Trices Group Book Review Journal

About Time: Einstein's Unfinished Revolution

Davies, Paul

by:

Simon & Schuster (Touchstone)

Publisher:

Location:

1995

Julie Metz

Cover:

Softcover

Type:

Lynard Barnes

reviewed by:

09/01/2005

Comment:

* * * Good place to start.

What is time?
Before reading Paul Davies’ ABOUT TIME: EINSTEIN’S UNFINISHED REVOLUTION, I would have said that time was a process in which matter was transformed into energy and eventually back into matter. After reading ABOUT TIME, my answer remains the same, however this should not be viewed as a critique, though it comes awfully close.

We live in a time-dependent world. Our manner of reckoning the measurement of time (sequenced changes) are all artificial constructs, from watching the shadow on a sundial, to listing for the pips resulting from time maintained by atomic, cesium-beam clocks. When we say the earth is four billion years old, or that it takes light eight and a half minutes to reach the earth from the Sun, we are counting time by our “earthbound” clock. As Davies points out toward the end of his book, even our mental perceptions of the world around us appear to be delayed by one second of time as we measure it. The mental decision to lift an index finger starts firing neurons “moments” before the decision to do so is made–according to our clock measurements. Time is everything and everywhere. Yet, it is an artificial construct. Suppose however there is another clock; a clock built into the universe itself, beating out a rhythm of growth and decay, life and death for all things. It is this intrinsic clock that Paul Davies takes a stab at identifying in the 316 pages of his book.

Davies has managed to render a highly complex, multi-layered subject down to five or six essential components. In the end, it is reasonable to conclude that the question “what is time” can not be answered because we have no way of measuring any process smaller than a trillion-trillionth of a second the speed of light, which is 186,300 miles per second (or 700 million miles per hour). (In the metric system, which Davies uses, he rounds the speed of light up to 300 million meters per second–the precise figure is 299,792,458 meters per second. Electrical signals travel at about two-thirds the speed of light in wires). Right, the numbers–lots of numbers–are a part of this reading adventure, but they do not get in the way of an entertaining journey.

Roughly half of ABOUT TIME is simply setting up definitions and explaining the significance of Einstein’s theory of relativity. In this, Davies is at his best. Using the example of Betty, taking a twenty year near-speed-of-light voyage to a distant world, and Ann who remains on earth, Davies provides a thorough discussion of what each woman sees on their

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time-measuring device–their clocks. More importantly, he discusses what each woman sees on the other’s clock and why. The foundation concepts laid by the example are revisited throughout the book. The book is also laced with ample biographical material about Albert Einstein. It is rather obvious that Einstein’s genius was not his mathematical skills, but rather his conceptual skills. Even as you follow Davies’ example of Ann and Betty, you have to constantly nudge yourself into remembering why time seems to be slowing down for Betty or speeding up (time dilation) for Ann.

That space and time are relative is not an easy concept to wrap your mind around. As Davies points out, physics was a “mature” discipline when Einstein introduced his concept of relativity. “It was possible to believe,” Davies writes, “ that [Issac] Newton’s laws of motion and gravitation, [James Clark] Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism, the laws of thermodynamics and a handful of additional principles might adequately account for all physical phenomena”. A century later, with Einstein’s theories being verified, physics has become very un-settled, still in pursuit of Einstein’s quest to unit the laws of motion and gravitation, electromagnetism and the laws of thermodynamics. Physicists are delving farther and farther beneath the surface of matter to explain the physical world–so far without success.

The study of sub-atomic matter, quantum physics, has generated new discoveries and new theories to explain them. In chapter 7 of his book, Davis provides a surprisingly clear discussion of how particles appear to exceed the speed of light. As he points out early on in a discussion of time-warps and gravitation, Einstein’s theory of relativity does not say nothing travels faster than the speed of light, only that there is a barrier in which an object traveling less than the speed of light can never exceed it and an object traveling faster than the speed of light can never travel less than the speed of light. “Physicists have invented a name for superluminal particles: they are called ‘tachyons,’ after the Greek word for ‘speed’”. But there are also objects–particles–which appear to travel faster than the speed of light. The concept is called tunneling and Davies does an excellent job of explaining exactly what it is. It is one of those concepts from quantum physics which has commercial applications in computers and other electronic circuits. It is related to time measurement because it throws a variable into using the sub-atomic world as a “universal clock”.

Tunneling is just one “oddity” coming out of quantum physics. In 1927, Werner Heisenber introduced the” uncertainty principle” in which “all measurable attributes of the electron are subject to uncertainties in their values”. In other words, you may know the location of an electron or how fast it is moving, but you can not know both at the same time. There is a lot more going on at the sub-atomic level of nature than we currently know. This is where Davies basically leaves the subject: there is more to Albert Einstein’s revolutionary contribution to our concept of time. There may be a universal clock, but it is yet to be found.

The most striking thread running through ABOUT TIME is the author’s continued reference to “the flow of time”–the perception of a past, present and future. Precisely where the argument against “the flow of time” comes from, this reviewer is unable to identify. That the discussion fits into a physics discussion is obvious. Every event has a cause, but is the cause necessarily in the past? Or present or future? Is our concept of time so artificial that we force a percption of sequenced reality where there is in fact no sequence, only events? Apparently some of those enamored of quantum physics are prepared to use the science as an argument against a Creator concept. It is an odd position. Davies touches upon this anti-Creator position in a couple of places in the book. (If the universe existed before the “big bang”, then science still has not answered the question of how the earth came into

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existence, leaving supernatural “God” as the default answer). The “in the beginning” preamble of most religions is effectively nullified if there was no “beginning” to the universe. This seems to be the target of the argument against time being a process. Yet, physics, so far, offers very skimpy evidence to support the view of a world created by the execution of the laws of physics. This is not a criticism. It is an observation. The evidence may still yet come. In the meantime, as science thrashes through the subjective and objective fields of reality, the impression is inescapable that a bit of narcissistic proselytizing is setting in.

Read ABOUT TIME. It does a very good job of explaining the theory of relativity and some of the issues awaiting resolution.

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