Reflects upon life and mankind's inevitable search for meaning, arguing that those without religious belief find disappointment in placing their faith in historical progress.
When Fred Thompson made his brief run for president in 2007, his experience as minority counsel for the Senate Watergate Committee, back in the early 1970s, was suddenly in the limelight again. If you never quite understood what all the fuss was about, this young lawyer's, blow by blow, personal account of what he saw from the inside out, might just turn some lights on for you. He writes in the same, down-home folksy way that he talks.
Why is the future so different from the past? Why does the past affect the future and not the other way around? What does quantum mechanics really tell us about the world? In this important and accessible book, Huw Price throws fascinating new light on some of the great mysteries of modern physics, and connects them in a wholly original way. Price begins with the mystery of the arrow of time. Why, for example, does disorder always increase, as required by the second law of thermodynamics? Price shows that, for over a century, most physicists have thought about these problems the wrong way. Misled by the human perspective from within time, which distorts and exaggerates the differences between past and future, they have fallen victim to what Price calls the "double standard fallacy": proposed explanations of the difference between the past and the future turn out to rely on a difference which has been slipped in at the beginning, when the physicists themselves treat the past and future in different ways. To avoid this fallacy, Price argues, we need to overcome our natural tendency to think about the past and the future differently. We need to imagine a point outside time -- an Archimedean "view from nowhen" -- from which to observe time in an unbiased way. Offering a lively criticism of many major modern physicists, including Richard Feynman and Stephen Hawking, Price shows that this fallacy remains common in physics today -- for example, when contemporary cosmologists theorize about the eventual fate of the universe. The "big bang" theory normally assumes that the beginning and end of the universe will be very different. But if we are to avoid the double standard fallacy, we need to consider time symmetrically, and take seriously the possibility that the arrow of time may reverse when the universe recollapses into a "big crunch." Price then turns to the greatest mystery of modern physics, the meaning of quantum theory. He argues that in missing the Archimedean viewpoint, modern physics has missed a radical and attractive solution to many of the apparent paradoxes of quantum physics. Many consequences of quantum theory appear counterintuitive, such as Schrodinger's Cat, whose condition seems undetermined until observed, and Bell's Theorem, which suggests a spooky "nonlocality," where events happening simultaneously in different places seem to affect each other directly. Price shows that these paradoxes can be avoided by allowing that at the quantum level the future does, indeed, affect the past. This demystifies nonlocality, and supports Einstein's unpopular intuition that quantum theory describes an objective world, existing independently of human observers: the Cat is alive or dead, even when nobody looks. So interpreted, Price argues, quantum mechanics is simply the kind of theory we ought to have expected in microphysics -- from the symmetric standpoint. Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point presents an innovative and controversial view of time and contemporary physics. In this exciting book, Price urges physicists, philosophers, and anyone who has ever pondered the mysteries of time to look at the world from the fresh perspective of Archimedes' Point and gain a deeper understanding of ourselves, the universe around us, and our own place in time.
As a successful Hollywood executive, Mariah is on the lookout for the perfect screenplay, and while scouting locations in Pittsburgh, she thinks she has it. With an old-fashioned setting and Thorn, a hero to die for, she knows it will make a great movie. But something will have to be done about the ending--Thorn is too great a character to die. Then a visit to a historic park sent Mariah back in time--to frontier Fort Pitt, where she is rescued by a very real Thorn.
This book is a revision of Random Point Processes written by D. L. Snyder and published by John Wiley and Sons in 1975. More emphasis is given to point processes on multidimensional spaces, especially to pro cesses in two dimensions. This reflects the tremendous increase that has taken place in the use of point-process models for the description of data from which images of objects of interest are formed in a wide variety of scientific and engineering disciplines. A new chapter, Translated Poisson Processes, has been added, and several of the chapters of the fIrst edition have been modifIed to accommodate this new material. Some parts of the fIrst edition have been deleted to make room. Chapter 7 of the fIrst edition, which was about general marked point-processes, has been eliminated, but much of the material appears elsewhere in the new text. With some re luctance, we concluded it necessary to eliminate the topic of hypothesis testing for point-process models. Much of the material of the fIrst edition was motivated by the use of point-process models in applications at the Biomedical Computer Labo ratory of Washington University, as is evident from the following excerpt from the Preface to the first edition. "It was Jerome R. Cox, Jr. , founder and [1974] director of Washington University's Biomedical Computer Laboratory, who ftrst interested me [D. L. S.
NEWBERY MEDAL WINNER • TIME MAGAZINE’S 100 BEST FANTASY BOOKS OF ALL TIME • NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE FROM DISNEY Read the ground-breaking science fiction and fantasy classic that has delighted children for over 60 years! "A Wrinkle in Time is one of my favorite books of all time. I've read it so often, I know it by heart." —Meg Cabot Late one night, three otherworldly creatures appear and sweep Meg Murry, her brother Charles Wallace, and their friend Calvin O'Keefe away on a mission to save Mr. Murray, who has gone missing while doing top-secret work for the government. They travel via tesseract--a wrinkle that transports one across space and time--to the planet Camazotz, where Mr. Murray is being held captive. There they discover a dark force that threatens not only Mr. Murray but the safety of the whole universe. A Wrinkle in Time is the first book in Madeleine L’Engle’s Time Quintet.
In a universe filled by chaos and disorder, one physicist makes the radical argument that the growth of order drives the passage of time -- and shapes the destiny of the universe. Time is among the universe's greatest mysteries. Why, when most laws of physics allow for it to flow forward and backward, does it only go forward? Physicists have long appealed to the second law of thermodynamics, held to predict the increase of disorder in the universe, to explain this. In The Janus Point, physicist Julian Barbour argues that the second law has been misapplied and that the growth of order determines how we experience time. In his view, the big bang becomes the "Janus point," a moment of minimal order from which time could flow, and order increase, in two directions. The Janus Point has remarkable implications: while most physicists predict that the universe will become mired in disorder, Barbour sees the possibility that order -- the stuff of life -- can grow without bound. A major new work of physics, The Janus Point will transform our understanding of the nature of existence.
'There has never been a mid ocean ditching by an air carrier jet.' These are the words that haunt Captain Charlie Wells when he realizes that his jumbo jet has a problem over the Atlantic. None of the passengers or crew could know that a disgruntled airline mechanic has sentenced them to a night of terror. As the flight approaches the Equal Time Point and is the most distant from land, Captain Wells and his crew of pilots and flight attendants struggle to avoid making history. While airline personnel, the FAA, and the FBI try to solve the mystery of Tri Con Flight Eleven, a small U.S. Navy ship may be the only hope for the 208 souls on board. Ride along in the cockpit as this routine international flight becomes a nightmare that will require all the flight staff's training to survive. After reading Equal Time Point, frequent flyers and first-time passengers will find themselves studying the emergency procedure card in the seatback before their next flight.