The Future of Spacetime by Stephen Hawking, Kip Thorne, Igor Novikov, Timothy Ferris and Alan Lightman, Norton, $25.95, ISBN 0393020223
MARRIAGE, says the Book of Common Prayer, is not by any means to be 鈥渆nterprised nor taken in hand unadvisedly or lightly.鈥� It鈥檚 a warning that might be applied to this collection of what are described as 鈥減opular talks鈥�, adapted for print. They were delivered at a celebration of the 60th birthday of Kip Thorne by Thorne himself and invited speakers 鈥渨ho were distinguished and accomplished, yet would draw a crowd鈥�, in the slightly strange words of the preface.
The introduction to The Future of Spacetime stretches from Copernicus to the edges of black holes. After that, it鈥檚 a plunge into the possibilities or impossibilities of time travel, space-time warps, quantum physics, wormholes, gravitational wave astronomy and alternative universes. These essays suggest there was more than one reason for the glass-in-hand birthday celebrants to find their heads spinning. All the authors have taken great trouble to find the simplest words and construct the plainest diagrams in explaining the far-out ideas elaborated here, but the science is still far from easy. It demands repeated reading. Tackling small sections in easy stages will help to wrestle understanding from the pages. The effort is worthwhile, but popular science this ain鈥檛.
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