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Title: Last Three Minutes (Science Masters)
ISBN: 0297815024
Author:
P. C. W. Davies
Publicate Date: 1994-10-03
Publish: 1994-10-03
List Price: $1.73
Average Customer Rating: 4.0
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $1.73
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $1.75
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1: An understandable explanation of what the fate of the universe will likely be
This book is somewhat of a companion to the book "The First Three Minutes" by Steven Weinberg. In that book, Weinberg describes the physical conditions of the universe in the three minutes after the big bang winked it into existence. Davies distills current quantum and cosmological thinking down into an understandable explanation of what are the likely end scenarios for the universe.
In general there are two main endings postulated for the universe. The first is that it will continue to expand and all energy concentrations will eventually be dissipated to achieve what is literally universal thermodynamic equilibrium. The second is that the universe will cease expanding and start to contract. Once the contraction starts it will accelerate until all matter, which is the entire universe, will contract down into a singularity of infinite density. At this point time and the laws of physics will no longer exist.
Which end scenario is the eventual result is based on the density of mass in the universe, less than a certain amount and it is universal expansion, more than a certain amount and contraction is certain. At this time, the amount of mass in the universe does not appear to be enough to force a contraction; however cosmologists are finding additional mass all the time.
Where Davies diverges from other authors writing in this area is in his discussions of ways to create new universes and how advanced species could literally use the creation of new universes to be immortal. It was a fascinating thought because it is based not on speculation but on the highest levels of current cosmological thought. That section alone made reading the entire book worthwhile.
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2: Escape from Yourself and Join the Stars
An elegant book on the ultimate fate of the universe - cosmological speculations based upon well known hard physics - and all very exciting stuff extremely well written, and easily grasped if one remembers any high school science at all.
All the subject matter concerns a physical scale (large and small), a time scale (long and short), and a temperature scale (hot and cold) of such stupendously extreme parameters that reading becomes a terrific brain stretching exercise that delightfully removes one from the tiny doings of one's own overly personalized and petty mind circus.
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3: The human end and not so much the universe's
I am not a scientist, and do not understand technical scientific matters in a deep way. For better descriptions of what this book is about in scientific terms I recommend the reader of this review look at the other Amazon Reviews.
I am the kind of reader who reads the scientific material in order to use it as basis for understanding certain fundamental questions. Science provides the ' truth' and my own thought the conjecture.
However what happens when the Science itself is conjecture, and what we are dealing with is alternative theories? From what I understand the most accepted view of the Universe's ' end' in scientific terms is its continuous expansion. Thus a number of readers on Amazon have indicated that the ' contraction scenario 'or ' big crunch scenario ' for the world's end is not held today by the great majority of Astronomers.
My question and here I share Davies' concern is not with ' the end of the Universe' the ' last three minutes as it were of everything' but with the ' ultimate fate of mankind'. And I wonder if the kind of material presented here brings to a greater understanding of that.
On the one hand it is possible to suggest that Mankind is such a small part of the Universe, and has been in existence for such a small interval of time that its continued existence through the kinds of times and distances the Universe is likely to exist through seems extremely unlikely. Here it is possible to speak about various scenarios of ' colonization' and the human transformations involved in them. Speculations in other words.
But then too since Mankind is now rapidly developing ' machine - intelligences' that may in some way become ' independent others' the question of ultimate human fate is connected with our own efforts here. In other words we might not wait until the last three minutes of the universe but might through our own ' creative means' put ourselves to sleep.
All this of course raises questions which are ultimately religious or spiritual.
And that question too I think should be asked in relation to ' the final time' of the universe.
All this leads me to the thought that the real subject we should be thinking about is the subject of God at the beginning or before the beginning, and God at the end or beyond the End. And what that means for us. And what we mean for God?
And how we are to make sense of this universe, and whether or not we can at all.
This is to say that the kinds of information Davies presents do not help me so much in my own quest to ' understand the ultimate meaning of who I am, who we are, and what my and our purpose is here on this earth and in this Universe.
For all those we now living love will end long before the physical Universe does.
Is there some other meaning for all of us only God knows ? Is there another universe next door or up above, or in some other way of perception and knowing we cannot possibly grasp?
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4: Mind Expanding... (or is it contracting?)
This book overviews the current major ideas of cosmology and sets them against a logical background of ultimate fate. What happens to the universe ultimately depends upon whence we came. Davies takes several theories and then logically extrapolates the possible fates of the universe.
One of the things to keep in mind is the fact that "infinity is a long time" and this reoccuring theme is central to the ideas he develops. If the universe is expanding, what eventually happens to matter? If the universe is contracting, what will eventually happen to matter? Where does matter come from? Can matter be created or destroyed over infinite amounts of time?
Such ideas explored are the steady state theory, the expanding universe and "cold heat" death. The contracting universe and the eventual ceasing of all time, matter --- everything... The oscillating universe where matter can be created from "nothing" .
Some of the info is a little dated -- I suppose this applies if you are a graduate student in the Astrophysic department of Cambridge University. But for the average bloke with an interest in cosmology, one need not be worried about reading "old" materials. In fact the popular science, current considerations about the universes initial inflation stage -- that fraction of a secong when expansion and matter may have formed --- is well described and should serve as an intro to other reading.
The one thing that I really like about Davies is that his writing is clean and does not become a political tract: eg. Dawkins, Pinker and Dennet.
This trend towards writing "polically" based appreciations of scientific theory is based upon two things in my estimation: 1) the rise of the irrational, Voodoo Science and stark raving mad religious fundementalists --- scientific authors often rightly feel that they are fighting a rear guard action against the forces of darkness, and: 2) amazing egos that need to be assuaged (Dawkins and Dennet) so they feel that they must always address all potential attacks, however inconsequential, to defend their "good name."
Davies is clean and can present contrasting and even illogical ideas (Bede's "Darwin's Black Box") in a non-political way -- and still make the guy look irrelevant to modern science.
That is why, along with Matt Ridley, Davies is the best writer in popular science, worthy to assume the mantle of Carl Sagan.
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5: A bit dry in the middle..
The book starts with what I might consider a fake-out: Davies starts by recounting a situation where some asteroid has been found to be on a collision course with Earth and the final minutes in our existence considering that we know we're going to be hit by a "global killer". While this is interesting, it's a bit of fiction. We were scared for a bit that later this century we would be hit by something heading our direction, but it was found to be missing us by just a little bit later. After considering the possibilities and probabilities of these happening for some pages, he notes that even if we do die this way, it's not exactly the last three minutes of the universe, just life on earth. Going on, he discusses the possibility of heat death, seemingly unavoidable by the second law of thermodynamics and something which depressed scientists to no end after they found it out. He also covers the possibility that the universe may stop expanding and start contracting at some point in the future.
Davies seems to work very hard to make the material not as dry as a AA member at a monastery by connecting most of the theory to what would actually happen, assuming that human life exists at that point. Unfortunately, the evaporating power of the material seems to take over, and I couldn't really get through this book all the way without forcing myself through long sections on black holes that I really didn't care much about. After the long discussion of black holes and how we could possibly get energy out of them stops, Davies got to the meat of what I was actually looking for: heat death or contracting universe. The last third of the book was actually much easier to read than the middle and much more intersting than most of the rest. Contracting and "Bouncing back" universes are discussed along with an actually interesting tangent about artifically creating universes by tricks with false vacuum. One other thing I really like about this book - Davies seems to go out of his way to make sure you know where to look up more information about the situations he talks about - even without resorting to looking at the notes in the back.
The book is actually better than many I could have read on the subject, and did increase my knowledge of the possibilities for the ultimate fate of the universe fairly extensively. It definitely gets my recommendation for geeky reading over the summer, at least if you can get through to the really interesting parts. At 176 pages, it is actually more reading than it looks like at a paltry paperbook size. If it weren't for the dry section in the middle, it wouldn't be B grade material.
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