Leading us gently and light-heartedly through the dizzying world of our space and time, he even gives us the recipe for a time machine, capable of taking us Back to the Future, to Alice's Wonderland or on a trip with the Terminator.

From the Author
(What's this book is about and who I am.)
The book is meant for all those people--which is pretty much everyone I know--who are curious about such exotic sounding concepts as black holes, space warps, the Big Bang, time travel and parallel universes. In writing the book I have asked myself whether complete non-experts can learn a little about some of the ideas of modern physics without feeling the urge to check that their IQ is up to the task before embarking.

The subject matter of the book has been covered elsewhere at many different levels. At the very top is the advanced text or monograph for the practitioner in the field. This is the sorcerer's spell book, decipherable only by the privileged few. Then comes the textbook aimed at the university physics student. It too contains some spells, but nothing very powerful. Below that comes the top end of the popular science market. Such books are aimed at the non-scientist in that they contain little or no mathematics. However, they appeal only to those who are either (a) other scientists or (b) fans of such books already, who have invariably read similar books on the subject. So, when writing this book I have made every effort to cut out as much scientific jargon as possible.

I hope this book is entertaining as well as informative. I never set out to write an introductory course in relativity theory, but what I offer is a glimpse of what modern physics is about and an opportunity to share with me the sheer excitement of contemplating some of the deepest questions of existence. I hope you enjoy it.

I had also better introduce myself I suppose. I am a theoretical physicist at the University of Surrey in Guildford, England where I carry out my research as well as teach undergraduate classes in quantum physics, relativity theory, mathematics and nuclear physics.

I performed the 1998 UK Institute of Physics Schools and Colleges Lecture Tour. The lecture ended up as this book. I also seem to have been involved quite a bit recently in various TV and radio programmes discussing the subject matter of my book. I appeared with Roger Penrose on the BBC's Flow of Time documentary earlier this year and will appear later this Autumn on another BBC documentary, with Paul Davies, called A Life of Time. My recent radio work has involved discussing topics ranging from the nature of Free Will and the meaning of truth in science to the physics behind the Star Wars movies. Earlier this year I was nominated for the Royal Society Michael Faraday Award in the Public Understanding of Science.