The New Time Travelers: A Journey to the Frontiers of Physics [Hardcover]

David Toomey (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2007

The story of physicists' quest to answer a mind-boggling question: How can we travel through time?

Since H. G. Wells' 1895 classic The Time Machine, readers of science fiction have puzzled over the paradoxes of time travel. What would happen if a time traveler tried to change history? Would some force or law of nature prevent him? Or would his action produce a "new" history, branching away from the original?

In the last decade of the twentieth century a group of theoretical physicists at the California Institute of Technology undertook a serious investigation of the possibility of pastward time travel, inspiring a serious and sustained study that engaged more than thirty physicists working at universities and institutes around the world.

Many of the figures involved are familiar: Einstein, Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne; others are names known mostly to physicists. These are the new time travelers, and this is the story of their work--a profoundly human endeavor marked by advances, retreats, and no small share of surprises. It is a fantastic journey to the frontiers of physics. 15 illustrations

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

According to Toomey, professor of English who teaches technical and nonfiction writing at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst, the concept of time travel successfully made the transition from science fiction to the research literature of physics about 20 years ago. This is not to say that physicists uncritically accept the idea but simply that it is now a topic for rigorous scientific discussion. Because Toomey (Stormchasers) spends as much time describing the personalities of those investigating this odd field as he does the subject's technical aspects, he is able to bring the topic fully to life. The contributions made by Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan and Kip Thorne, in addition to other lesser-known physicists, are described, but even the author's fine writing is not able to make all of the highly technical material easily understood. Given that time travel, if it can occur at all, is likely to involve wormholes and worldlines, multiverses and Minkowski diagrams, as well as negative energy and naked singularities, this is not surprising. Toomey is at his best treating the many paradoxes that time travel engenders and exploring the ways around them, from Hawking's chronology protection conjecture to David Deutsch's creation of multiple universes. While physicists have, to date, been unable to demonstrate that any laws of nature make time travel impossible, Toomey makes it clear that we shouldn't expect to make such a trip any time soon. 15 illus.
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From Booklist

Kip Thorne's Black Holes and Time Warps (1994) remains the best general-audience book about the outré physics of time travel, but for lay readers who may want a less-technical introduction, Toomey's title fills the bill. It illustrates dimension-bending concepts with space-time diagrams, M. C. Escher drawings, and the plot of H. G. Wells' Time Machine. Toomey gets a grip on bending the fourth dimension by historically chronicling physicists who have theorized about time travel, Thorne included. As is so often the case in physics, it all goes back to Einstein. After imparting the basic ideas of relativity, Toomey explains how they led physicists to imagine what would happen to light or matter when dragged through strong gravitational fields. He introduces black-hole gurus John Wheeler and Stephen Hawking and, relating the deficiency of black holes as time machines (they offer one-way trips), shifts to theoretically permissible specifications of time travel as conceptualized by pioneers Thorne, Frank Tipler, and Igor Novikov. If you dream of getting outside your personal light cone, Toomey shows how it might be imagined. Taylor, Gilbert

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (July 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393060136
• ISBN-13: 978-0393060133
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #765,145 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cover-to-cover in three days! Great science fiction without the fiction., July 31, 2007

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GeekReviewer - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The New Time Travelers: A Journey to the Frontiers of Physics (Hardcover)

I love to read science fiction, especially the classic short stories. I must admit I approached this book with some trepidation..... my "summer reading" rarely includes non-fiction, especially science.

Having said that, I am very glad this book was recommended to me. I bought it on a whim and--even though it looked daunting (lined up next to the paperback novels)--I read it cover-to-cover in three days. That's saying a LOT, as I have the attention span of a ...

Okay, about the book: I learned some things I didn't know before about relativity, I laughed at some stories of theoretical physicists at work, and got a welcome dose of time travel paradoxes. My favorite is the classic "grandfather paradox"--that is, can a time traveler kill her grandfather and so change the past? I've read about it in science fiction, but Toomey (and the physicists he talked to) offer much more complex and provocative discussions in The New Time Travelers.

I find it amazing to discover what these physicists and philosophers are theorizing and debating about. For instance, the book talks about Igor Novikov, a physicist who suggests that if a natural time machine exists somewhere in the universe and we can reach it via unmanned spacecraft, we could exploit something called the "Bootstrap Paradox" (gotta love that name for a time travel paradox, eh?) and force the spacecraft to create itself. It would carry knowledge of its own design and the location of the natural time machine from the future to us in the present.

Are they dreaming up the next science fiction bestseller? Nope. It's serious science. This is why I like the book so much. It sounds a LOT like science fiction, but these ideas been debated among theoretical physicists. All very serious, all very plausible....well, debatable, at least, which is a start. I would have been just as skeptical of virtual reality or gene manipulation only 20 years ago, so you never know.

I totally recommend this book. I honestly can't believe I enjoyed it so much, given the books normally on my summer reading list....

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Physics can be fun!, August 23, 2007

By 

Ken B. (Colchester, CT USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The New Time Travelers: A Journey to the Frontiers of Physics (Hardcover)

Anytime that I have picked up a book about the space-time continuum and quantum physics I feel that the adventure begins. Unfortunately the adventure can end quite early if the writing is thick and obscure as a tunnel that connects two black holes. Mr. Toomey's book, however, is extremely readable. In fact I couldn't put it down. He manages to explain complex ideas and theories very clearly and understandably. I enjoyed this book very much and encourage anyone with an interest in time travel to pick it up and give it a read. This is a fun book!

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Smart and interesting, July 6, 2007

By 

Adam "a reader" (Columbia, SC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The New Time Travelers: A Journey to the Frontiers of Physics (Hardcover)

There have been a number of good books on the viability of time travel, most by the physicists who
have done work in the field. A chapter in Kip Thorne's excellent Black Holes and Time Warps
describes Thorne's own venture into this strange realm; J. Richard Gott's equally good Time Travel
in Einstein's Universe goes a bit further, focusing (naturally) on Gott's own work. Toomey is not a
physicist, but that may more an advantage than a liability, as he brings a broader and more
comprehensive history of the inquiry. Also, since Thorne's work appeared in 1994 and Gott's in
2001, he takes us up to date. Toomey tells the story chronologically, in the classic "scientific
detective story" fashion, and he keeps it moving, sprinkling it with examples from science fiction,
a few Escher lithographs, and plenty of diagrams. Readers seeking a real understanding of "closed
timelike curves" will not feel cheated: there is an extensive glossary, and enough footnotes and
citations to technical papers to satisfy a serious scholar. This might be the closest thing to a
definitive history of the serious study of time travel that we have so far, and it is as fascinating
a story as one could wish.