1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910337881503321

Autore

Broderick Damien

Titolo

The Time Machine Hypothesis : Extreme Science Meets Science Fiction / / by Damien Broderick

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cham : , : Springer International Publishing : , : Imprint : Springer, , 2019

ISBN

3-030-16178-1

Edizione

[1st ed. 2019.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (246 pages)

Collana

Science and Fiction, , 2197-1188

Disciplina

530.11

Soggetti

Physics

Mathematical physics

Literature

Fiction

Popular Science in Physics

Theoretical, Mathematical and Computational Physics

Popular Science in Literature

History and Philosophical Foundations of Physics

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di contenuto

PART ONE: Spacetime Time -- Time Travel Unraveled -- The Scientific Basis for Time Machines -- Closed Timelike Loops -- Don’t Change the Past -- PART TWO: Time Machine Time -- The First Half Century (and a bit) -- Empires of Time -- Behold the Time Machine -- Time’s Up -- Highways to the End of Time -- Windows Into the Past -- From Dinosaurs to Elsewhen -- Looping Time -- PART THREE: A Thought Experiment is Not a Theory -- In Search of Lost Time Machines -- Appendix: “The Dry Sauvages”. .

Sommario/riassunto

Every age has characteristic inventions that change the world. In the 19th century it was the steam engine and the train. For the 20th, electric and gasoline power, aircraft, nuclear weapons, even ventures into space. Today, the planet is awash with electronic business, chatter and virtual-reality entertainment so brilliant that the division between real and simulated is hard to discern. But one new idea from the 19th century has failed, so far, to enter reality—time travel, using machines



to turn the time dimension into a two-way highway. Will it come true, as foreseen in science fiction? Might we expect visits to and from the future, sooner than from space? That is the Time Machine Hypothesis, examined here by futurist Damien Broderick, an award-winning writer and theorist of the genre of the future. Broderick homes in on the topic through the lens of science as well as fiction, exploring some fifty different time-travel scenarios and conundrums found in the science fiction literature and film.