Cycles of Time

An Extraordinary New View of the Universe

De: Roger Penrose

Narrado por: Bruce Mann

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.

Includes a bonus PDF of illustrations and equations from the book

Reseñas de la Crítica

“The hyper-density of this book made my brain feel simultaneously wiped out and dazzled.”
-Boston Globe Best Science Books of 2011

“Radical . . . A surprising and unorthodox work disguised in the jacket of a popular science book, Cycles of Time should prove both deeply enlightening and just as deeply mystifying for anyone who dares to follow along.”
-Peter Woit, The Wall Street Journal

“An intellectual thrill ride . . . As Penrose builds a solid foundation for his argument in analyzing universal entropic accumulation and Newton’s Second Law, the reader senses something tremendous looming—mysterious and compelling as a black hole . . . A cosmological page-turner.”
-Y. S. Fing, Washington Independent Review of Books

“If you’ll forgive a skiing metaphor, Cycles of Time is a black diamond of a book. But like all steep slopes, sometimes you take a moment from your struggles and look up, and in front of you is an utterly gorgeous view.”
-Anthony Doerr, Boston Globe

“Profound . . . This fascinating book will surely become a classic in the history of cosmology.”
-Choice

“Controversial but intriguing . . . Well worth the effort.”
-Kirkus

“Intriguing . . . Penrose makes provocative arguments for his challenging new theory.”
-Publishers Weekly

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.

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.

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.

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.