About Time: Cosmology and Culture at the Twilight of the Big Bang

Synopsis

Our universe’s “beginning” is at an end. What does this have to do with us, here on Earth? Everything. Our lives are about to be dramatically shaken—as altered as they were by the invention of the clock, the steam engine, the railroad, the radio and the Internet.

In About Time, astrophysicist Adam Frank allows us a peek into the cutting edge of cosmology, explaining how the texture of our lives changes along with our understanding of the universe’s origin. Since we awoke to self-consciousness fifty thousand years ago, our lived experience of time, from hunting and gathering to the invention of cell phones and electronic calendars, has been transformed and rebuilt many times. But the latest theories in cosmology—time with no beginning, parallel universes, eternal inflation—are about to send us in a new direction.

Time is both our grandest and most intimate conception of the universe. Frank tells the story of humanity’s deepest question—when and how did everything begin?—alongside the story of how human beings have experienced time, looking at the way our engagement with the world has allowed us to discover the nature of the universe and how those discoveries inform our daily experience. This astounding book will change the way we think about time and how it affects our lives.