How to Build a Time Machine [Hardcover]

In How to Build a Time Machine, Paul Davies, Professor of Theoretical Physics and a veteran of the popular science writing genre, has produced a delightful little book about time and time-travel. The format of the book is reader-friendly, written in his usual clear, lucid and engaging style with text linked to relevant sketches, photographs and diagrams of machinery. At the heart of the book is an explanation of Einstein's theory of relativity and what that theory tells us about the possibility of time-travel. Einstein's theory tells us that travel into the future is certainly possible while the possibility of travel into the past has not yet been ruled out. What makes this book such a fascinating and fun read is finding out about the practicalities of building a time machine. If we want to travel into the future, Davies tells us, all we need do is build a machine that moves fast enough. Any machine will do so long as it can move at a velocity close to the speed of light. Things become really interesting however, when we start to think about how to travel backwards in time. The method Davies outlines in the book involves using a wormhole adapted to form a time machine. You jump into the hole and come out in another place and in another, past time. This is a "machine" that is part of the structure of the universe, a machine you step through into the past. Davies then presents a step-by-step guide to building such a machine with illustrations of the various components and descriptions of the processes involved before discussing some of the paradoxes of time-travel. A more interesting way of learning about Einstein's theory than this is difficult to imagine; this is a highly entertaining read and an excellent introduction to the subject of theoretical physics. --Larry Brown

Is time travel possible? According to internationally acclaimed physicist and science writer Paul Davies, the answer is definitely yes. But if we can travel in time, surely we can glimpse the future and act to change it? Or alter the past, creating all sorts of bizarre paradoxes? This hugely entertaining brain-twisting book reveals how it might be done. With his remarkable gift for easy explanation, Paul Davies shows how to use gravity to visit the future and how to warp space to reach the past; and, in a "tour de force", how to build a time machine from a traversable wormhole. This is the ultimate time traveller's companion. Paul Davies expertly and effortlessly explains the mind-boggling physics that makes time travel possible, and more importantly shows how we can make sense of this very possiblity. Might the inconceivable be achievable? Can we break the last cosmic taboo?

Paul Davies is an internationally acclaimed physicist, writer and broadcaster, now based in South Australia. He works in the fields of cosmology, gravitation, and quantum field theory, with particular emphasis on black holes and the origin of the universe. He is the author of some twenty award-winning books, including The Mind of God and The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin of Life.