
What Is Time? One Physicist Hunts for the Ultimate Theory - niyazpk
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/02/what-is-time/
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Maro
Disclaimer: I haven't read the book.

As a physicist, I think it's a bad idea when scientists write popular science
books where they try to explain advanced, unproven theories like various
interpretations of time and gravity or string theory. First of all, it's not
even real science as of now, and second, it gives readers a false sense of
understanding: it's like in the (otherwise really bad) movie 'A Serious Man'
where a student is complaining to his physics professor after a quantum theory
test that he feels his failing grade is unfair, because he didn't know he
would be tested on the mathematics and not just the physics ("I understand the
physics! The cat if both alive and dead!"). The professor answers that the
mathematics is the physics.

~~~
stingraycharles
If I may ask a related question, I recently read the book "The Fabric of the
Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality", which is targeted to an
audience of non-specialists too.

Do you happen to know it, and do you happen to have an opinion about the
accuracy of it? It appears to be genuinely accurate, but I have reference to
know this is true.

From [http://www.amazon.com/Fabric-Cosmos-Space-Texture-
Reality/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Fabric-Cosmos-Space-Texture-
Reality/dp/0375412883) :

"Assuming an audience of non-specialists, Greene has set himself a daunting
task: to explain non-intuitive, mathematical concepts like String Theory, the
Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and Inflationary Cosmology with analogies
drawn from common experience. For the most part, he succeeds."

~~~
Maro
Sorry I haven't read that book. Perhaps you can tell me what you have
genuinely learned from that book.

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gjm11
Sean Carroll, the physicist interviewed in this article, blogs at
<http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/> where (among other things)
he's conducting a sort of online book club looking at his recently published
book.

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stingraycharles
If you enjoy this, I recommend watching the following BBC Horizon documentary,
"Do you know what time it is?"

<http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=B6BE0700688DBF9D>

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Panoramix
This is he giving a talk about this: [http://www.themonthly.com.au/origin-
universe-and-arrow-time-...](http://www.themonthly.com.au/origin-universe-and-
arrow-time-sean-carroll-2196)

