Timewarps Author:John Gribbin How well-founded are our ‘commonsense’ ideas about time? Does time ‘really’ flow inexorably forward? Or is it ‘all in the mind’? — In Timewarps John Gribbin examines how, in a world ruled by clocks and calendars, scientists are discovering that time can be distorted, can stand still...and m... more »ay even run backward! With a rare gift for communicating the puzzles and paradoxes of modern science. Gribbin challenges our common notion of time runnig constantly in one direction with such new findings as parallel universes, where all of the possibilities of our everyday world -- and then some -- actually occur.
Timewarps brilliantly presents man's fascination with time throughout history--the story of watches and water clocks, of the Gregorian calendar's "lost" fourteen days, the dazzling precision of today's "atomic time", and even the persistent science-fiction theme of journeys through space-time. The book takes a clear, imaginative look at some of the most dramatic questions raised by our new knowledge of "elastic time" -- biological clocks and jet lag, free will versus determination. ESP and dream telepathy, the amazing potential that science fiction's "time travel" may someday be a reality.