Nahin Time Machine Tales

The Science Fiction Adventures and Philosophical Puzzles of Time Travel
1. Auflage 2017
ISBN: 978-3-319-48864-6
Verlag: Springer Nature Switzerland
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 423 Seiten

Reihe: Science and Fiction

This book contains a broad overview of time travel in science fiction, along with a detailed examination of the philosophical implications of time travel. The emphasis of this book is now on the philosophical and on science fiction, rather than on physics, as in the author's earlier books on the subject. In that spirit there are, for example, no Tech Notes filled with algebra, integrals, and differential equations, as there are in the first and second editions of TIME MACHINES. Writing about time travel is, today, a respectable business. It hasn't always been so. After all, time travel, prima facie, appears to violate a fundamental law of nature; every effect has a cause, with the cause occurring before the effect. Time travel to the past, however, seems to allow, indeed to demand, backwards causation, with an effect (the time traveler emerging into the past as he exits from his time machine) occurring before its cause (the time traveler pushing the start button on his machine's control panel to start his trip backward through time). Time Machine Tales includes new discussions of the advances by physicists and philosophers that have appeared since the publication of TIME MACHINES in 1999, examples of which are the chapters on time travel paradoxes. Those chapters have been brought up-to-date with the latest philosophical thinking on the paradoxes.


Paul Nahin was born in California, and did all of his schooling there (Brea-Olinda High 1958, Stanford BS 1962, Caltech MS 1963 and - as a Howard Hughes Staff Doctoral Fellow - UC/Irvine PhD 1972, with all degrees in electrical engineering). He has taught at Harvey Mudd College, the Naval Postgraduate School and the Universities of New Hampshire (where he is now emeritus professor of electrical engineering) and Virginia.
Prof. Nahin has published a couple of dozen short science fiction stories in ANALOG, OMNI, and TWILIGHT ZONE magazines, and has written 14 books on mathematics and physics. He has given invited talks on mathematics at Bowdoin College, the Claremont Graduate School, the University of Tennessee and Caltech, has appeared on National Public Radio's 'Science Friday' show (discussing time travel) as well as on New Hampshire Public Radio's 'The Front Porch' show (discussing imaginary numbers) and advised Boston's WGBH Public Television's 'Nova' program on the script for their time travel episode. He gave the invited Sampson Lectures for 2011 in Mathematics at Bates College (Lewiston, Maine).

Autoren/Hrsg.

Nahin, Paul J.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1;Also By Paul J. Nahin;6
2;Frontispiece: The Pioneers of Time Travel;7
2.1;A Note on the Story Citations and Science Fiction History;8
3;Some First Words;10
3.1;For Further Discussion;20
4;Acknowledgements;24
5;Introduction;26
5.1;That Useless Time Machine;36
5.2;A Useful Time Machine;38
5.3;For Further Discussion;41
6;Contents;45
7;About the Author;47
8;Chapter 1: A Broad Look at Time Travel;48
8.1;1.1 Time Travel in the Fantasy and Science Fiction Literature;48
8.2;1.2 Where Are All the Time Travelers?;57
8.3;1.3 Skepticism About Tales of Time Travel;62
8.4;1.4 Troubles with (some) Time Machines;69
8.5;1.5 Quantum Gravity, Singularities, Black Holes, and Time Travel;76
8.6;1.6 Tipler´s Time Machine;85
8.7;1.7 For Further Discussion;89
9;Chapter 2: Philosophical Space and Time;97
9.1;2.1 Time: What Is It, and Is It Real?;97
9.2;2.2 Linear Time and the Infinity of Past and Future;107
9.3;2.3 Cause and Effect;113
9.4;2.4 Backward Causation;118
9.5;2.5 The Fourth Dimension;124
9.6;2.6 Spacetime and the Block Universe;136
9.7;2.7 Philosophical Implications of the Block Universe;146
9.8;2.8 For Further Discussion;155
10;Chapter 3: The Physics of Time Travel: Part I;160
10.1;3.1 The Direction of Time;160
10.2;3.2 The Arrows of Time;169
10.3;3.3 Time Dilation;184
10.4;3.4 The Lorentz Transformation;191
10.5;3.5 Spacetime Diagrams, Light Cones, Metrics, and Invariant Intervals;200
10.6;3.6 Proper Time and the Twin Paradox in Time Travel to the Future;218
10.7;3.7 For Further Discussion;226
11;Chapter 4: Philosophers, Physicists, and the Time Travel Paradoxes;232
11.1;4.1 Paradoxes and Their First Appearance in Science Fiction;232
11.2;4.2 Changing the Past and the Grandfather Paradox;240
11.3;4.3 Changing Versus Affecting the Past;251
11.4;4.4 Causal Loop and Bootstrap Paradoxes;259
11.5;4.5 Sexual Paradoxes;270
11.6;4.6 Splitting Universes and Time Travel;274
11.7;4.7 For Further Discussion;282
12;Chapter 5: Communication with the Past;290
12.1;5.1 Reversed Time;290
12.2;5.2 Multi-dimensional Time;297
12.3;5.3 Maxwell´s Equations and Sending Messages to the Past;301
12.4;5.4 Wheeler and Feynman and Their Bilking Paradox;309
12.5;5.5 Absorber Theory and Signaling the Past;314
12.6;5.6 Tachyonic Signals and the Bell Quantum Antitelephone;318
12.7;5.7 For Further Discussion;328
13;Chapter 6: The Physics of Time Travel: II;333
13.1;6.1 Faster-than-Light into the Past;333
13.2;6.2 Tipler´s Rotating Cylinder Time Machine;341
13.3;6.3 Thorne´s Wormhole Time Machine;345
13.4;6.4 Gott´s Cosmic String Time Machine;363
13.5;6.5 Cutting and Warping Spacetime;370
13.6;6.6 For Further Discussion;378
14;Appendix A: Old Friends Across Time (A Story);382
14.1;For Further Discussion;387
15;Appendix B: Newton´s Gift (A Story);389
15.1;For Further Discussion;394
16;Appendix C: Computer Simulation of the Entropic Gas Clock;396
17;Epilogue;398
18;Glossary;407
19;Index;417