From Eternity to Here

The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time

By: Sean Carroll

Narrated by: Erik Synnestvedt

Time moves forward, not backward---everyone knows you can't unscramble an egg. In the hands of one of today's hottest young physicists, that simple fact of breakfast becomes a doorway to understanding the Big Bang, the universe, and other universes, too. In From Eternity to Here, Sean Carroll argues that the arrow of time, pointing resolutely from the past to the future, owes its existence to conditions before the Big Bang itself---a period of modern cosmology of which Einstein never dreamed.

Increasingly, though, physicists are going out into realms that make the theory of relativity seem like child's play. Carroll's scenario is not only elegant, it's laid out in the same easy-to-understand language that has made his group blog, Cosmic Variance, the most popular physics blog on the Net. From Eternity to Here uses ideas at the cutting edge of theoretical physics to explore how properties of space-time before the Big Bang can explain the flow of time we experience in our everyday lives. Carroll suggests that we live in a baby universe, part of a large family of universes in which many of our siblings experience an arrow of time running in the opposite direction. It's an ambitious, fascinating picture of the universe on an ultra-large scale, one that will captivate fans of popular physics blockbusters like Elegant Universe and A Brief History of Time.

©2009 Sean Carroll (P)2010 Tantor

Critic reviews

Carroll writes with verve and infectious enthusiasm, reminding readers that science is a journey in which getting there is, without question, much of the fun.( Publishers Weekly)

Sean Carrol is great but ...

I wanted so much to like this book, but it’s too technical for me. It’s a level or two above my ability to comprehend. Maybe I should have listened to it without doing other things.

great listen well worth it.

Carol does a great job relating universal time to a somewhat more understandable human scale.

Great listen

Full of insight into the history of cosmology, not just what we know but also how we know. Good for cozy bedtime pondering

Great but looks for the keys under the streetlight

This book deserves a high rating simply because of the sheer quantity of interesting information and questions it clearly presents along with the pleasant narration. Most of the book focuses on the facts and questions related to our understanding of time followed by some relatively brief speculations. When speculation occurs it is clearly labeled as such. It is unfortunate that a PDF is not available for the figures discussed. There were, however, a few weaknesses. The book is largely from a general relativity point of view, only mildly addressing quantum effects. Particularly in the description of the hints we see in experiments regarding time, Carroll focuses a lot on the unexpectedly low entropy of the recent past (which is important) but then glosses over several other equally important hints such as the Bell/EPR results, Space and Time not being fundamental, and the information density enigma, he also speaks about the wave function as if it is fundamental while there are very good reasons to believe it is not.

The author basically admits although space and time being non-fundamental increasingly appears to be the case, he is unable to say anything interesting about this, so instead proposes solutions to the low entropy problem in a fundamental space-time context. This is a bit like looking for your keys under the streetlight because the light is better over there. Although speculation is an important aspect of science, successful speculation will illuminate by addressing several of the outstanding hints before us. Although the speculation was mildly interesting, the focusing on just one of the outstanding enigmas along with non-testability left it ultimately un-illuminating.

The author also indicates his preferred interpretation of quantum mechanics is the Multi-World interpretation. Although Carroll seems to point out QM having so many interpretations is odd (and likely another hint) instead of rejecting all the interpretations he seems to settle for one.

The key benefits of this book are the enigma and questions it raises. The author highlights most of the important enigmas giving us hints towards a fuller understanding of time; unfortunately he does follow most of the hint presented. For example the author points out the strong correspondences between information and entropy, even seeming to conclude that the information viewpoint is clearer and more fundamental, yet then proceeds to ignore the information viewpoint for the rest of the book.

Although the author does a pretty good job describing how classical entropy works, I am not sure I would have fully understood it without having listened to Penrose???s (long, detailed and daunting) description in Cycles of Time.

A very good teacher…

Very good foundation presentation for me as a non physicist. He made some more of the story come to life!