The River of Time

by Igor D. Novikov, Vitaly Kisin (Translator)

The nature of time has long fascinated physicists and the general public. As an irresistible flow into which all events are embedded, time cannot be slowed or accelerated, nor can it be undone or turned back. In The River of Time , Igor Novikov describes how the thinkers throughout history have defined time and how these discoveries demonstrate that humans may influence time's flow. He describes how time flows in specific regions of the Universe, how it stops in black holes and splashes over the brim in white holes, and how time may convert into space and vice versa. Exploring time's genesis at the Big Bang, Novikov details how recent discoveries indicate that time machine travel might be possible. Igor Novikov is the Director of the Theoretical Astrophysics Center and Professor of the Astronomical Observatory of Copenhagen University. He began his scientific career at the Moscow State University and has since been affiliated with the Institute of Applied Mathematics, Moscow, the Space Research Institute, Moscow, and Copenhagen University. He has published more than 250 scientific papers and 150 articles and is the co-author of Edwin Discoverer of the Big Bang (Cambridge, 1993) and Black Holes and the Universe (Cambridge, 1993). Previous paperback edition (1998) 0-521-46737-3

Genres: Physics, Science, Unfinished, Popular Science

300 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Igor Dmitriyevich Novikov (Russian: И́горь Дми́триевич Но́виков) is a Russian (and former Soviet) theoretical astrophysicist and cosmologist.

Novikov put forward the idea of white holes in 1964. He also formulated the Novikov self-consistency principle in the mid-1980s, a contribution to the theory of time travel.

Novikov gained his Ph.D. degree in astrophysics in 1965 and the Russian D.Sc. degree in astrophysics in 1970. From 1974 to 1990 he was head of the Department of Relativistic Astrophysics at the Russian Space Research Institute in Moscow. Before 1991 he was head of the Department of Theoretical Astrophysics at the Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow and has been professor at Moscow State University. Since 1994 he has been director of the Theoretical Astrophysics Center (TAC) of the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He is currently also a professor of astrophysics at the Observatory of the University of Copenhagen, where he has been since 1991. Since 1998 he has been a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Reviews

[Szplug · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you look, in a certain rudimentary light, at the structure of time and space, you can work them as complimentary components in the descriptive analysis or depiction of a variety of modern civilizational elements, especially those that can be arranged in a bifurcated opposition or antithesis to each other. In politics, we could say that Conservatives operate from a view that desires to hold back time, to preserve time passed, and that locates themselves within closed, and hence consistent, spaces that retain and preserve what is inside whilst being loath to admit potentially destabilizing influences from beyond. Progressives, on the other hand, run exuberantly but impatiently astride time's forward-running current, eager to speed their society's collective way into an unknown, but assuredly promising future, and embracing the beckoning vastness of open spaces, both in the possibilities inherent in such widespread environments and the opportunities provided for spreading locally-bred values and mores outwards within a widely-cast net, bringing them into mutually beneficial contact with those flung forth by differing cultures. In economics we have Microeconomics, in which space is drawn-in to encompass the individual actor and the decisions she makes in a upward-looking environment, whereas the field of Macroeconomics examines the workings of economies at scales stretched to national and international limits with the gaze drawn to what lies beneath—and both, in their modern permutations, strike the arrogant posture of defying time and temporal vagaries by operating within a manner of frozen-present in which various pertinent variables are simply known, regardless of when they are expected to be accounted for in reality—declaring themselves to have been elevated to the status of a market permutation of gravity. Over the past century we have become aware of the divergent laws and mysteries that operate when we endeavor to quantify both the unimaginably large, wherein Einstein's Relativity comes into play, and the infinitesimally small, in which we require Quantum Physics if we are to make heads or tails out of an ethereal sea of probabilities. For entertainment we might partake of reading, an activity necessitating but (ideally, at least) somewhere to park one's butt while nestling book in hand, enshrouded within self-delimited space, and taking whatever time is required in order for the words to be ingested comfortably; set this against media like television or the cinema, where the screen displaying the streamed/projected images forms a spatial link with the human eyes that drink in their displayed material—a rectilinear grid in which all that falls between image and ocular might be consigned to a manner of televisual void—and which package their entertainments in precise allotments of temporal passage. Then, in the realm of the personal, we measure the span of our life with the etchings of a time harnessed to human-derived standards such as seconds, minutes, hours, months, years, decades—a hierarchy of labelled containers allowing our species the illusion of some mastery over that fleeting, inexorable, all-devouring thing of which we find a dim sense inhering, but an understanding of as ephemeral as the ticks echoing from a bedside alarm-clock. And during this lifetime, spatiality brings itself into the equation: the cloistered confines of the womb from which we emerge; the concealed spaces and pressing limits of our infant and early childhood terms; the wide-open, illimitable vistas of our heady youth and virile middle-years; and then, once again, those untethered dimensions seizing-up and grinding their way inwards as we advance into our final quarter, its invisible barriers limned with greedy, unstoppable, unwelcome—until, perhaps, at the very last—Death. What's more, in the quest to quench the loneliness that consumes the long-distance runner that is man making his uncomprehending and groping way through his life, we seek partners to share that terrifyingly exhilarating journey with, merging ourselves with them into a unity that is both confined in space in its intimate union and flesh-bound sharing, the glances, the unspoken understandings that we wear like comfortable garb—and the widespread, horizon-limned open country of the unknown future, the potentialities of offspring and adventures and labours and journeys which we will share together and buttress one another against. Time is contracted for the term of one's life at the outset of this enjoined adventure; with luck one that will prove a perdurable commitment. However, there exists a reasonable likelihood that, having been found incompatible, the intertwined lives will be sundered, time linked via memories and whatever future promises betoken whilst simultaneously cloven by the rendering of one back into two, separated streams of onrushing life widening the gulf with the further notching of temporal passage upon one's body, soul, and mind. Of course, those shared spaces and closeted quarters, reduced to the rubble of ruptured life, will be transformed to the unbridgeable and flattened wideness of a steppe as the moment of separation recedes with the stopped watches of rent memory; and whether those beckoning tablelands be verdant pasture or darkened hardscrabble will depend upon the opportunities and realities lying ahead on the winding paths through an open unknowing that such individuals, perforce, finds themselves embarking upon. Perhaps most curious of all is the conception we have concocted, in especial within the realm of religious doctrine, of the afterlife awaiting both select believer and damned sinner: all the bliss and holy stupor of a reunion with God and loved ones in Heaven, or the agonizing torments of the burning fiends of Hell. This forecasting beyond Death's unknowable barrier plays a fascinating game with our two dimensions: for spatiality, celestial or infernal, rarely occupies the mind, but rather lies cradled in a perhaps unwarranted belief of a supernally comforting nearness to God, replete with excursions into forest-ringed leas where friendly and beloved spirits partake of well-furnished picnics with agreeable animal companions and the odd non-biting or -stinging insect. Hell is even less defined, a vague and blurry prison bathed in the essence of searing red with choking black abyssal smoke filling whatever space be neither aflame nor occupied with screaming and horrifically abused bodies. It is directly the opposite as regards the scale of time: for temporally both supernatural ideations spread themselves within the inherently incomprehensible immensity of eternity. Thus inconceivable in essence, in effect we turn it into the dream of whatever the highest pleasure or terror—and its accompanying actions—be that one might conceive of, carried to anodyne extremes in an effort to be made mutually comprehendible and desirable, and then situated within a present moment of time, replayed as far forward as our mental processes can abstract in order that we can come to see, like the animation of a series of drawn stick characters in a flip-book, how such metaphysical tergiversation might constitute a reasonable projection of an eternity of reward or punishment.

[Vibhu AV · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book, translated from Russian, is written by the Igor Novikov, the Russian theoretical astrophysicist and cosmologist. It is very similar to Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, without the flamboyance, but with a serious Russian tilt by introducing the contributions of Russian physicists, accompanied with a lamentation of how some of their contributions have not been able to fully achieve recognition in the physics world, especially in the west, sometimes understandably and sometimes inexplicably. It is not much, but it was eye opening at least for me. The book has some autobiographical narrations focusing on Communist influence—nay attack—on science in Russia in general and on Novikov’s family. He highlights his friendship with American Physicist, Kip Thorne. All good stuff, in my opinion.

The book’s intent is to explore time’s relentless flow—like a river—in one direction only, from the past to the future. Also included in the exploration is the pace of flow of time (can it be changed?) and can time wrap around to go to the past or jump forward to go to the future!

The book starts with a brief history of time during the Greeks and quickly jumps to Newton’s concept of absolute time and space and physics at low speed and energy. Although Newton knew about the finiteness of speed of light (though, of course, not its invariance), his laws implied instantaneous action at a distance. Newtonian physics along with Maxwell’s equations begged for existence of ether which was demolished only in the beginning of the twentieth century. This was almost simultaneously accompanied by Einstein’s theories of relativity.

Now Novikov introduces how time can be slowed down by using the twin paradox. Time dilation is explained very clearly as the “slowing down of the pace of time.” Travelling to distant star at close to speed of light is introduced as a time machine.

Then we get into general relativity, time, space, gravitation, and curvature of spacetime, and all that good stuff! Novikov pays special attention to how strong gravitational fields affects the pace of time, thereby leading us to black holes.

In the chapter on black holes, Novikov also introduces white holes. Black holes are dense regions in space from which nothing, not even light, can escape. Matter (and light) can only fall into black holes. White holes are the opposite to black holes and were discovered mathematically by Novikov. Being the opposite of black holes, nothing—not even light—can fall into a white hole; things can only come out of them. So black holes and white holes are like one-way streets. Novikov proposes that if a black hole and a white hole are connected via. a ‘gorge’ or a tunnel, then travelling through it would enable make it possible to travel across remote regions in space or even from our Universe to another one!

However, as Novikov is quick to acknowledge, white holes are only theoretical objects with no physical process explaining how they can form. He goes on to write that Roger Penrose showed mathematically that formation of white holes as well as the gorges is a very unstable process. In other words, white holes most probably do not exist. (A tidbit here: Novikov exposes the reader to the Russian terminology of relic radiation which they tried to promote—but it never caught on—instead of Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation.)

Then there is an interesting but rather fantastic chapter on how energy can be extracted from a black hole. Virtual particle pairs that are formed near black holes could be materialized into energetic real ones at the expense of energy from the black hole, thereby leading to energy radiation from the black holes as if it were at certain temperature. (Hawking extended this idea into his “Hawking radiation” theory.) However, the temperature of stellar size black holes is extremely low, emitting hardly any energy. But if the size of the black hole was much smaller—about the mass of a big mountain, which would have to be compacted into a diameter of an atomic nucleus—then they can become potentially good sources of energy! But they would be too tiny to handle as well as, how to create them? Novikov suggests that Nature has provided us with intermediate, mini black holes that could have been created at the early stages of expansion of the Universe and, if we can locate them, they can be harnessed to solve our energy needs!

Then he gets into real cosmology, (Hubble’s) expanding universe, Friedmann’s models, curvature of space, critical density of our Universe which determines if it is closed or open, etc. In particular, Hubble’s law—that the Universe is expanding—leads us to the source of the river of time, to the Big Bang.

There are two chapters on unification of the four forces—electromagnetic, weak, strong, and gravity—at the beginning of the creation of the Universe. Simple and very good explanation of various fields (such as Higgs field) which give rise to different types of vacuums, all trying to explore how time could have started at big bang, and what its nature was. He ends with the inflation theory of cosmology by which the creation of our Universe itself is by-chance, by a quantum fluctuation in a quantum foam of spacetime, the ultimate free lunch. Since it appears too farfetched—what are your chances that, on your one and only game of poker, you will be dealt with a perfect hand?—that perfect physical constants can exist in this one Universe, it is conceivable that many deadbeat universes might have been created (may be happening even now) with all sorts of values for the physical constants, none of which abets life, along with many others which harbors a vastly different life forms (or who knows what else), and ours was just one of the many hands, and we are here! Multi-universes (or parallel universes) are shown to be theoretically possible but is not pursued vehemently but they could be pointing to multiple sources of many rivers of time!

However, the final jury is still out, and the chapter ends inconclusively.

Regarding the reason for the flow of time from past to future only, like a river, Novikov quotes three possibilities: could time be connected to entropy increase as per the second law of thermodynamics? Could it be connected to the phenomenon of the expanding Universe? Could it be connected to our psychological processes—our memory of the past and ignorance of the future—that give a subjective feeling of flow of time? Most other physicists go with the thermodynamics arrow of time. But where in physics is the root cause of time asymmetry? Physical processes following Newton’s laws and relativity theories are time symmetric. Where does the time asymmetry lay? Novikov gives a three-page introduction to how, in Quantum Mechanics, the Reduction from Unitary evolution of subatomic particles (i.e., the collapse of the Schrodinger’s equation) is time asymmetric but does not try to relate it to the arrow of time and instead, magnanimously, refers the reader to Roger Penrose’s The Emperor’s New Mind where the Orchestrated Reduction is explained.

The next two chapters are about altering the flow of time so as to visit the past and the future. He introduces time loops and how wormholes can be used to make time machines. All very fanciful but theoretically correct and feasible probably in the far future by some very well-developed civilization. He also addresses the issue of, if we can travel to the past, can we change the past? Can we travel back in time and kill our grandfather? Novikov explains that it is not possible to change the past when using time loops in time machines because in such a time loop, the present is determined by both past as well as the future (unlike just the past, as in case of unidirectional arrow of time). Therefore, all the processes will behave consistently to take not only the past but also the future into account. In my opinion, this topic of time machines is the best in the book!

Overall, a good book and easy to read.

[Federico · Rating 2 out of 5]

Questo libro mi ha lasciato un po' deluso, forse perché mi aspettavo qualcosa di diverso. La quasi totalità del libro si concentra su dare le basi e approfondire aspetti di fisica, cosmologia e materie correlate attraverso elenchi di nozioni, congressi e scoperte scientifiche. Non metto in dubbio il fatto che avere tale background sia necessario per comprendere a pieno le dinamiche temporali, ma mi aspettavo più riflessioni di natura filosofica e pensieri intorno alla natura del tempo in sé. Comunque il libro è scritto bene e non è così pesante nonostante gli argomenti trattati, ma personalmente ho trovato interessanti solo gli ultimi capitoli.

[Heather Browning · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love thinking and reading about the nature of time, but found this book a little disappointing. Possibly because it focussed much more on the physics than the philosophy, spending a lot of space on the background cosmology and quantum mechanics. Although this may have been necessary background, I would have liked to see more on time itself. That said, it is an interesting and well-written book, providing history and science in an accessible way. The last chapters on time-travel and how to overcome paradoxes associated with travel to the past were definitely my favourite.

[Mohammed Ghoul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though I've read this book over 3 years ago, I still remember the aww and fascination it left me with , it was the book that ignited my passion and started my obsession with physics. I know that this review isn't objective, and this is mainly because, it was my first book in the field of physics, so I'm very biased and I read it too long ago, to remember much of it's details. But still this shouldn't make you think any less of this amazing book.