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The author of the highly acclaimed Other Worlds again
breaks new ground. This brilliant new work by the eminent physicist Paul Davies
charts the route to the physics of the future, which lies beyond the edge
of infinity. It may ultimately tell us where the universe came from and how
it will end. Davies writes with authority and with clarity, even beauty, about
ideas one has never heard of before -- about the startling, awesome, utterly fascinating
challenges that lie before us. Regions of the universe
exist where gravity is so strong that it overwhelms all physical laws and structures.
New and far-reaching discoveries show that uncontrolled gravity can twist space
and time into destruction at so-called singularities. A singularity is a weird
non-place where spacetime is ripped open and matter may enter or leave the physical
universe. Singularities lie at the centers of black holes
and mark the creation and destruction of the universe. At a singularity, gravitational
forces can become infinite. On the edge of infinity, bizarre effects occur --
time is reversed, cause and effect break down, and matter is totally annihilated.
Most disturbing of all is naked singularity -- a singularity
unclothed by a black hole and capable of destroying the orderly, predicable operation
of the entire cosmos. Here is an entity not subject to any known laws, and representing
the threshold to a strange new physical world. Dr. Davies
writes that we may discover -- at the edge of infinity, in naked singularities
-- a whole new era of physics, more elegant and more fundamental than anything
that has gone before. Dr. Paul Davies is Professor
of Theoretical Physics, University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, lecturer in
applied mathematics at King's College, University of London, and visiting fellow
at the University of London, and visiting fellow at the Institute of Astronomy,
Cambridge. He writes internationally for science magazines and journals, including
Nature, New
Scientist, The Economist,
and The Sciences, and he frequently
contributes to science broadcasts. He is the author of Other
Worlds, The Physics of Time
Asymmetry, Space and Time in
the Modern Universe, The Runaway
Universe (Stardom
in paperback), The Forces of Nature,
and The Search for Gravity Waves. |
