As promised, we’re going to have a book club to talk about From Eternity to Here. Roughly speaking, every Tuesday I’ll post about another chapter, and we’ll talk about it. Easy enough, right? (Chapters 4 and 5, about relativity, are pretty short and will be combined into one week.)
For the most part I won’t be summarizing each chapter — because you’ll all have read the book, so that would be boring. Instead, I want to give some behind-the-scenes insight about what was going through my mind when I put each chapter together — a little exclusive for readers of the blog. Of course, in the comments I hope we can discuss the substance of the chapters in as much detail as we like. I’m going to try to participate actively in all the discussions, so I hope to answer questions when I can — and certainly expect to learn something myself along the way.
The book is divided into four parts: an overview, spacetime and relativity, entropy and the Second Law, and a discussion of how it all fits into cosmology. You can find a more detailed table of contents here, and here is the prologue to get you in the mood. Part Three is definitely the high point of the book, so be sure to stick around for that.
So see you next Tuesday! Get reading!
Part One: Overview
- January 19: Chapter One (What is time?)
- January 26: Chapter Two (Entropy and the Second Law)
- February 2: Chapter Three (The expanding universe)
Part Two: Relativity
- February 9: Chapters Four and Five (Special and general relativity)
- February 16: Chapter Six (Time travel)
Part Three: Entropy and the Arrow of Time
- February 23: Chapter Seven (Determinism and reversibility)
- March 2: Chapter Eight (Entropy according to Boltzmann)
- March 9: Chapter Nine (Information, memory, life…)
- March 16: Chapter Ten (Recurrence and Boltzmann brains)
- March 23: Chapter Eleven (Quantum mechanics)
Part Four: Time and the Universe
- March 30: Chapter Twelve (Black holes)
- April 6: Chapter Thirteen (Evolution of the universe)
- April 13: Chapter Fourteen (Inflation)
- April 20: Chapter Fifteen and Epilogue (Explaining the arrow of time)
Comments
33 responses to “From Eternity to Here: Book Club”
This sounds fun! My copy arrives today!! Can’t wait to get started.
I’m currently in Chapter 5… can’t WAIT to get to part 3! Looking forward to the discussions.
Looking forward to the discussion & insights.
Sean:
If the cosmological constant was somewhat different, the visible universe might be contracting, on its way ‘towards’ a state similar to that of a big bang universe, at its time ‘zero’. But the contraction would be in the ‘most probable direction’, in terms of our understanding of physics, and entropy would be increasing with passing time, even though the visible universe would be approaching a state indistinguishable from what you suggest is one of minimal entropy. However, omelets would not be turning into eggs 😉
In your prologue, you completely ignore this paradoxical problem.
Judging by a couple of the Amazon reviews, I hope you plan to actively “monitor” the comments on the book club.
Mine just arrived! STANDING BY.
listened to Coast to Coast while Mr Carroll was talking about this book excellent — he has my high mark for lecture. but i imagine he will be to busy coaching the Seahawks now ! :-0
Just purchased a copy today. Looking forward to the discussions!
Rats, now I have to go out and buy a copy to do my homework. Fortunately, one of my high-school science students gave me a generous gift card to B & N. I can’t think of a better way to use it.
Well, I think it’s all going wrong. The book is turning me into a believer in Boltzmann’s Brain–I keep going to the window and peering out to see if the rest of the universe is still there or has collapsed into chaos yet…
The world outside seems pretty chaotic at the moment, but it’s not yet thermal equilibrium.
Just came across this in my reader. Will pick it up this weekend! Very excited!
Great timing, my copy arrived today. And I’m living in Germany! Globalization rocks.
While reading about closed timelike curves, I was feeling a little down, thinking my deterministic world had been destroyed and there was free will (bummer to me). Then I learned they probably don’t exist and I felt good again. Was worried I might have to change from a liberal to a conservative, whew.
Now I’m learning that information can be lost (I don’t want info. to be lost) and was thankful that CPT has a way around it. This is all very hard for a Dentist- Biologist with a passion for Physics, but I’m lovin it.
Thanks, Sean, B.Greene, L. Randall, L. Susskind, and S. Hawking for your books.
Any chance you’ll be commenting on Verlinde’s think on arXiv. I haven’t read your book yet, but it sounds like you are wading in the same waters.
http://arxiv.org/abs/1001.0785
At some point I hope to — haven’t had a chance to read it yet.
I’m sure we’d all be very interested to read your thoughts on Verlinde’s paper, Sean. At the very least it’s makes some powerful philosophical claims motivated by concerns that appear similar to yours. And at the very most it’s a true watershed paper.
I never have been on a blog or book club in my long life, but yours will be worth my time.
Okay, I ordered it and got it, but all I see is Burt Lancaster in swimtrunks in the surf.
I hope you explain a little better the end of chapter one (from “Twisty paths through spacetime” to the end.) I had a hard time understanding a few comments, ie “a straight trajectory between two events in spacetime describes the longest elapsed duration” and the part about block time, eternalism and presentism. I couldn’t understand what you were getting at.
Anyway, I am enjoying the book, and look forward to grasping fully the concepts you are writing about.
[…] to the first installment of the From Eternity to Here book club. We’re starting at the beginning, with Chapter One, “The Past is Present […]
It’s 2:30 EST, hope I haven’t missed Chapter 1. Is it on another link?
RGG, each chapter will have its own post. Here’s the discussion for Chapter One.
[…] was even more excited to find out he’d be organizing an online book club through his blog, going through his book at a rate of roughly one chapter per week. The first post […]
Sean:
In your thread on Chapter 1, you take the trouble to address each question raised.
But here, you’ve completely ignored #4 (that I raised).
How come?