The Time Quantum

by David Streets

In an old church on a cold autumn afternoon, a young woman is making a brass rubbing. Suddenly, she senses a presence by the altar. A vague, diaphanous object brushes past her. She bends down over her brass rubbing and sees that it is speckled with blood. She faints.

What do you do when your girlfriend says she's seen a ghost? Brian Kenning is a physicist, so he decides to perform an experiment in the church to find out what she actually saw. He becomes the first person to truly uncover the mystery of ghosts and how their appearance is linked to historical events. His explanation involves a new theory about the quantized nature of time itself.

But Brian and his colleagues pursue the truth too far, until the safety of all is threatened. The consequences of their later experiments are most mysterious, and it is left to Brian's brother, John, to uncover the truth and rue the day they ever discovered the time quantum.

368 pages, Paperback

Published November 16, 2021

About the author

David Streets was born in England but has lived in suburban Chicago for most of his life. He is an environmental scientist with advanced degrees in physics. He specializes in the study of air pollution and how to control it so that we can all breathe easier. He has helped to improve the air in many parts of the world, particularly Asia. He is a world-renowned researcher with more than three hundred publications in the scientific literature. He was a named contributor to the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. In his childhood he spent many hours in gloomy churches, wondering if they were haunted, which has led to this first foray into the world of fiction. The novel introduces a plausible, science-based theory of how ghost objects come into existence as dilute representations of real objects from other time periods. It is Fictional Science, not Science Fiction!

Reviews

[Marilyn Manzella · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once I started reading this book, I did little else. I didn't reach the end until 4 a.m. If you enjoy a ghostly tale that travels between today and medieval times, you'll love this richly written story. The ending was a surprise and I'm hoping there will be a sequel.