de Einstein, mil veces explicada, de ellas 999 mal). Un gran libro para los apasionados de la ciencia y más aún para los que tenemos ese interés especial por la física del espaciotiempo.

[Elisa · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not for me. I'm not brilliant enough to grasp this. The historical part was interesting, but the rest sailed way, way above my limited brain.

[Alex Shrugged · Rating 4 out of 5]

It started off a little trite, but it soon got more interesting. I suppose the editors didn't want to scare anyone off with a lot of complicated stuff. Eventually the subject became physics and ideas about how time travel might be accomplished (or not) and why the "Twins Paradox" is not quite what I thought it was.

This is a collection of Scientific American articles regarding the science of time, what is it, when did it start, does it ever end, and whether or not it has something to do with thermodynamics. It covered a wide range of topics about time and the articles are fairly recent, most, I recall, came from 2018.

I'd read (of listen) to this audiobook again.

[Blake · Rating 3 out of 5]

A compilation of articles from Scientific American about TIME. Topics range from examples of what can fit into the different units of time to the latest technology behind atomic clocks to discussion of theories of what time is or is not. Some were quite fascinating, and some left me rather confused.

In general I prefer books that are complete narratives rather than compilations, but this was still worth listening to (I had the audiobook).

Did you know that certain atomic clocks can detect differences in the flow of time between one stairstep and another (due to relativistic effects from differences in gravity)?! That's incredible to me.

[Barb · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars, rounded up

Not sure why I keep saying "This isn't quite what I expected," but this book fits that qualifier. Once I accepted that it is a collection of essays/articles about time, I more or less enjoyed listening to them. Some were way too 'deep' for this non-scientist to understand, but others were fascinating. They all brought up interesting questions and insights that made me go "hmmm..." At least for the time it took to listen to this collection, it made me think about time in an entirely different light - and making me question things I take for granted is always a good thing.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very nice collection of essays from Scientific American, written by physicists/philosophers from the scientific community. While mostly dealing with the physics involved with the dilemmas and paradoxes of time, the topics are generally interesting and readable. Audible makes these essays available for free...and provides a PDF set of notes which includes charts and diagrams that help with some of the more difficult concepts.

[Nuno · Rating 2 out of 5]

Please - a different narrator. The delivery is very dull, it doesn't make it easy to follow. I liked most of the articles, although some of them go a bit too much into esoteric matters. I mean, when string theory posits that the universe is a brain (membrane?) I start to think we've gone beyond science here. Or did I miss something?

[Mack · Rating 5 out of 5]

These Scientific American books of essays feature so many great ideas, presented clearly and reasonably. This articles require a fair amount of knowledge, and they discuss deep issues. Also, they are usually new (2018 or so).

[Gonzalo Corvera · Rating 4 out of 5]

Muy interesante revisión de la ciencia actual referente al tiempo, con un poco de filosofía entretejida

[Max Patiiuk · Rating 4 out of 5]

4+

[Kevin Postlewaite · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hit and miss: this anthology had a few articles that were quite good and a bunch that weren't. Definitely worthwhile overall.

[Melody · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of essays on time and how it works, when it started and whether it can end. Lots of food for thought.

[AttackGirl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kept getting lost…. Had to keep backing it up to find my spot… lmao.

Don’t you just love what if’s….

[Tony Ciak · Rating 5 out of 5]

lots of different ideas

[Craig Werner · Rating 1 out of 5]

A major disappointment. I recently finished reading Peter Galison's Einstein's Clocks, Poincaire's Maps, which sparked my interest in broadening my notion of contemporary ideas about time. Unfortunately, this anthology did almost nothing to either broaden or deepen what I'd picked up previously. The problem is two-fold. First, these essays confirm my sense that for some time now Scientific American has been going downhill, trading in in-depth engagement with the state of our knowledge for gee-whiz (and often cutesy) near-fluff. That may simply mean that I should take the time and energy to keep up with Science News (which has been dealing with related problems, no doubt tied to the need to maintain economic viability). But it's also specific to this volume. The editors have chosen to emphasize the philosophical and "speculative physics" aspects of Time at the expense of better grounded approaches. The last half of the book is devoted primarily to "big questions": will time have an end? is time real? Most of the writers view the answers in terms of mathematical models of systems like quantum loop gravity and quantum chromodynamics and one whose precise name I can't remember that actually includes the word "magic." I'm not an advanced mathematician to say the least, but the rhetoric of the essays does nothing to convince me there's a "there there." The writers are building models and speculating on how they might some day be tested, but, at the risk of sounding anti-intellectual, it feels like metaphysics more than physics.

It's particularly frustrating because the space devoted to angels dancing on the head of cosmological pins could have been devoted to more concrete or to my mind interesting pursuits. I would very much have liked to read something about how the precision clocks described in one section play out in engineering applications. (For instance, just how the heck does GPS actually work?) Or perhaps a section on the way different cultures concieve of time? (A. Aveni's book Empires of Time is a nice starting place for that, but I'm positive anthropologists have much more to say today than they did in the 1980s.)

It's not a total waste of time. The essays by Antonio Damasio on time and the brain is a good introduction to his thought (and his books); the essay on "inconstant constants" took the speculation into the realm of the testable. But I can't recommend this to anyone. The one star is for the realization of the book as a whole; the essays in the first half would get a three-star rating.

[Elsie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow? So much to think about and so much I don’t understand. In fact, so much the scientists are hypothesizing about. Fascinating!!

[Sascha Michels · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was still quite interesting but sometimes it was either too difficult or it supposed some prior knowledge that I didn't have (I never did physics).

Example: "The traveller uses the length-contraction equation of special relativity to measure distance. So the star six light-years away to the homebody appears to be only 4.8 light-years away"(5.1 Time and twin paradox).

I have never heard of this length-contraction equation and there is no explanation whatsoever which means that I just have to believe that this equation explains why 6 light-years appear to be 4.8 light-years...

[Nrtashi]

I...couldn't finish it. This is supposed to be popular science, and yet, at some point, I realized that I don't understand a word from it. Too many complicated terms and ideas quickly glossed over made my head spin. It felt like reading a foreign language!

[Rod Haper · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good survey review of time.

A good review survey of time related physics research and thinking targeted for the informed lay audience. I would have preferred a more mathematical based exposition but that have excluded most of the target audience. Some of the material is dated.

[Adarsh Hatwar · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of disparate essays; interesting read but very disconnected.

[Jack Oughton · Rating 4 out of 5]

t's an anthology of intellectual curiosities - approaching the subject of time from the perspective of the various sciences. Very enjoyable. A 'scientific pick me up' perhaps.

[Anna Paula · Rating 4 out of 5]

A compilation of articles published by Scientific American on the concept of time, from philosophical, physiological, and physical/mechanical/quantum points of view.