Cycles of time - BookWyrm

No cover — Roger Penrose: Cycles of time (2011, Knopf)

288 pages

English language

Published Oct. 18, 2011 by Knopf.

ISBN:: 978-0-224-08036-1
OCLC Number:: 676726661

(3 reviews)

"A groundbreaking book providing a new take on three of cosmology's most profound questions: What, if anything, came before the Big Bang? What is the source of order in our universe? What is the universe's ultimate future? Current understanding of our universe dictates that all matter will eventually thin out to zero density, with huge black holes finally evaporating away into massless energy. Roger Penrose--one of the most innovative mathematicians of our time--turns around this predominant picture of the universe's "heat death," arguing how the expected ultimate fate of our accelerating, expanding universe can actually be reinterpreted as the "Big Bang" of a new one. Along the way to this remarkable cosmological picture, Penrose sheds new light on basic principles that underlie the behavior of our universe, describing various standard and nonstandard cosmological models, the fundamental role of the cosmic microwave background, and the key status of black holes. Intellectually …

"A groundbreaking book providing a new take on three of cosmology's most profound questions: What, if anything, came before the Big Bang? What is the source of order in our universe? What is the universe's ultimate future? Current understanding of our universe dictates that all matter will eventually thin out to zero density, with huge black holes finally evaporating away into massless energy. Roger Penrose--one of the most innovative mathematicians of our time--turns around this predominant picture of the universe's "heat death," arguing how the expected ultimate fate of our accelerating, expanding universe can actually be reinterpreted as the "Big Bang" of a new one. Along the way to this remarkable cosmological picture, Penrose sheds new light on basic principles that underlie the behavior of our universe, describing various standard and nonstandard cosmological models, the fundamental role of the cosmic microwave background, and the key status of black holes. Intellectually thrilling and accessible, Cycles of Time is another essential guide to the universe from one of our preeminent thinkers"--

3 editions

Adrián Astur Álvarez reviewed Cycles of time by Roger Penrose

Review of 'Cycles of time' on 'Goodreads'

No rating

I'm not going to rate this book because I had no business reading it.

I read this on the recommendation of a reliable book friend, the same who got me to read The Splendid and the Vile so he had some fresh clout since I really liked that one. This is not a guy who studies astrophysics or mathematics or, honestly, any science, so I figured this would be accessible to the general population. I didn't question it since it was coming from this friend, who described one of the concepts covered, which intrigued me. My belief in what kind of book this was held so strongly that even after getting halfway through and not understanding anything about what I was reading I felt sure things would clear up at any moment.

I even asked him about it. Mentioned it was kind of mathy, yeah? To which he responded, oh …

I'm not going to rate this book because I had no business reading it.

I read this on the recommendation of a reliable book friend, the same who got me to read The Splendid and the Vile so he had some fresh clout since I really liked that one. This is not a guy who studies astrophysics or mathematics or, honestly, any science, so I figured this would be accessible to the general population. I didn't question it since it was coming from this friend, who described one of the concepts covered, which intrigued me. My belief in what kind of book this was held so strongly that even after getting halfway through and not understanding anything about what I was reading I felt sure things would clear up at any moment.

I even asked him about it. Mentioned it was kind of mathy, yeah? To which he responded, oh you'll get the gist, I just skimmed the math parts. Phew, okay.

I finished the book. I had no idea what I just read. Skimmed the math parts? I couldn't even interpret any point in this book to mean the concepts my friend had described which intrigued me in the first place.

Turns out he gave me the wrong title. He wanted to recommend Endless Universe: Beyond the Big Bang Theory, which apparently is meant for mere liberal arts mortals like myself.

Here's something about me that I learned while living abroad: I'm skilled at not knowing the language. I wait around, I see some charts, I read through a lot of mathematical formulas, we go back to the second law of thermodynamics and I'm just like haha very cool, very fun.

tempse

rated it

Aug. 22, 2020

Phil

rated it

Jan. 1, 2018

Subjects

Cyclic universe theory (Cosmology)
Cosmology
SCIENCE / Astrophysics & Space Science