About Time, Adam Frank
About Time, Adam Frank
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About Time
Cosmology, Time and Culture at the Twilight of the Big Bang

Author: Adam Frank

Narrator: David Drummond

Unabridged: 13 hr 32 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 09/30/2011

Categories: Nonfiction, History, Science


Synopsis

The Big Bang is all but dead, and we do not yet know what will replace it. Our universe's "beginning" is at an end. What does this have to do with us here on Earth? Our lives are about to be dramatically shaken again—as altered as they were with the invention of the clock, the steam engine, the railroad, the radio and the Internet.

In About Time, Adam Frank explains 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 development of agriculture to the industrial revolution to the invention of Outlook 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. Many books tell the story, recounting the progress of scientific cosmology. 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. He looks at the way our engagement with the world—our inventions, our habits and more—has allowed us to discover the nature of the universe and how those discoveries, in turn, inform our daily experience.

This astounding book will change the way we think about time and how it affects our lives.

About Adam Frank

Adam Frank is a professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester and a regular contributor to Discover and Astronomy magazines. He has also written for Scientific American and many other publications and is the cofounder of NPR's 13:7 Cosmos & Culture blog. He was a Hubble Fellow and is the recipient of an American Astronomical Society Prize for his scientific writing.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Dan on March 15, 2014

There’s something about time that seems to perplex us. It’s easy to measure, but hard to define; the past seems different from the future, but our equations don’t tell us why; it is everywhere, and nowhere. No wonder books about the nature of time appear like… well, clockwork, from Stephen Hawking’s......more

Goodreads review by Charlene on January 19, 2018

Adam Frank focused not just on whether we could agree that there is a time we agree upon (people near different sized objects, such as black holes or small planets) would experience time differently. This has been written about quite a bit. Frank also wants to understand time as it relates to cultur......more

Goodreads review by Florin on April 21, 2017

Fairly impressive under several aspects. Recommended. Detailed review will soon follow.......more

Goodreads review by Brian on November 11, 2014

This is a curious book that tries to be great - and it almost succeeds. Adam Frank makes a determined effort to interweave two apparently unconnected strands of science and technology history - the personal appreciation of time in human culture and our cosmology. Along the way he brings in a whole h......more

Goodreads review by Randal on January 25, 2016

From my blog post on time here: Frank’s 2011 book provides an illuminating survey of the history of modern cosmology; the evolution from the pre-history of humans in the West to debates at astrophysics conferences in our own time. The first signs of speculation about time he sees in the story of mar......more