Reddit reviews A Brief History of Time
We found 79 Reddit comments about A Brief History of Time. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
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Reddit reviews A Brief History of TimeWe found 79 Reddit comments about A Brief History of Time. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
A Brief History Of Time
Not to be confused with his album "A Brief History Of Rhyme"
"We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology." - Carl Sagan
Do Stephen a solid and read A Brief History of Time. And never forget the importance of knowledge. The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan is another great one.
RIP Stephen Hawking, one of the truest niggas who ever walked the face of the earth.
I always recommend Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin because it's less antagonistic and more matter of fact about our evolution. Another good choice might be The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond. Again, I'm trying to think of the less obvious and less vitriolic choices than Harris or Dawkins. Handing him something entitled "The God Delusion" is likely to just shut off his brain instantly.
Oh ... to combat the Young Earth mentality, you could consider something like A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking.
I remember reading A Brief History of Time while in middle school. I picked it up out of the public library on a whim. I was surprised at how easy of a read it was for a topic that is so complex. It was at that point I understood that the most complex topics in human history were easy to understand at a high level if explained simply, that the knowledge was easily accessible to someone like me.
It's one of the few books that I can point to that I can say legitimately changed my life.
Thank you all for your responses! I have compiled a list of books mentioned by at least three different people below. Since some books have abbreviations (SICP) or colloquial names (Dragon Book), not to mention the occasional omission of a starting "a" or "the" this was done by hand and as a result it may contain errors.
edit: This list is now books mentioned by at least three people (was two) and contains posts up to icepack's.
edit: Updated with links to Amazon.com. These are not affiliate - Amazon was picked because they provide the most uniform way to compare books.
edit: Updated up to redline6561
Sagan and Tyson aren't even in the same league. Sagan's Cosmos is much better, scientifically, educationally, and from an entertainment perspective.
However, if you're interested in cosmology specifically, neither series will get you very far. They cover a range of topics, some of which are prerequisites for cosmology (like relativity), others which aren't really cosmology (e.g. astronomy, astrophysics, other kinds of physics.)
Some books that are good for an accessible introduction to issues in cosmology are:
Amazon links for books mentioned in this thread:
\/u/thetrueonion (OP)
\/u/llothar:
\/u/DallasGreen:
\/u/gearnut:
\/u/frothysasquatch:
\/u/Beefstyles:
\/u/CalledCaptainHook:
\/u/75footubi:
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I feel similarly whenever I see a popular science/philosophy/crackpottery book with "Dr. Archibald Cornelius, PhD" or whatever on it. It makes me feel that their argument is weak enough that "hey, I have a degree!" is the best way to support it.
Serious scientists do this too sometimes, but not very often.
This question gets asked all the time on this sub. I did a search for the term books and compiled this list from the dozens of previous answers:
How to Read the Solar System: A Guide to the Stars and Planets by Christ North and Paul Abel.
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.
A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing by Lawrence Krauss.
Cosmos by Carl Sagan.
Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space by Carl Sagan.
Foundations of Astrophysics by Barbara Ryden and Bradley Peterson.
Final Countdown: NASA and the End of the Space Shuttle Program by Pat Duggins.
An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth: What Going to Space Taught Me About Ingenuity, Determination, and Being Prepared for Anything by Chris Hadfield.
You Are Here: Around the World in 92 Minutes: Photographs from the International Space Station by Chris Hadfield.
Space Shuttle: The History of Developing the Space Transportation System by Dennis Jenkins.
Wings in Orbit: Scientific and Engineering Legacies of the Space Shuttle, 1971-2010 by Chapline, Hale, Lane, and Lula.
No Downlink: A Dramatic Narrative About the Challenger Accident and Our Time by Claus Jensen.
Voices from the Moon: Apollo Astronauts Describe Their Lunar Experiences by Andrew Chaikin.
A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts by Andrew Chaikin.
Breaking the Chains of Gravity: The Story of Spaceflight before NASA by Amy Teitel.
Moon Lander: How We Developed the Apollo Lunar Module by Thomas Kelly.
The Scientific Exploration of Venus by Fredric Taylor.
The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe.
Into the Black: The Extraordinary Untold Story of the First Flight of the Space Shuttle Columbia and the Astronauts Who Flew Her by Rowland White and Richard Truly.
An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics by Bradley Carroll and Dale Ostlie.
Rockets, Missiles, and Men in Space by Willy Ley.
Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants by John Clark.
A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking.
Russia in Space by Anatoly Zak.
Rain Of Iron And Ice: The Very Real Threat Of Comet And Asteroid Bombardment by John Lewis.
Mining the Sky: Untold Riches From The Asteroids, Comets, And Planets by John Lewis.
Asteroid Mining: Wealth for the New Space Economy by John Lewis.
Coming of Age in the Milky Way by Timothy Ferris.
The Whole Shebang: A State of the Universe Report by Timothy Ferris.
Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandries by Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution by Neil deGrasse Tyson.
Rocket Men: The Epic Story of the First Men on the Moon by Craig Nelson.
The Martian by Andy Weir.
Packing for Mars:The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach.
The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution by Frank White.
Gravitation by Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler.
The Science of Interstellar by Kip Thorne.
Entering Space: An Astronaut’s Oddyssey by Joseph Allen.
International Reference Guide to Space Launch Systems by Hopkins, Hopkins, and Isakowitz.
The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality by Brian Greene.
How the Universe Got Its Spots: Diary of a Finite Time in a Finite Space by Janna Levin.
This New Ocean: The Story of the First Space Age by William Burrows.
The Last Man on the Moon by Eugene Cernan.
Failure is Not an Option: Mission Control from Mercury to Apollo 13 and Beyond by Eugene Cernan.
Apollo 13 by Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger.
The end
This might help.
Answering your edit, time dilation does occur at the speed of light. So much so that at exactly the speed of light, no travel in time occurs. To a photon, this means it "feels like" it was born and dies at the same instant, if we're going to anthropomorphize here, even though to us we can see it existing in time.
EDIT: as u/Aliudnomen points out, "a frame traveling at c is not a valid inertial frame", which means it's not precise to say that time dilation is happening at the speed of light. Got a bit carried away with the explanation here :) You see infinity time dilation at the speed of light, but that's because the denominator trends to 0, which is a place that inertial objects can't get to. It doesn't really mean that time dilation is infinite, but rather nonexistent. This is why it's often said information is the only thing that can appear, to us, to travel at the speed of light: anything with an inertial reference frame can never get to the speed of light.
With you being in 10th grade, I'll use an analogy/projection that I find helpful. Imagine a Cartesian set of axes (the normal kind), where the y axis is time-velocity and the x axis is space-velocity. Draw a big circle of radius the speed of light, we'll call that "1 unit". Now, you need to replace the idea of "speed of light" (which implies movement of light in the space velocity coordinate frame) with c, the celerity constant: celerity means "rapidity of motion", but it was chosen specifically because it can mean speed in the 4 dimension coordinate system of spacetime. In other words, you can travel in space or you can travel in time, and both of these will be measured, not with mph, but with some fraction of c. With me so far?
OK, what relativity is saying here is that we are always traveling on a circle with radius c. If we don't travel along the space-velocity x axis (we're at rest), we travel along the time-velocity(y axis), and whenever we travel along the x axis, we rotate our point from (0, 1) around this circle clockwise toward (1, 0).
To see this, we can rearrange the time dilation equation:
t' = t / sqrt(1 - (v/c)^2) Original equation
t' / t = 1 / (sqrt(1 - v/c)^2) Move the t in the numerator over
t' / t = 1 / sqrt((c^2) - (v^2)) Multiply the guys under the sqrt by c^2
(t' / t)^2 = 1 / (c^2 - v^2) Square both sides
1 / (t' / t)^2 = c^2 - v^2 Invert both sides
1 / (t' / t)^2 + v^2 = c^2 Add v^2 to both sides
t^2/t'^2 + v^2 = c^2 Square under the first term denominator and invert.
This is an equation of a circle with radius c: the axes can be chosen so that the y axis is "ratio of time", which is what I'm calling "time velocity" and the x axis is "space velocity".
We are always traveling at c, and so we're always somewhere on this circle. This is why it's a constant: nothing in the universe travels faster or slower than this celerity, we can only change which coordinates add up to get us there. If we're perfectly at rest in the space-velocity dimension (x = 0), all of our travel is along the time dimension (y = 1): we're at (1, 0) on this point of the circle. With me so far?
This is what "spacetime" means: right here we're dropping the fact that space is 3 dimensional and considering all velocity to be along the one axis, but if you add in higher dimensions, this is spacetime: x, y, z, t all involved in the same equations. Events - which are used to describe "something that happens somewhere in spacetime" - always travel within a 4 dimensional hypersphere that relativistic folk call the light cone.
Back to our 2d example. As you start to increase your x dimension - that is, start moving - your celerity starts to rotate around the circle. When you travel half the speed of light, where x = 0.5, you can imagine the line drawn from the origin to the point on the circle that corresponds to this x coordinate slanting up and to the right, which happens to be solved by (x^2 ) + (y^2 ) = c^2. Solving for y, we get 0.866 - that is, we're traveling at 0.866 the normal rate of time flow.
Keep increasing space velocity, and you'll plot points like (0.6, 0.8), (0.7, 0.714), (0.8, 0.6), (0.9, 0.435), (0.95, 0.31), (0.99, 0.14), (0.999, 0.045), (0.9999, 0.014)
You see, we're putting more and more of our celerity into the space-velocity coordinate and taking it from the time-velocity coordinate. This is time dilation.
Finally, anything with mass requires energy to convert its travel in time to travel in space. As you keep attempting to get closer to (1, 0), it requires more energy to shift the angle around the circle, until the last little bit is infinite. This is why only massless particles (like photons) can travel at the speed of light.
You can also, then, intuitively grasp the other parts of this circle: what does it take to make time slow down? Well, we would have to move from the 1st quadrant (the top right quadrant) to the 3rd and 4th quadrants (the bottom quadrant). We don't really know for sure how to do this, but we do know that it seems possible that more exotic particles could behave just like matter, except progressing backwards. In other words, at rest, their velocity is (0, -1). What does it take to get from matter going forward in time to backwards? Well, you can't do it by increasing your space-velocity alone: no matter how much you increase your velocity, you can only ever get to almost (1, 0) with something that has mass. This is the "tachyon" idea: a massive particle that travels so fast that it loops around the coordinate frame into quadrant 4 (bottom right), that is, think about moving so fast that you move faster than the speed of light (perhaps you became massless for a second, then gained mass as you somehow started traveling in the negative time direction. This can't happen, AFAIK, because you'd have to travel through infinite energy to loop around, but you can imagine the symmetry here). Real particles can't do this, but it's theoretically possible that particles do exist that travel "faster than the speed of light", but only in a way that breaks what it means to have velocity: they're traveling backwards in time, so their motion is some fraction of c to them; they're not moving faster than the speed of light. To us observing them, they're moving faster than we can achieve with our motion on the x coordinate: their motion backwards in time makes them seem to us as if they're moving faster than c. They're not, remember: all of us are always moving at c.
If something has anti-mass, however (that is, antimatter), it seems possible to have it traveling at (0, -1) all on its own! It's hard to jump on something that has anti-mass, though, so this is still theoretical in many ways. That is, the equations say it should be moving backwards in time, but what that actually means is far more complicated: it maths out that way, but it's not like causality is broken (that is, when we create antimatter in particle accelerators, they don't appear "before" the collision, but they do get "younger" before they annihilate. What does "younger" mean to a particle? How do you define "younger" when it's getting "older in negative time"? What is the sound of one hand clapping?
Also interesting is the idea of time dilation with negative velocities: the 2nd (top-left) quadrant. What does it mean to move "backwards" in space? Does that even have a meaning? I mean if I walk down the street, I'm moving forward in a direction, but if I walk the opposite way, I'm moving forward in the opposite direction. I'm not aware of anything discussing "negative velocity", but that's just my ignorance: perhaps someone else can chime in if they know more.
Finally, Carl Sagan here to describe what life looks like as you approach the speed of light. You can start to see from his example what it would be like to travel so fast that no time passes for you at all.
Finally, one of the most accessible books I've ever read is Stephen Hawking's a brief history of time. If you're at all remotely curious about either relativity or quantum mechanics, this guy, along with being just about the most brilliant mind in these fields, has a fantastic way of explaining the concepts while still staying true to the equations involved.
In Hawking's A Brief History of Time, he explains the reason why we can only live in a universe of three spatial dimensions.
Newton originally discovered this purely mathematically. The force of gravity must be inversely proportional to the square of the distance in order for stable orbits to be possible. The force would be inversely proportional to the square of the distance only if the force-carrier (gravitons, photons, however you want to imagine the force propagating) was emitted in three spatial dimensions.
If you had two spatial dimensions or four, planets (electrons) wouldn't form stable orbits and nothing that we can imagine being matter would form.
A Breif History of Time by Stephen Hawking.
Regardless of the OPs eventual interests there's a reason we start with Newtonian stuff in most 101 type courses. I think its reasonable for OP to start there if they are serious, my recommendations are:
IF OP WANTS TO LEARN PHYSICS
IF OP IS WANTS TO LEARN ABOUT PHYSICS
From there, op can look at different fields, biophysics seems like it would be the most likely candidate in which case OP might also want to brush up on organic chemistry and learn how to use MATLAB.
This is definitely above your level, and it's from 1982 so it's a little outdated, but if you're really interested in astrophysics then it might be worth checking it out and trying to work through at least the first few sections. I think it's written so that you can follow it without too much math involvement.
Frank Shu - The Physical Universe: An Introduction to Astronomy
Otherwise, there are a lot of great popular-writing (i.e. not a textbook) books about physics/astrophysics. Here are a few:
Stephen Hawking - A Brief History of Time
Carl Sagan - Cosmos
Neil deGrasse Tyson - Death By Black Hole, and Other Cosmic Quandaries
My biggest advice, though, for taking physics in high school is to try to do as well as you possibly can in your math classes. Those are the most important for getting into physics. If you do well in math then physics should be pretty easy.
your request is basically "i want to reach for the stars with no effort because im handicapped and poor" and sadly you are limiting yourself because of that mindset.
This is handicapped. so whatever ouchie, booboo, or challenge you might have: Suck it up and deal with it; every handicapped person in the world that makes anything of themselves comes to realize this.
if you can flip burgers at mcdonalds, you can make enough to get your education at any age (expecially if you are handicapped as you would get SSI, plus that pension you mentioned). dont think that your above flipping burgers- nobody is above flipping burgers to survive.
things you need to do first:
required reading
Book 1
Book 2
book 3
Book 4
Book 5
sadly without a degree- people wont acknowledge you or accept your theories. you need to get a solid college education for anyone to care. i recomend getting a diploma in astronautics and then going from there.
I love how these kind of "gotcha" questions are always couched in a willful misunderstanding of what the actual scientific theory states.
Read a book, shitbird.
You concept of time isn't wrong and I didn't post to correct you in any way. I love Asimov's The Collapsing Universe and Hawking's A Brief History of Time. I hope others get to read them and enjoy them as well, even though physics has changed and some of the information is outdated... they are so well written.
No one knows what the universe was like before the Big Bang. There are some very weird theories out there with evidence behind them. Any one of them might be right, or they might all be based on information we don't fully understand and could be all wrong.
SOMETHING FROM NOTHING? Richard Dawkins & Lawrence Krauss that I recommend you watch the entire way through (though its 2 hours, it is well worth for someone interested in such topics). However if you are short of time, go to 47:30-51:00 minutes and watch Krauss explain how matter could literally form in deep space where there is nothing. This means our universe could have formed from nothing, turned into a singularity, and then formed in a big bang. Krauss says, "...That 'nothing' is unstable. That 'empty space' is unstable. The laws of quantum mechanics combined with gravity, will tell you, that if you have empty space there, and you wait long enough, particles will be created. And if you wait long enough, empty space will always produce a universe full of matter." It just makes you say, Whhaaaat?
Combine the concept that our universe is something like the surface of an expanding balloon where everything is getting further apart all the time. Over enough trillion of years, the empty space between those old galaxies could create their own singularities and own universes. We don't have a way to measure something like this.
Since the boson particle was only recently observed and confirmed, there will be a lot of changes coming. That means the Higgs-Boson field that creates all mass... well it might not have been causing mass within the singularity. At which point the singularity could expand without the forces of gravity until the h-b field took over... there are just too many variations at the time. That doesn't even cover dark matter or
TL;DR... Before the big bang could have been (1) nothing but a singularity since no time/space, (2) other universes, (3) other parts of this universe, or (4) literally nothing but empty space.
a brief history of time, http://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-Time-Stephen-Hawking/dp/0553380168
edit: Sorry, i forgot to remind you not to buy from amazon either.
edit 2: Actually if you want it, pm me your address and I'll ship you my copy
"A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking is great but maybe not technical enough for you. His colleague Kip Thorne, however, wrote "Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy" which is significantly meatier on the hard science side of things.
You can't go wrong with A Brief History of Time or The Universe in a Nutshell.
A book that is only partially about space but covers a lot of material that I'd highly* recommend is How to Build a Habitable Planet.
"Unearthing Atlantis"
"Noah's Flood"
"Guns, Germs, and Steel"
"A Brief History of Time"
Then that means any of the ones that attempt to provide a mathematical basis are no good, those usually require two or more calculus courses. The aforementioned book "Fundamentals of Physics" won't do you much good since you'll need to know calculus to understand it.
A Brief History of Time is a very good book written by a very knowledgeable scientist. This book very nicely explains the concepts behind gravity and spacetime. I was about your age when I read it. This is one of the most popular books on the subject and will be at your local library.
While I've not read it, Carl Sagan's Cosmos is a popular book on the subject.
This and this explains general relativity nicely. There are a lot of videos on youtube that are very interesting.
And finally a rap battle between Einstein and Stephen Hawking.
To know why what you are saying doesn't make sense you need to read a very large amount of physcis books, may i suggest starting at Bill Bryson's a short history of nearly everything then moving on to Stephen Hawking's a short history of time
I think you are looking for 'A Brief History of Time' by Stephen Hawking
https://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-Time-Stephen-Hawking/dp/0553380168/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1520139577&sr=8-1&keywords=a+brief+history+of+time
The late Stephen Hawking wrote a book which explains it all very clearly.
Economics:
Sciences:
try reading "The Grand Design" and "A Brief History of Time" for more understanding on the universe, time and the big bang.
also
>I am an atheist except in one very crucial sense - I believe SOMETHING supernatural created the universe at the moment of the big bang.
this is a "god of the gaps" type argument, just because science has not yet found all the answers does not mean that a god exist.
There's lots of interesting things you'll never understand; quantum physics is going to be one of them unless a Grand Unified Theory (or a subset of that which reconciles quantum theory and relativity) is discovered.
If you haven't read it, try A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking; you may enjoy it.
If you think you can read an undergraduate textbook Ryden is a standard.
However, if you think that may be too advanced, start with some popular books on the subject such and The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene, Parallel Worlds by Michio Kaku or the classic by Hawking A Brief History of Time.
If after reading those you want something more advanced but still not a textbook try The Road to Reality by Penrose. It reads like a popular book but he actually works through math (and the real stuff with like tensors etc...) to make his points so it is more advanced. Also, the Dummies Books are also a more intermediate step and are often decently good at teaching the basics on a lower technical level than a textbook.
A Brief History of Time
I found A Brief History of Time to be a very interesting book when I was in high school. It's not so much about space as it is about the physics side of things. At least a good starter in this area.
No, not an imposition at all.
I read this book a long time ago, but I think it is where most of the information I know about cosmology came from, and speaks to the idea of time as analogous to spatial dimensions:
The Universe In A Nutshell by Stephen Hawking
I haven't read A Brief History of Time but I hear it's great, too.
and there is always this wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shape_of_the_universe
A Brief History of Time, by Steven Hawking is a classic. I found it to be a little dense and difficult at times (I'm no expert in physics), but it's a pretty cool overview of some deep science questions (e.g. where did the universe come from?) for non-scientists.
James Gleick's biography of Isaac Newton is also quite good. My calculus professor recommended it.
I also liked The Physics of Superheroes by James Kakalios.
A good book that is fun to read and has tons of anecdotes about scientific history is A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
In a similar vein, you can ponder the more mind-bending aspects of our Universe with Stephen Hawkings A Brief History of Time
Other than that you may find some interesting things in the works of Carl Sagan or Richard Dawkins (I personally recommend Dawkins's The Selfish Gene)
If you are sick of scientific titles you can also check out Freakonomics or The Worldly Philosphers
These Books are all written for a general audience so they go down pretty easy.
Deciding which major in College can be tricky - I was lucky since I knew exactly what I wanted to study before I left High School, but maybe some ideas in these books will pique your interest. My parents always told me to go to school to study something I love, and not to train for a job. I'm not so sure this advice carries through in "recovering" economy. You may want to factor in the usefulness of your degree post-college (but don't let that be the only thing you consider!).
Good Luck, and enjoy!
About the why questions you asked: I'm afraid nobody has the definitive answers you are looking for. But there are people who ask the same questions you do. Let me point you to read "a Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking.
> "Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Brief_History_of_Time
https://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-Time-Stephen-Hawking/dp/0553380168
http://www.fisica.net/relatividade/stephen_hawking_a_brief_history_of_time.pdf
The first atoms came into existence around 380,000 years after the Big Bang, when the universe’s temperature was low enough for electrons to become bound to free nuclei and thus form atoms. Every element heavier than lithium was formed in the cores of huge stars, so carbon and oxygen nuclei didn’t exist until around 100,000,000 years after the Big Bang at the earliest.
The Big Bang wasn’t an explosion, but rather a rapid expansion of space. It didn’t occur in one place, nor was it fueled by a chemical reaction.
Whether something came from nothing or if it even makes sense to talk about what caused the Big Bang — as a notion of causality presupposes the existence of time — remain open questions!
If this seems strange and confusing, don’t worry, it is strange and confusing! The conditions encountered in the Big Bang are extremely far removed from anything we experience in our lives today, so we have little frame of reference to fall back on for understanding the beginning of the universe in an intuitive fashion.
Don’t let this dissuade you, though! There is a huge amount of stuff one can learn about the Big Bang still and its strangeness only makes it more interesting and exciting to learn about, even if some of the concepts take a little time to wrap our heads around!
EDIT:
Here are a pair of classic books written for the interested layman that I think are good introductions to some of the topics at hand:
Big Bang — Simon Singh
A Brief History of Time — Stephen Hawking
I'm a pretty big chemistry nerd, and if my brother were to buy me another chem textbook, I'd thank him politely and then toss the book on my shelf. A gift in a similar vein might be A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. It is pretty short, but it is as close to "reading for enjoyment" as you can get when it comes to astrophysics.
If you're willing to not buy him a book, simplemathtome had a pretty good idea of a drink set. Besides buying the actual "lab themed" set, it isn't too hard to find relatively cheap pyrex lab glassware around. It is often expensive new, but you can find some pretty cheap. Craigslist/garage sales/thrift shops/ebay/amazon(seriously) are good places to start, over the years I've accumulated my own little lab setup, I have a few erlenmeyers (50mL for shots, 500mL for beers!), a volumetric flask, a couple beakers, a round bottom, and a florence flask, all Pyrex or Kimax. I got a few of them used from places where they were unsure of the previous owner, so those ones I use as flower vases / decorative / just cool to have. Something just feels wrong drinking out of lab glassware if you aren't absolutely sure where its been.
tl;dr I'd think it was way cooler if my bro bought me a pyrex erlenmeyer shotglass than a textbook.
I only know of it in paperback, couldn't find it online sorry...
http://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-Time-Stephen-Hawking/dp/0553380168
Demon Haunted World is so good - it's in my "big three," books that really helped me change my worldview. The other two are A Brief History of Time and the deliciously amoral The 48 Laws of Power.
If you lean towards the nerdy, Ray Kurzweil's The Age of Spiritual Machines and The Singularity is Near are also quite interesting. They lay out a fairly stunning (and strangely convincing) optimistic view of the future.
You can't go wrong with A Brief History of Time. Written for the layman, it's excellent stuff. I believe there's some stuff that's slightly out of date in there by now, but for a basic understanding of the history of the universe it paints a very easily digestible picture.
>books
Read "A Brief History of Time" and tell me it has no practical use, is not mathematically definite, and has no practical use. Read any textbook on any science or mathematical subject and tell me it's not practical, and not mathematically definite.
No problem!
Philosophy of time is an enormous area!
Not only are there many distinct positions that attempt to address the scientific and philosophical questions in different ways, there are different positions regarding the very method by which we should attempt to answer these questions! Some of these certainly overlap.
What do I mean by this?
Putting it roughly:
There are those who tend to think that we should use science to answer these questions about time. All we should care about is what observations are made; we should only care about the empirical data. These people might point to the great success of our best scientific theories that refer to 'time', such as those in physics, including; Einstein's Theory of Relativity, Entropy (The Arrow of Time), and even Quantum Theory, but also those in neuroscience and psychology, where our perception of time becomes relevant (such as the Inference Model of Time and the Strength Model of Time). So we have notions of physical/objective time, and subjective/mental time. We may talk about time slowing down around a massive body such as a black hole, or time slowing down when a work-shift is boring or when we're experiencing a traumatic event.
But there are also those who tend to think that we should use not just science, but also uniquely philosophical methods as well. Conceptual analysis is one such method; one that involves thinking very carefully about our concepts. This method is a distinctically a priori method (A priori is just philosophical jargon meaning; "Can be known without experience," for example, the statement "All triangles have three sides"). These people think we can learn a great deal about time by reflecting on our concepts about time, our intuitions about time, and the laws of thought (or logic) and how they relate to time. This philosophical approach to answering questions about time is distinctively metaphysical opposed to the former physical and cognitive theories about time.
Of course there are many who may see the use in all of these different approaches!
Recommendations:
Physics:
Hawking, S 1988, A Brief History of Time: From The Big Bang to Black Holes, Bantam Books, Toronto; New York. [Chapters 2, 9 & 10. Absolute Classic, little dated but still great read]
Gardner, M 1988, Time Travel and Other Mathematical Bewilderments, W.H. Freeman, UK. [Chapter 1]
Greene, B 2010, The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory, W. W. Norton, New York. [Chapter 2 is a great introduction for Special Relativity]
Physics and Metaphysics:
Dainton, B 2010, Time and Space, 2nd edn, McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal; Ithaca N.Y. [Chapters 1-8, 18, 19 & 21. This book is incredible in scope, it even has a chapter on String Theory, and it really acknowledges the intimate connection between space and time given to us by physics]
Metaphyics:
Hawley, K 2015, Temporal Parts, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy <http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/temporal-parts/&gt;. [Discussion of Perdurantism, the view that objects last over time without being wholly present at every time at which they exist.]
Markosian, N 2014, Time, The Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2016/entries/time/&gt;.
Hunter, J 2016, Time Travel, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
<http://www.iep.utm.edu/timetrav/&gt;.
Callender, C & Edney, R 2014, Introducing Time: A Graphic Guide, Icon Books Limited, UK. [Great book if you want something a bit less wordy and fun, but still very informative, having comprehensive coverage. It also has many nice illustrations and is cheap!]
Curtis, B & Robson, J 2016, A Critical Introduction to the Metaphysics of Time, Bloomsbury Publishing, UK. [Very good recent publication that comes from a great series of books in metaphysics]
Ney, A 2014, Metaphysics: An Introduction, Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, London; New York. [Chapters 5 & 6 (Chapter 4 looks at critiques of Metaphysics in general as a way of answer questions and Chapter 9 looks at Free-will/Determinism/Compatiblism)]
More advanced temporal Metaphysics:
Sider, T 2001, Four-Dimensionalism: An Ontology of Persistence and Time, Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press, Oxford New York. [Great book defending what Sider calls "Four-Dimensionalism" (this is confusing given how others have used the same term differently) but by it he means Perdurantism, the view that objects last over time without being wholly present at every time at which they exist.]
Hawley, K 2004, How Things Persist, Clarendon Press, UK. [Another great book: It's extremely similar to the one above in terms of the both content and conclusions reached]
Some good Time travel movies:
Interstellar (2014)
Timecrimes (2007)
Looper (2012)
Primer (2004) [Time Travel on drugs]
12 Monkeys (1995)
Donnie Darko (2001)
The Terminator (1984)
Groundhog Day (1993)
Predestination (2014)
Back To the Future (1-3) (1985-1990)
Source Code (2011)
Edge of Tomorrow (2014)
I read Complexity: A Guided Tour on a flight a few years back. It's a thoughtful and well written non-technical CS book, uses concrete real world examples with interesting historical tangents weaved in (I enjoy that "here's what people believed at the time/here's how this person figured out XYZ" sort of stuff). It kind of reminded me of Hawking's A Brief History of Time.
Lots of comments here trying to argue that you're "doing Judiasm wrong" or "not hard enough" ("Of course mitzvos aren't fun... that's the point!") so I'll offer the kofer perspective.
Write:
Do:
Here's a bunch of stuff I've found informative in my personal journey:
Skeptic reading:
Skeptic viewing:
Skeptic Listening:
Looking on their website it seems as if they do not let outside people borrow from their library, sorry :(.
I know many libraries have "partnerships" for the lack of a better word, where if you try to borrow a book from the library, and they don't have it, they will request it from somewhere else they are partnered with and get it for you.
Some ideas of books:
For my undergraduate astrophysics class I used - Foundations of Astrophysics by Ryden and Peterson, ISBN13: 978-0-321-59558-4
I have also used (more advanced, graduate level) - An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics by Carroll and Ostlie, ISBN13: 978-0-805-30402-2
There are plenty of other undergraduate text books for astrophysics, but those are the only two I have experience with.
Some other books that may be just fun reads and aren't text books:
A Brief History of Time - Hawking
QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter - Feynman
Random popular science books:
Parallel Worlds - Kaku (or anything else by him Michio Kaku)
Cosmos - Sagan
Dark Cosmos - Hooper
or anything by Green, Krauss, Tyson, etc.
Videos to watch:
I would also suggest, if you have an hour to burn, watching this video by Lawrence Krauss. I watched it early on in my physics career and loved it, check it out:
Lawrence Krauss - A Universe From Nothing
Also this video is some what related:
Sean Carroll - Origin of the Universe and the Arrow of Time
Hope you enjoy!
Edit: Formatting.
>a couple of science books about physics
Any chance it's A Brief History of Time and The Feynman Lectures on Physics?
We better kick in and get them this
It sounds like you want someone to tell you for certain that there either is/is not a God/Hell and how the universe as we know it came to be (ie what caused the Big Bang) and wrap it up in a box with a pretty bow and put it under your Christmas tree for you to open.
Guess what - we'd all like that!
No one knows these answers for sure. There IS a lot of evidence for the Big Bang even though you say you don't believe in it. You say you want the truth and that is the truth...we really can't help you if you ask a question, we give you an answer (supported by many forms of evidence), and you tell us, for the most part, that we're lying.
What was "before" that (yes, I know it's bad terminology but we all know what I mean) - no one knows.
Is there a god? No one knows but there is zero evidence for one. Same for hell.
You might feel better if you become a Deist for awhile while you try to figure things out. Sometimes it's scary for people to think they might be an atheist so soon after questioning their faith.
In the meantime I'd read up on the Big Bang and the universe in general. Watch Cosmos.
Here are some books to help you get started:
Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe - Simon Singh
Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution - Neil deGrasse Tyson
A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking
A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking.
Amazing read, will probably change the way you perceive the world around you. :)
I love music, so my favourite one was Last Night A DJ Saved My Life. A history of electronic music which gave me a real in-depth appreciation of the electronic music scene now.
I also really liked A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking and Flatland (not exactly non-fiction, but extremely interesting).
Don't trust everything you read online, either. Books are still generally your best bet, because people who might not know what they're talking about can't edit them while you're reading them.
Obviously I'm not saying all books are better than all internets, but find some credible ones and you're much better off.
I'm not a scientist by training, but I can suggest a few books that will provide a pretty good counterbalance to what your mom will be teaching you. (A few of them have quasi-religious-sounding titles, too, so if she happened to find them lying around she might not get too angry.)
The Chosen Species: The Long March of Human Evolution
The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
A Brief History of Time
I can recommend more if you'd like. These ones are pretty broad surveys of the topics of (in order) evolution, more evolution, the role of science in society, and the physical nature of the universe. If you're homeschooled, I'm assuming high school-level? None of these books is technical - they're all 'popular science', intended to explain broad concepts to non-scientists. They're very, highly interesting, though, and it's easy to find recommended reading lists once you discover some specific topics that interest you. The Chosen Species itself has a lengthy and detailed bibliography and recommended reading section at the end.
I hope I've been able to help! Good luck!
Thanks for responding!
I think that there are a few books which have influenced me greatly, but I have a much more expansive list of books I want to read than ones I have already consumed.
To start, you should try the greats:
For a historical perspective, try: The Barbarian Conversion
Evolutionary perspective: The Selfish Gene
And, if you have a sense of wonder:
But this is such a small selection... Try them out and let them guide you to many more works.
For the lazy:
(They're permalinks, not affiliate links)
he's not talking about the universe, he's talking about everything that's not the universe. only in our universe would the laws of the universe apply, the sequential nature of time being one of them.
look at it like this. our universe is on the lowest tier. one tier above that is god or gods or whatever. god(s) made the universe because everything has to have a cause and effect right? this is how it holds up in our universe so why wouldnt it hold up everywhere? with that same logic, something has to have created god(s) and something has to have created that god and that god and that god... until you get to a point where that god just has to exist. cause and effect wont hold up in his tier. if that doesnt, then how do we know that any of the laws of nature do on any tier that isnt our own? the universe wouldnt need a creator because there wouldnt need to be a cause for it. the universe just kinda is.
on top of all of this, this is only assuming that we are rational beings capable of drawing conclusions from what we observe around us. with what i wrote above we know that the laws of nature really only satisfy the small number of observations that is our universe (infinite as it may be, small in the grand scheme of things)
tl;dr pick up a brief history of time
There are some amazing answers above me Calamitizer's being exeptional in my opinion but I thought I would try my hand at answering.
Given your discussion of black holes I want to point out that a black hole and other singularities are the ultimate barrier, the smallest 'point'. A Schwarzschild black hole exists theoretically as a point surrounded by an event horizon. The event horizon is what you would actually see and it would appear much larger, however this event horizon is just a visible boundary, it is the radius (from the black hole) at which the escape velocity is greater than the speed of light.
If you haven't read it A Brief History of time is a great book and explains black holes and their functioning in great detail.
Here.
Of course! :)
Here are a few of my favorite youtube channels that cover our universe.
These guys do a good job of giving excellent and creditable facts while keeping the video short and sweet.
https://www.youtube.com/user/scishowspace
This channel covers more than just space, but again they give good facts while still keeping the videos not too lengthy.
https://www.youtube.com/user/Kurzgesagt
And of course, nothing gets more credibility than the big guys themselves, NASA. These videos are a bit long, but are just loaded with a ton of real world space Q&A's.
https://www.youtube.com/user/NASAtelevision/videos
The few magazines I have lying around my house right now are all related to space, and they are a great read for any of my guests! Heres a link for the planetary society (main source of my reading material)
http://planetary.org/
and here are a few books that every curious mind should take a good long glance at when it comes to our universe.
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/pale-blue-dot-carl-sagan/1103141155
https://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-Time-Stephen-Hawking/dp/0553380168/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
(this one is a MUST READ!)---> https://www.amazon.com/Science-Interstellar-Kip-Thorne/dp/0393351378
The main podcast I listen to is Star Talk with Neil DeGrasse Tyson. He has a plethora of different guests on at all times talking about new and fascinating topics. Here's a link for his show
https://www.startalkradio.net/
And when it comes to articles, most of them come from Reddit! I am subscribed to a ton of different space related subreddits which post countless numbers of interesting articles all the time. Here is a small list just to name a few
r/space r/astronomy r/astrophysics r/astrophotography r/science r/spaceporn
I hope this helps!
No particular order:
Blind Descent by James M. Tabor. It is a great book about cave exploration and the race to discover the worlds deepest supercave.
A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. Are you interested in the universe and how it all happened? This gives some pretty insightful answers.
From Eternity To Here by Sean Carrol. A really interesting view on the nature and concept of time and how it relates to the us and the universe. It can get a bit deep from time to time, but I found it fascinating.
Adventures Among Ants by Mark W. Moffet. It's about ants. Seriously. Ants.
The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard. A first hand account of the ill-fated Scott expedition to the south pole in 1911-1912. Even after reading the book I cannot imagine what those men went through.
Bonus book: The Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan. Human intelligence and how it evolved. Some really interesting stuff about the brain and how it works. A very enjoyable read.
I am not a physicist but I have never heard one claim the Universe is infinite. As was mentioned before, the universe has no edge so it appears to be infinite. Watch this video if you can make it through:
http://www.universetoday.com/103790/zogg-from-betelgeuse-explains-why-the-universe-has-no-edge/
Understanding the universe is exceedingly difficult even for the smartest people (which I am not one of). Crazy stuff happens in the universe, this is one of the reasons I am not atheist, it is just too wild.
Time dilation for one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation
For instance, time is moving quicker for satellites relative to us here on earth, since we feel a larger effect of gravity. They had to slow down the clocks on the GPS satellites:http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast162/Unit5/gps.html
Long story short, there are a lot of really wild things happening in the universe, maybe take a look at a book called Brief History of Time written by Stephen Hawkins.
http://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-Time-Stephen-Hawking/dp/0553380168/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1377011140&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=brief+history+of+time
I would highly recommend Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time. It goes into some detail about quantum mechanics, and gets into black holes some. But be warned: Despite being toned down, it is still a pretty hard read, and you will find yourself going back to re read things a lot.
For a documentary, you could probably google one and look for the one with the best ratings. I remember watching one a few years ago, but I can't find it.
In a different vein, I heard that there is a popular science nonfiction Chinese book, called "The Physics of the Three Body Problem Universe,"
I was keen to order it but realized that I probably can't understand it.
But there are several excellent pop-sci books on String Theory, Big Bang that I would have considered abstract, obtuse prior to reading Three Body Problem,
https://www.amazon.com/Elegant-Universe-Superstrings-Dimensions-Ultimate/dp/039333810X/ref=sr_1_6?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1486145503&amp;sr=1-6&amp;keywords=Physics
https://www.amazon.com/Fabric-Cosmos-Space-Texture-Reality/dp/0375727205/ref=pd_sim_14_1?_encoding=UTF8&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=4FS9WM0HGP79QXBRHDBS
https://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-Time-Stephen-Hawking/dp/0553380168/ref=pd_sim_14_3?_encoding=UTF8&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=1MQ7BXTSH2NJK5E0E02Y
Reminds me of the way once I attempted to explain the possibility of a >3D universe literally encompassing the concepts described in Hawking's "turtles all the way down" anecdote.
It involved diagrams of hyper-turtles and everything. Most of my effort went into making sure that every turtle in my diagram looked ridiculously happy.
EDIT: I was also drunk at the time these events took place :D
You might find Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time" to be an interesting read.
http://alleeshadowtradition.com/pdf/stephen_hawking_a_brief_history_of_time.pdf
http://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-Time-Stephen-Hawking/dp/0553380168
A Brief History of Time made me brain hurt but was a fascinating read. If you do read it, I recommend taking it in in 1 chapter segments.
A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking
Time is simply what we call a fourth dimension, in addition to length, width, and depth. As beings that perceive four dimensions, the one we label time is the one that we perceive differently from the others. This video can help to explain the concept, and goes on to explain further dimensions as well.
Stephen Hawking discusses the nature of time and its perceived directionality in one of his books, which is a relatively easy read. Some of the discussion relates to the idea that entropy increases in our universe (that we constantly move toward a universe that is less ordered).
I am caught with trying to understand if you are asking an existential or scientific question. If you were asking if perception of time by humans is absolute, I would have to say that it is not. Clearly a year feels much longer to a 7 year old than a 70 year old. If you are asking for an existential proof that the memories you have really happened or if you exist as an entity that merely believes in a fiction that something you choose to call "the past" has occurred, that is something that I can't answer for you.
The beginning of the wikipedia page on time actually covers some interesting concepts as well.
You will notice the absence of A short history of nearly everything, which is a good book, but frankly it didn't speak very much to me. Bryson is almost only interested in geography.
I read 'A brief History of Time' and felt stupider.
A brief history of time. Hands down the best primer on theoretical physics.
Also Sagan. Easy reads, though you will have to read certain sections a dozen times to really get them. Still the best for building a framework IMO
http://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-Time-Stephen-Hawking/dp/0553380168/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1396314781&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=a+brief+history+of+time
There was recently a revision to Stephen Hawking's: A Brief History In Time and it does a really good job of laying out some of the construction behind the biggest phenomenons in space without getting to complex conceptually. Definitely recommend it for dipping your toes in the water so to speak.
http://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-Time-Stephen-Hawking/dp/0553380168
A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking is also good. Its famous because it makes things like spacetime easy to understand. I've read it several times. Learn something new each time.
Well... Not really? I'd probably word it more as experiencing the passage of time faster/slower as opposed to moving through time faster/slower, as the latter (at least to me) seems to imply time as an absolute, but that may just be a wording issue on my part.
Honestly we're moving toward areas I don't feel as confident explaining, but I'll give it a try. As far as I understand, basically if two observers are at rest with respect to each other in the same inertial reference frame, they will experience the same passage of time. If the two observers are in motion with respect to each other (outside of a major gravitational field), each will observe the other's clock as going slower than his own. Each observer's experience of his own passage of time also never changes.
Clocks near significant gravitational masses also move more slowly than those farther away, which isn't reciprocal like the relative velocity time dilation. An observer farther away from the mass and one closer will both agree that the farther away observer's clock is moving faster and the closer observer's clock is moving slower.
If all this fascinates you and you want to read about it from someone who actually knows what they're talking about, I'd recommend Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History of Time". You can also check out the Wikipedia pages on the theory of relativity and time dilation, but I think it helps a lot to have a whole book to explore the ideas rather than just a couple Wikipedia pages. Also, Hawking is really good at explaining all of it in a way that normal people like us can understand while still keeping the ideas intact.
A Brief History of Time I loved this book and learned quite a bit about the relationship between light and time.
Apart from that you can also work your way through textbooks, such as Molecular Quantum Mechanics, read popular publications such as A Brief history of time or The Elegant Universe (haven't read those unfortunately).
You can also visit the subreddit /r/Physics, to be up to date, ask questions and such, or even visit 4Chans /sci/ which gives you access to a large science and math guide.
This is - in dept - a difficult question for me to answer. Time itself is very hard to define as an isolated concept and books, like for example written by the great mind of our time Stephen Hawking, are written about it. This is a quote from the book 'Ibn 'Arabi - Time and Cosmology', (page 24):
>"...time is one of the most fundamental issues in philosophy and cosmology, since the whole of existence is nothing but consecutive series of events in time. Everybody feels time, but most people do not question it because it is commonly experienced every day in many things and is so familiar. However, it is far more difficult to understand the philosophical nature of time and its characteristics.
>Throughout the history of philosophy, many opposing views have emerged to discuss and describe the different aspects of time, and some novel hypotheses have eventually emerged in modern cosmology. However, it is still the dream of every physicist to unveil the reality of time, especially since all modern theories have come to the conclusion that time is the key."
When I would try to explain the concept of time to anyone, I would first of all state that we humans have our limitations. We do not know, other than that what we perceive. I would not have known that time is relative, if it were not for Einstein and Hawking to back-up their theories. Note that we are still scratching the surface, since I try to answer your question, without going into matters like what CERN does and what the effects of their assumptions and conclusions will have on widely accepted theories in modern day science, or for example the Higgs boson (he named it the 'God particle') and what this means for our basic understanding of concepts like cosmos and time.
I think that your question originates from not understanding the concept that Allah is not his creation. So everything that we observe, is within the creation of Allah and it is very hard (it would seem impossible, if not for the mercy - of knowing him - that he send down upon us) to define anything that is outside of his creation.
A chemistry professor in Stuttgard, which is a converted Christian himself, said about time: "Allah creates all of his creation again in every small instant". The same professor said that modern western scientists only recently made a shift in thinking about time, while 'Ibn 'Arabi (which I mentioned earlier) expressed such theories in his time already. The professor could make this conclusion, because he is an active member of fora where his peers post, discuss and promote the newest theories, and for example the papers they write, on these subjects.
A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. This is THE book that started my love of science. I have read it multiple times and each time my understanding of the universe grows be leaps and bounds... If you buy it and don't love it, I will pay you back.
http://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-Time-Stephen-Hawking/dp/0553380168
>I obviously proved that they are not.
Really. Better call up Stephen Hawking and tell him.
Or maybe just read his book, A Brief History of Time, and learn something. Ha, wait, you obviously can't read, better find you the audio books.