In our century, the subject of time has become an area of serious inquiry for science. Theories that contain time as a simple quantity form the basis of our understanding of many scientific disciplines, yet the debate rages on: why does there seem to be a direction to time, an arrow of time pointing from past to future? In this authoritative and accessible Sunday Times bestseller, physical chemist Dr Peter Coveney and award-winning science journalist Dr Roger Highfield demonstrate that the common sense view of time agrees with the most advanced scientific theory. Time does in fact move like an arrow, shooting forward into what is genuinely unknown, leaving the past immutably behind. The authors make their case by exploring three centuries of science, offering bold reinterpretations of Newton’s mechanics, Einstein’s special and general theories of relativity, quantum mechanics, and advancing the insights of chaos theory. In their voyage through science the authors link apparently irreconcilable subjects, from Einstein’s obsession with causality to chaos theory, from Marvell’s winged chariot to that Monday morning feeling. Finally, drawing together the various interpretations of time, they describe a novel way to give it a sense of direction. And they call for a new fundamental theory to take account of the Arrow of Time. Foreword by Ilya Prigogine, Nobel laureate.

Marcus Chown's highly accessible exploration of reality, the nature of the universe, and the place of life within it. Starting with the questions being asked by the world's most daring and imaginative scientists, he takes us to the frontier of science and reveals that the mysteries being examined there are those that matter most to all of us: could we live for ever? where did we come from? and what the hell are we doing here?

Quantum theory forces us to consider the usual scientific method invalid in several ways. It even questions the basis of scientific logic: cause and effect. The current scientific method ignores individual experience and the different states of awareness we go through in the sleep states of the brain. Phil Petersen, Ph.D., explores how to open science to study these states and better understand how the uncertainty of quantum theory applies to them and our waking state. He asserts that this helps us understand how to enable positive possibilities for our lives. The book will appeal to those who meditate or believe in the power of positive thinking as well as those who are open to questioning the very foundations of science. Readers will learn what historys greatest thinkers, including Francis Bacon, Stephen Hawking, Thomas Kuhn, Albert Einstein, and others, have said about the reality of the world in which we live. Discover an intriguing argument for reconsidering and replacing the scientific method to explore different realms of consciousnes and enjoy spiritual awareness and healing with the insights in A New Quantum Scientific Method.

Had the author’s inventive hypothesis of Replicating Space been envisioned when Isaac Newton published his laws of motion and gravity, it would most certainly have been incorporated into our concept of the nature of the Universe. The author describes a comprehensive vision of the nature of the heavens, their creation and growth. He throws in a whopping amount of down-to-earth explanations of his unique perspective on the origins of everything. No stone is left unturned as he destroys conventional academic theories, replacing them with simple, yet not obvious truths. Matter, energy, light, speed, space, time, reality, the edge of the Universe, are all players in a new, more tangible explanation of our Universe. All these things along with many more concepts will be explained in light of the new radical Replicating Space theory (RST).

This book positions entropy and creativity as key philosophical categories and presents the action of entropy and the notion of creativity on the informational, natural-scientific, social-humanistic and metaphysical levels. In this sense, the book expands the scale of the civilization envisioned by Nikolai Kardashev and Carl Sagan; deepens the readership’s understanding of the anthropic principle and the paradigm concept; provides a layered explanation and solution to the Fermi paradox; corrects the parameters of the Drake equation; explores singularity outside of the traditional framework of this term and points to the philosophical potential of such an expansion; and presents a unique chain of being — from elementary information to the totality of all possible worlds.

This book explores the idea of time travel from the first account in English literature to the latest theories of physicists such as Kip Thorne and Igor Novikov. This very readable work covers a variety of topics including: the history of time travel in fiction; the fundamental scientific concepts of time, spacetime, and the fourth dimension; the speculations of Einstein, Richard Feynman, Kurt Goedel, and others; time travel paradoxes, and much more.

Chronic disease states of aging should be viewed through the prism of metabolism and biophysical processes at all levels of physiological organization present in the human body. This book connects these insights to what causes them to go awry in the context of unhealthy human behaviors and aging, aiming to buttress scientific creativity. It also provides links between the art and science of medicine that strengthens problem-solving in patient care. New and important discoveries in the area of metabolic health and metabolic diseases are discussed in exquisite detail. Key Features: Broad and up-to-date overview of the field of metabolic aspects of health and chronic disease development, especially connecting the spectrum of topics that range from molecular clocks to stress response to nuclear hormone receptors and the role of microbiota in human health Provides a deeper basic science and interdisciplinary understanding of biological systems that broaden the perspectives and therapeutic problem solving by elaborating on the usefulness of the Physiological Fitness Landscape Describes the importance of insulin resistance in metabolic disease, especially diabetes but also includes links to cancer and Alzheimer’s disease Examines the process of aging from the perspective of metabolic decline illustrating it with the Physiological Fitness Landscape This book, the second volume in a two-volume set, primarily targets an audience of clinical and science students, biomedical researchers and physicians who would benefit from understanding each other’s language.

Does matter matter? The scientific picture of the end of the physical Universe has undergone dramatic changes since the turn of the 21st century, with its future characterized by accelerated expansion and futility. Yet Christian theology has been largely silent on this, despite the interest in eschatology in popular culture and in theology itself. What can Christian theology learn from and contribute to the scientific picture of the future of the Universe? Can the biblical narratives of creation and new creation have a fruitful dialogue with scientific discoveries? David Wilkinson shows what a fruitful dialogue this can be. Critiquing the folk eschatology of the Left Behind series, the misguided faith of the scientific optimists and the lack of scientific engagement of the theologians of hope, Wilkinson argues for a rediscovery of the theological theme of new creation and the centrality of bodily resurrection.

We say that the processes going on in the world about us are asymmetric in time or display an arrow of time. Yet this manifest fact of our experience is particularly difficult to explain in terms of the fundamental laws of physics. This volume reconciles these profoundly conflicting facts.

What are the basic building blocks of the world? This book presents a naturalistic theory saying that the universe and everything in it can be reduced to three fundamental entities: a field, a set of values that can be actualized at different places in the field, and an actualizer of the values. The theory is defended by using it to answer the main questions in metaphysics, such as: What is causality, existence, laws of nature, consciousness, thinking, free will, time, mathematical entities, ethical values, etc.? The theory is compared with the main alternatives and argued to solve problems better than the existing theories. Several new theories are suggested, such as how to understand mental causation, free will and the truth of ethics and mathematics.