• Cycles of Time

  • An Extraordinary New View of the Universe
  • By: Roger Penrose
  • Narrated by: Bruce Mann
  • Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
  • 3.9 out of 5 stars (191 ratings)

Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.
Cycles of Time  By  cover art

Cycles of Time

By: Roger Penrose
Narrated by: Bruce Mann
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $15.75

Buy for $15.75

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.

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

What listeners say about Cycles of Time

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    76
  • 4 Stars
    48
  • 3 Stars
    41
  • 2 Stars
    16
  • 1 Stars
    10
Performance
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    69
  • 4 Stars
    30
  • 3 Stars
    21
  • 2 Stars
    22
  • 1 Stars
    9
Story
  • 4 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    68
  • 4 Stars
    33
  • 3 Stars
    26
  • 2 Stars
    19
  • 1 Stars
    6

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars

Difficult, Awe-inducing and Fascinating

Wow, this is a challenging book. I was tempted to stop listening at various points, but it was usually there that Penrose dropped in a gem of insight or an utterly fascinating speculation on the nature of the universe, and on I went. I finally settled in when I realized that I was listening to a unique book: it is written for the general reader, but it doesn't try to soft pedal any of the complexity of thought that leads to the conclusions. In the end, I loved it.

What is the book about? Penrose is proposing an admittedly conjectural notion of universal cosmology. He is, in fact, making a new argument for something like the balanced beauty of the old Steady State idea of the universe's orgin and life while using all the new stuff on black holes, the cosmic background radiation and black holes. He's attempting to reconcile the Big Bang with a steady state by arguing that at the extreme end of things -- the heat death of the universe after all the black holes have evaporated and all that remains are mass-less protons, gravitons and such -- the geometry of the universe will match the geometry necessarily in place at the time of the Big Bang. And things could, thus, start all over again or, as Penrose puts it, bounce. We could be somewhere in the midst of an endless cycle of expanding and "bouncing" universes.

Whether or not you buy Penrose's conclusion, the road there is hard, awe-inducing and fascinating.

I highly recommending downloading his cool illustration packet, many handdrawn, and referring to them from time to time, as well.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

23 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

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.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

18 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

No PDF, difficult to follow

The narrator instructs the listener to refer to the PDF, clearly indicating that it should be included. This is a chronic problem with Audible Books, reference to a pdf, but none available. With this book, it makes it impossible to follow. It's like reading an 18th century math book, tedious, impossible to follow.
If you're interested, get a paper copy, I know more about the ideas in this book from reading a press report than after an hour of listening. Big disappointment.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

8 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

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.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

7 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    1 out of 5 stars

Tedious, dull, difficult

Somehow Roger Penrose has a reputation as an explainer of cutting-edge scientific ideas to the lay public. This is the first of his books that I have read, and I am disappointed.

A major technical problem with the audiobook is the constant references to a PDF of diagrams which makes the discussion impossible to follow while driving or working in the garden.

But beyond that, the author steps way back and teaches us the physics of Entropy in tedious detail. I suspect it is a cover for the fact that he, and no one else, really understands time at all! Perhaps they think that if they can make us fall asleep listening to the finer points of entropy, we will believe that our great scientists must really understand this. But I believe that if they understood time, they would be able to explain it.

When he talks about the universe and cosmology, he takes something of great beauty and deep mystery, and somehow makes it boring and dry. It is like the entomologist who would rather keep a collection of dead insects under glass than watch the creatures living in the wild. All the beauty and wonder are sucked out of it.

It is as if the subject of cosmology has had all the mystical lifeblood drained out of it, and its dead remains were pressed into the pages of this book. Buried deep in this pile of ashes is the suggestion that the universe goes through great cycles of expansion and contraction. Doesn't that sound marvelous? So why does it sound so boring in the pages of this book?

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

5 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Don't Go Here Unless...

This is very difficult to digest. I loved it, but must reread(listen). This is a fascinating book in at least the regard to helping one realize, after reading a handful of physics books written for laymen, that physics is not as easy as one may think. If you hang out in the Science and Physics portion of Audible you have to give this one a try. Enjoy!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Deep waters

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

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

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.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

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.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars
  • JA
  • 06-25-12

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.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful