Cycles of Time

An Extraordinary New View of the Universe

By: Roger Penrose

Narrated by: Bruce Mann

Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins

Publisher's summary

From the best-selling author of The Emperor’s New Mind and The Road to Reality, a groundbreaking book that provides new views 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 its 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. Ideal for both the amateur astronomer and the advanced physicist - with plenty of exciting insights for each - Cycles of Time is certain to provoke and challenge.

Intellectually thrilling and accessible, this is another essential guide to the universe from one of our preeminent thinkers.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2011 Roger Penrose (P)2011 Random House

A great service to Boltzmann and the rest of us

Whew, I can follow what I can’t discover; use what I haven’t created. Thank you professor, I’m very grateful.

Detailed and makes key points - not for everyone

I recommend downloading the PDF. If you can???t understand the PDF without reading the book ??? don???t bother. Now if you find the PDF fascinating, then try the book. It is really not a book that does well with audio unless you are already very familiar with the subject and have excellent multidimensional visualization skills. This book has a truly excellent description of entropy and the second law it is worth it just for that analysis. I don???t find the overall thrust of the book compelling, but it points out very important defects of the basic big bang theory which must be addressed one way or another.

This book was meant for paper, not audio

I was excited to read a book by Penrose, after hearing so much about him in books by Hawking and others. But unlike books by Hawking, Brian Greene and other excellent choices on Audible, this one was not cut out for audio. It comes with a PDF reference guide, and unless you can visualize things like q3-dimensional space and conformal representations of hyperbolic geometry, you really need to have the reference guide in front of you through almost the entire listen.

This book seems perfect for a Nova documentary. Animation would make it so much more accessible. I would be captivated by a well-made couple hour documentary.

About the narrator: At times I felt like I was listening to a British Sheldon Cooper (Big Bang Theory). He narrated with a rapid and awkward cadence and had a weird habit of starting the first word of a sentence with 'Ah-.

Fascinating topic, but I didn't get much out of this book trying to listen to it in the car.

Lots of diagrams referenced

I don’t have much of a physics background (just one semester in college) so I found this book especially technical. I was looking for a challenging read so I appreciated the rigor. I’m so sick of physics books that treat the reader like they’re too dumb to understand the concepts. I like that this book required deep thinking and re-reading certain sections to understand it. I’ll admit that I was lost during the parts where Penrose described DeSitter space (sorry if wrong spelling), tensor related concepts, and other abstract models that would require more math/physics knowledge. I was confused about the part about information loss in black holes because I just read the book Black Hole Wars by Leonard Susskind, which I highly recommend, that highly contradicted the premise of Penrose’s argument. That was the one area that I wish he expanded on, but everything else was covered thoroughly. The one thing that bothered me about this book is the constant references to the attached PDF, which in the end completely defeats the purpose of listening to this book. There’s probably around a hundred diagrams referenced during the book. This forces the reader to constantly examine these drawings if they want to visualize what’s going on. Things get very confusing if you choose to not look at the PDF file. So I’d recommend buying the written book over listening to it on Audible. The reader was great, but the diagrams really are key to understanding the book so it would be much easier to just buy the written copy.

Exceptional text to understand we is known about time as it impacts cosmology and quantum mechanics.

Clear summary of the current cosmological theories of space, time, space-time, and what is known and theorized about what we call the universe. Sufficient mathematical framework to understand and follow the historical developments while including clues and hints as to the future work needed to provide a layperson’s interest in these topics. The reading is expertly done and adds to the joy of study while keeping it interesting and compelling.

Deep waters

A challenge the first time,
Better the second.
On the 3rd attempt at understanding, between the formulas, I get it.

Milking the quantum cow

What did you like best about Cycles of Time? What did you like least?

Another one of these scientists's half-hearted attempt at getting a few dollars out of the public's curiosity for anything 'stringy' and 'cosmy'. I must say that this latest effort is more honest than most, but mostly more clumsy. Penrose is more honest in the sense that a lot of the research spelled out in excruciating details is actually his own or that of his collaborators. More clumsy because of low quality illustrations, referred to by a notation system that is counterintuitive (in the accompanying PDF, illustration 2.9 appears pages BEFORE 2.14. ) Worse still, the choice of a narrator is awful, a voice that takes several chapters getting used to. I suppose that the tone and timbre chosen was to match that of the old professor, but it sounds shakingly feeble and quite monotonous, certainly no match for the excellent voice in Richard Panek's 4% Universe.

What did you like best about this story?

the first part is a good exposition of historical development leading to the standard model.

What do you think the narrator could have done better?

give the job to someone else, possibly a reader that understands physics and takes throat drops.

Was Cycles of Time worth the listening time?

some of it was

Any additional comments?

Forget all string theorists and read outside the box - This trend is getting to be very annoying, too much dogma by too many priests who copy each other with too much hype. Avoid any book that uses the word 'profound' more than 100 times, as Dr Susskind's latest book does. Those books are deeply superficial and provide glorified snakeoil with narcissistic overtones. Penrose avoids some of that, and this is why I bought the book. Buy at your own risk.

If you like popular science...

This isn't it. I listen to/read a lot of popular science, and it's kind of like playing Guitar Hero on a video game console and thinking "yeah, I could play guitar"...

I learned two things from this book:

1. There are really smart people in this world.
2. I am not one of them.

The audio format isn't good for this one unless you have the math already worked out, and there are a lot of diagrams referred to. Also the most obnoxious sounding British accent on the reader imaginable. Like the British kid from South Park.

Penrose makes cosmological concepts accessible

Would you consider the audio edition of Cycles of Time to be better than the print version?

An excellent book, especially if you're a fan of his classic work "The Road to Reality". He is not shy about mathematical equations or concepts and the lay person that invests the time to go through this book will be very well rewarded.

What did you like best about this story?

This audible version comes with a lengthy PDF file with Penrose's trademark hand drawn diagrams. His diagrams are probably some of the best tools I've ever seen to make difficult concepts accessible to the non-physicist or mathematician.

Did the narration match the pace of the story?

Narration was adequate.

Bravely tackling the Past Hypothesis riddle

The Big Bang was in a special initial condition and nobody knows why. Penrose gives us a fascinating theory. Sir Roger is a gem.

Kudos to the narrator who does an excellent job with some difficult Mathematics.