Book Summary and Reviews of From Eternity to Here by Sean Carroll

From Eternity to Here by Sean Carroll

From Eternity to Here

The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time

by Sean Carroll

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  • Published:
  • Jan 2010, 448 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Time moves forward, not backward-everyone knows you can't unscramble an egg. In the hands of one of today's hottest young physicists, that simple fact of breakfast becomes a doorway to understanding the Big Bang, the universe, and other universes, too. In From Eternity to Here, Sean Carroll argues that the arrow of time, pointing resolutely from the past to the future, owes its existence to conditions before the Big Bang itself-a period modern cosmology of which Einstein never dreamed. Increasingly, though, physicists are going out into realms that make the theory of relativity seem like child's play. Carroll's scenario is not only elegant, it's laid out in the same easy-to-understand language that has made his group blog, Cosmic Variance, the most popular physics blog on the Net.

From Eternity to Here uses ideas at the cutting edge of theoretical physics to explore how properties of spacetime before the Big Bang can explain the flow of time we experience in our everyday lives. Carroll suggests that we live in a baby universe, part of a large family of universes in which many of our siblings experience an arrow of time running in the opposite direction. It's an ambitious, fascinating picture of the universe on an ultra-large scale, one that will captivate fans of popular physics blockbusters like Elegant Universe and A Brief History of Time.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. Carroll writes with verve and infectious enthusiasm, reminding readers that 'science is a journey in which getting there is, without question, much of the fun.'" - Publishers Weekly

"His approach is effective, but readers must still be willing to work through much heavy thinking. Highly recommended for fans of Stephen Hawking and those with at least some formal training in the physical sciences and/or philosophy." - Library Journal

"Not for the scientifically disinclined, but determined readers will come away with a rewarding grasp of a complex subject." - Kirkus Reviews

"For anyone who ever wondered about the nature of time and how it influences our universe, this book is a must read. It is beautifully written, lucid, and deep." - Kip Thorne, Feynman Professor of Theoretical Physics at Caltech and author of Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy

This information about From Eternity to Here was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Sean Carroll

Sean Carroll, Ph.D., is a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology. After receiving his doctorate from Harvard University, he pursued his research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, and the University of Chicago. He has published papers on dark matter and dark energy, the physics of extra dimensions, and alternative theories of gravity as well as the graduate-level textbook Spacetime and Geometry. Sean Carroll is one of the founders of the group blog cosmicvariance.com, named one of the five top science blogs by Nature. He can be found online at preposterousuniverse.com

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