From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time [Paperback]

Sean Carroll (Author)

Book Description

Release date: October 26, 2010

"An accessible and engaging exploration of the mysteries of time."
-Brian Greene, author of The Elegant Universe

Twenty years ago, Stephen Hawking tried to explain time by understanding the Big Bang. Now, Sean Carroll says we need to be more ambitious. One of the leading theoretical physicists of his generation, Carroll delivers a dazzling and paradigm-shifting theory of time's arrow that embraces subjects from entropy to quantum mechanics to time travel to information theory and the meaning of life.

From Eternity to Here is no less than the next step toward understanding how we came to exist, and a fantastically approachable read that will appeal to a broad audience of armchair physicists, and anyone who ponders the nature of our world.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Carroll explains the scientific studies of time in an accessible text for the lay reader, but one that proves prohibitively confusing for the lay listener. Sentences are stuffed with important, sometimes esoteric information that takes going over several times, making the listening choppy. And those prone to occasionally tune out for a sentence here or there will find it nearly impossible to follow. Erik Synnestvedt also hinders the production; though he reads in a clear and easy-to-follow voice, he never establishes a significant pattern of emphasis to guide listeners through the more technical and nuanced prose. His soft and rhythmic voice is slightly soporific and does little in helping the listener concentrate. A Dutton hardcover (Reviews, Nov. 2). (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

Review

"Carroll employs an easygoing, colloquial style of explanation to explore challenging issues of cosmology." ---Library Journal

--This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Plume; Reprint edition (October 26, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0452296544
• ISBN-13: 978-0452296541
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (84 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #156,340 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #23 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Physics > Time

More About the Author

Sean Carroll is a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology, specializing in cosmology, gravitation, field theory, and quantum mechanics. His research addresses the foundations of cosmology: What happened at the very beginning of the universe? Why was entropy low near the Big Bang? Is there an interpretation of quantum mechanics that applies to the universe as a whole? What are the dark matter and dark energy that dominate the universe today? How do complex structures evolve over time?

Carroll has been blogging regularly since 2004. His textbook "Spacetime and Geometry" has been adopted by a number of universities for their graduate courses in general relativity. He is a frequent public speaker, and has appeared on TV shows, such as The Colbert Report and Through The Wormhole with Morgan Freeman. He has produced a set of lectures for The Teaching Company on dark matter and dark energy, and another on the nature of time. He has served as a science consultant for films such as Thor and TRON: Legacy, as well as for TV shows such as Fringe and Bones. His 2010 popular book, "From Eternity to Here," explained the arrow of time and connected it with the origin of our universe.

"The Particle at the End of the Universe," about the Large Hadron Collider and the quest to discover the Higgs boson, was released November 2012. A TV special for NOVA on PBS, based in part on the book, is currently in development. Look for that in 2013.

More information at Carroll's web site, http://preposterousuniverse.com/

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

159 of 175 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A captivating read on a deep and difficult topic January 7, 2010

By A Cosmologist

Format:Hardcover

The arrow of time is a central issue in fundamental physics, and one that remains an open question even in the age of quantum mechanics and general relativity. It is a tall task even to define the question properly, never mind to explain what some of the proposed resolutions are. Nevertheless, Carroll is one of the best writers of popular science working today, and in this book he tackles the topic beautifully, guiding the reader through the relevant ideas, many of which we all think we have an intuitive feel for, like entropy, and explaining their physical meanings, and how gravity complicates the story.

The book is worth reading for its expert descriptions of the background material alone, but the reader hungry for speculations of how physics at the frontier may provide an understanding of the arrow of time will not be disappointed. Carroll devotes ample space to the concepts of cosmic inflation, the role of quantum mechanics, baby universes, and the setting that string theory may provide for all of this. None of this is settled ground in physics yet, and the author makes that entirely clear. But it hard to read this account and not come away with a tangible sense of the excitement to be found in taking on these most fundamental of problems.

42 of 45 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Time in the eternity of the multiverse March 21, 2010

By Jaume Puigbo Vila

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is a wonderful book that would merit a second reading to understand it more fully. At a fundamental level physics consists of the Standard Model, General Relativity and the Big Bang Inflationary Model of the universe. However, in this model there is something unexplained and it is the Past Hypothesis, that is that the universe started in a low entropy configuration. However the author speculates that perhaps the Big Bang was neither the beginning of time nor a moment of low entropy, but a moment of lowest entropy and the entropy increases in both directions of time, towards the future of the Big Bang and towards its past (from our point of view). This would be the situation in a single connected universe, although string theory predicts a multiverse.

Trying to elucidate the meaning of time (perhaps "an emergent phenomenon rather than a necessary part of our ultimate description of the world") the author reviews special and general relativity, Boltzmann's entropy, black holes and the controversy about conservation of information, life, quantum mechanics, inflation and the multiverse. Generally speaking the book is written in an accessible style (eggs can be broken and turned into omelettes, but not the other way around to describe the Second Law), but you will need to reread some parts to make the most of it.

In the final chapter Sean Carroll faces the "search for meaning in a preposterous universe". I quote: "We find ourselves, not as a central player in the life of the cosmos, but as a tiny epiphenomenon, flourishing for a brief moment as we ride a wave of increasing entropy...Purpose and meaning are not to be found in the laws of nature, or in the plans of any external agent...it is our job to create them.... One of those purposes -among many- stems from our urge to explain the world around us the best we can. If our lives are brief and undirected, at least we can take pride in our mutual courage as we struggle to understand things much greater than ourselves". I think he has a point. It is in our human nature to try to find meaning to things. The universe is meaningless. I agree and I think that Woody Allen would also. Read more ›

87 of 102 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Genius for non-geniuses! January 7, 2010

By David Grae

Format:Hardcover

I am not a physicist. I majored in English in college. I shouldn't be able to understand this book on any level. But I do. And it's fascinating. Illuminating. And just plain interesting as hell. That's Sean Carroll's greatest achievement in this page-turner about the TIME we live in. If you have any interest at all in getting your head around just what this elusive "time" we all experience is all about, you should read this book.

133 of 164 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Another Well Written Book That Goes Nowhere April 20, 2010

By Goldry Bluzco

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

After reading Mr. Carroll's book, I am reminded of a conversation that supposedly occurred between an old Indian and a white man in the late 1800s. The white man was trying to impress upon the Indian how much more advanced white civilization was when compared to his. He drew a small circle in the sand and said, "This is what the Indian knows." He then drew a larger circle around the first one and said, "And this is what the white man knows." The old Indian thought about this for a moment and then proceeded to trace a much larger circle around this second circle and said, "And this is what the white man does not know." This is how I feel about the current state of theoretical physics and cosmology. There are more questions than answers. At the end of this book I came away with a feeling of profound futility. I lost count of how many times Carroll said something like, "More research needs to be done." or "We don't know the answer yet." or "It's a complete mystery." Every book of this type that I've read in the last ten years ends at the same place -- we're stuck and none of the current theories we have adequately explain any of the fundamental questions about the nature or origin of the universe. String theory? It could be correct, but there is no way to prove it one way or another. Is the universe comprised of 11 dimensions? Possibly. The jury is still out. Does time exist? Yes, but it may also be an illusion. Parallel universes? Very likely. But, we may never know for sure. Is time travel possible? In theory yes, but the universe doesn't seem to like it, so it may never be technologically feasible. How about quantum entanglement, is this a real effect or does it signify some deeper, hidden property of the universe, or is it more like Bohm's guide wave interpretation?... Everybody seems to have a different view. Sometimes things seem to come down to personal likes or dislikes. Did the universe have a beginning or has it always existed? Was there a Big Bang or was there a phase state shift? Bump and grind branes anyone?

I think I've reached the point where I'll just stop reading this sort of book for the next ten years. Carroll and others of his ilk are clearly very bright people with a grasp of advanced mathematics that puts me to shame (college calculus was as far as I got), yet despite their intellectual accomplishments they have nothing new to say on these subjects at the moment. Apart from selling books and making a buck, I really wonder why we need more books like this. Until some new breakthroughs come along I'll bide my time and just hope I live long enough to know what dark matter and dark energy are. Read more ›