Time: A Traveler's Guide

This text strives to answer the questions posed by time - what is time, is time travel possible, is time real, does it flow in one direction only? Issues addressed include light cones, time machines, cosmic moment lines and Lorentz transformations. Readers do not need to be experts in physics. In Time: A Traveler's Guide, Clifford A. Pickover strives to answer the most challenging questions scientists and philosophers ask. What is time? Is time travel possible? Is time real? Does it flow in one direction only? Does it have a beginning or an end? What is eternity? For centuries, these questions have intrigued mystics, philosophers, and scientists. Today physicists would agree that time is one of the strangest properties of our universe. This book allows readers to travel through time and space, and they needn't be experts in physics. By the time readers finish this book they will understand such seemingly arcane concepts as space-time diagrams, light cones, time machines, cosmic moment lines, transcendent infinite speeds, Lorentz transformations, causal linkages, superliminal and ultraliminal motions, Minkowskian space-times, Gödel universes, closed timelike curves, and Tipler cylinders. This book is a resource for science fiction writers and readers, a playground for computer hobbyists, an adventure and education for beginning students in physics or philosophy.