Book description
This is a book about universes. It tells a story that revolves around
a single extraordinary fact: that Albert Einstein's famous theory of
relativity describes a series of entire universes. Not many solutions
to Einstein's tantalising universe equations have ever been found, but
those that have are all remarkable. Some describe universes that
expand in size, while others contract. Some rotate like a top, while
others are chaotically unpredictable. Some are perfectly smooth, while
others are lumpy. Some permit time travel into the past. Only a few
allow life to evolve within them; the rest, if they exist, remain
unknown and unknowable to conscious minds.
Here, in The Book of Universes, we are confronted with the
most fantastic and far-reaching speculations within the entire realm
of science.
John D. Barrow is Professor of Mathematical Sciences and Director of
the Millennium Mathematics Project at Cambridge University, Fellow of
Clare Hall, Cambridge, a Fellow of the Royal Society, and the current
Gresham Professor of Geometry at Gresham College, London. His principal
area of scientific research is cosmology, and he is the author of many
highly acclaimed books about the nature and significance of modern
developments in physics, astronomy, and mathematics, including
The
Origin of the Universe;
The Universe that Discovered Itself;
The Book of Nothing;
The Constants of Nature;
The Infinite Book: a Short Guide to the Boundless; Timeless and Endless;
The Artful Universe Expanded;
New Theories of Everything;
and
Cosmic Imagery
.
