Over at Cosmic Variance, Sean writes:
You know what the world really needs? A good book about time. Google tells me there are only about one and a half million such books right now, but I think you’ll agree that one more really good one is called for.
So I’m writing one. From Eternity to Here: The Origin of the Universe and the Arrow of Time is a popular-level book on time, entropy, and their connections to cosmology, to be published by Dutton. Hopefully before the end of this year!
Dammit! Now it’s a race to see whose pop-physics book will be out first. The approximately final draft of my book went off to my editor just before New Year’s– one final line edit, and then it’s into the production phase. I’m not sure there’s a target date for publication yet, but like Sean, I’m hoping to see it before the end of this year.
He’s one up on me though, in that he already has a web page devoted to the book. We own bunniesmadeofcheese.com, but at the moment, it just redirects to this blog. Clearly, I need to get on this, in my copious free time.
Anyway, the “Blogging Physicists Pop-Science Book Smackdown” is now officially on. You’re going down, theory boy!
(Kidding aside, I’m glad to hear that Sean’s publishing a popular book. The table of contents that he posted looks interesting, too, if short on practical information…
(One of my half-baked course ideas (again, to be worked on in my copious free time) is something I think of as “A Brief History of Timekeeping,” looking at the technology of time through the ages. You can get into a lot of good physics that way– start with astronomy (the Sun, Moon, and stars), move into classical physics (pendulum clocks and the like), and then to quantum physics (atomic clocks and frequency combs). You can even wrap it back around to the past, by talking about radioactive dating and red shifts and all that. You could probably get a good book out of that concept, as well. I’d be a little surprised if somebody hasn’t already done it, though.)