Time Travel

J Richard Gott's Time Travel in Einstein's Universe explores humanity's long-held dream of travelling in time. He explains how Einstein's theories of relativity offer a faint glimmer of hope that was not available under Newtonian physics. It's an interesting and informative read, but anyone looking for the blueprints for a time machine, especially for travel to the past, will be sorely disappointed as time travel is strictly a pastime for super-civilisations. However, thinking about time travel is useful when exploring the extreme limits of current theories. Gott is a physicist himself, and has shown that a time machine operating for tiny fractions of a second could have led to the universe creating itself, side-stepping the problem of where it came from. When it comes to practical applications, special relativity allows travel to the future by accelerating up to an appreciable fraction of the speed of light. This has already happened to a modest extent; cosmonauts and astronauts who have orbited the Earth many times at high speeds are a few milliseconds younger than they would otherwise be. Travel to the past is much harder and involves manipulating wormholes, black holes or cosmic strings, feats possible only with galaxy-spanning technology. The ideas are not always easy to grasp, but Gott illustrates the concepts with references to popular fiction and film wherever he can. Although his writing sometimes lapses into a dry, textbook-like style that can be hard going, for anyone interested in the frontiers of cosmology it's well worth persevering. --Elizabeth Sourbut

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Excellent book - Rated
In short words, the book is excellent for those who don't have a strong foundation about physics, but are willing to stop and think a bit to try and understand the wonders of the universe.

Time Travel in Einstein's Universe - Rated
This book describes the physical possibilities of time travel, an area I found to be fascinating. Richard Gott explains the ideas clearly, a little too clearly sometimes. The maths involved is basic, and for someone already familiar with relativity, maybe a little to simple to get a grasp of the theories of time travel. The references and notes in the back, however, do much to rectify this problem. The book covers many interesting possibilities for time travel, expanding further on How to Build a Time Machine by Paul Davies aswell as coming up with some ingenius ideas for how the universe started. For anyone with a mild interest in time travel and for any sceptics of time travel I would wholly recommend it.

Gets a bit heavy in the middle, but worth persevering. - Rated
Having read a few so called 'popular science' books in the past, and just having finished reading 'Longitude', I was looking for something else to stimulate the mind, without wearing it out too much.
I spotted this book completely by accident on Amazon, and thought it would fit the bill.
The first chapter, and the last chapter were the ones that realy caught my imagination, and the author's use of popular films and Escher's pictures to illustrate his theories makes the subject all the more accessible.
Unfortunately, the middle of the book gets a bit heavy, and some of the explanations of the different types of space was over my head. However, this doesn't detract too much from the 'journey' you are taken on. Simply gloss over the bits you can't quite follow, and you soon pick up the trail again anyway.
All in all a worthwhile read that should really get you thinking.. and you even get a method of predicting the future thrown in as a bonus in the last chapter.