#alan burdick

[explore-blog]

7 great science books of 2017

[dk-thrive]

Proposing such questions, the astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has said, is like standing at the South Pole and asking which way is south

In the beginning, or right before that, there was no time. According to cosmologists, the universe started nearly fourteen billion years ago with a “big bang” and in an instant expanded to something closer to its current size, and it continues to expand faster than the speed of light. Before all that, though, there was nothing: no mass, no matter, no energy, no gravity, no motion, no change. No time. Maybe you can imagine what that was like. I can’t fathom it. My mind refuses to receive the idea and instead insists, Where did the universe come from? How does something appear from nothing? For argument’s sake, I’ll accept that perhaps the universe did not exist before the Big Bang—but it exploded in something, right? What was that? What was there before the beginning? Proposing such questions, the astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has said, is like standing at the South Pole and asking which way is south: “Earlier times simply would not be defined.” Perhaps Hawking is trying to be reassuring. What he seems to mean is that human language has a limit.

~ Alan Burdick, "Why Time Flies: A Mostly Scientific Investigation" (Simon & Schuster, January 24, 2017)

[remainsstreet]

Illustration for the New York Times Book Review for the review of "Why Time Flies" by Alan Burdick.

[dk-thrive]

Time creeps, crawls, flies, flees, flows, and stands still; it is abundant or scarce; it weighs on us with palpable heft. Bells toll for a “long” or a “short” time

So it is with time. Whenever we talk about it, we do so in terms of something lesser. We find or lose time, like a set of keys; we save and spend it, like money. Time creeps, crawls, flies, flees, flows, and stands still; it is abundant or scarce; it weighs on us with palpable heft. Bells toll for a “long” or a “short” time, as if their sound could be measured with a ruler. Childhood recedes, deadlines loom. The contemporary philosophers George Lakoff and Mark Johnson have proposed a thought experiment: take a moment and try to address time strictly in its own terms, stripped of any metaphor. You’ll be left empty-handed. “Would time still be time for us if we could not waste or budget it?” they wonder. “We think not.”

~ Alan Burdick, "Why Time Flies: A Mostly Scientific Investigation" (Simon & Schuster, January 24, 2017)

[dk-thrive]

Where is it coming from, what is it passing through, and where is it going?

And so one day, longer ago than I wish were true, I set out on a journey through the world of time in order to understand it—to ask, as Augustine did, “Where is it coming from, what is it passing through, and where is it going?” The purer physical and mathematical aspects of time continue to be debated by the great minds of cosmology. What interested me, and what science has only begun to reveal, is how time manifests itself in living biology: how it is interpreted and told by cells and subcellular machinery, and how that telling seeps upward into the neurobiology, psychology, and consciousness of our species. As I traveled through the world of time research and visited with its many ologists, I sought answers to questions that have long plagued me and perhaps you too, such as, Why did time seem to last longer when we were children? Does the experience of time really slow down when you’re in a car crash? How is it that I’m more productive when I have too much to do, whereas when I have all the time in the world, I seem to get nothing done? Is there a clock in us that counts off the seconds, hours, and days, like the clock in a computer? And if we contain such a clock, how pliable is it? Can I make time speed up, slow down, stop, reverse? How and why does time fly?

~ Alan Burdick, "Why Time Flies: A Mostly Scientific Investigation" (Simon & Schuster, January 24, 2017)

[dk-thrive]

But deep down I sensed the truth: time was—is—in me, in us. It is there from the moment I wake to the moment I fall asleep, it suffuses the air, it permeates the mind and body, it crawls through one’s cells

I was so effective at avoiding time that a long time passed before I understood that that’s what I was doing. And with that realization, another one quickly followed: I was avoiding time because secretly I feared it. I gained a sense of control from perceiving time as external, as if it were something I could step in and out of, like a stream, or sidestep altogether, like a lamppost. But deep down I sensed the truth: time was—is—in me, in us. It is there from the moment I wake to the moment I fall asleep, it suffuses the air, it permeates the mind and body, it crawls through one’s cells, through every living moment, and will continue advancing long after the moment it leaves all cells behind. I felt infected. And yet I could not say where it came from, much less where it went—and keeps going, steadily leaking away. As with so many things that one fears, I had no idea what time actually is, and my skill at avoiding it only led me further from any real answer.

~ Alan Burdick, "Why Time Flies: A Mostly Scientific Investigation" (Simon & Schuster, January 24, 2017)

[dk-thrive]

My subject settled in for the long haul, a hungry houseguest, beguiling and instructive, much like time itself.

So I made a vow to myself: I would undertake a new book only on the condition that I would absolutely finish it on time—and in a reasonable amount of time at that. In effect, Why Time Flies would be a book about time, written on time. Of course, it wasn’t. What started as a journey evolved into something between a pastime and an obsession, accompanying me through one job and another, the birth of my children, preschool, grade school, beach vacations, and canceled deadlines and dinner dates; in its sway I beheld the most accurate clock in the world, experienced the white nights of the Arctic, and fell from a great height into the arms of gravity. My subject settled in for the long haul, a hungry houseguest, beguiling and instructive, much like time itself.

~ Alan Burdick, "Why Time Flies: A Mostly Scientific Investigation" (Simon & Schuster, January 24, 2017)

[dk-thrive]

At these moments I have the clearest and most chilling understanding that time moves in one direction only.

"Some nights—more than I like, lately—I wake to the sound of the bedside clock. The room is dark, without detail, and in darkness the room expands in such a way that it seems as if I am outdoors, under an endless empty sky, yet at the same time underground, in a vast cavern. I might be falling through space. I might be dreaming. I could be dead. Only the clock moves, its tick steady, unhurried, relentless. At these moments I have the clearest and most chilling understanding that time moves in one direction only.

~ Alan Burdick, "Why Time Flies: A Mostly Scientific Investigation" (Simon & Schuster, January 24, 2017)