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.)
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I don't see the need to take sides. I've enjoyed the chapters you've shown us of Bunnies Made of Cheese. I've also enjoyed the papers by Sean Carroll, several of which I discussed at length in a series of refereed coauthored Quantum Cosmology papers. Remember that I'm a Caltech Life Alumnus, and Sean Carroll is a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Physics at the California Institute of Technology. His Scientific American article was good. Good popular science books by good physicists who have good blogs -- well, that's just good. Not every profession is a blood sport. I want you both to have bestsellers. Even an All Star major league baseball game can be a tie.
You may be very far ahead of me in writing the actual "text," but I am ahead on setting up web pages! What's really important here, anyway?
Competition is good for the soul, especially when -- as with Chad's post -- it's entirely tongue-in-cheek. :)
Chad, that course sounds fantastic. The really cool thing is that a lab component would be pretty easy, measuring when the sun crosses the meridian, pendulums, etc., are really cheap and easy to use. Even a simple radioactive half-life experiment is not hard (in grad school we did one for non-science undergrads in 3 hours.)
For the atomic clock, just use WWV....
Hmmmm. Sean's book explains the side thread about the arrow of time and entropy on Numb3rs by the hero mathematician slash physicist. So when will they pick up on yours?
Explaining his latest bit of applied non-applied math to a dog would work just as well as the digressions that were self-parodied by his mathematical sub-genius opponent, but I guess the problem is that he has no pets that I can recall.
PS - That course concept is a good one. I've been meaning to do the grunt work needed to create a "how things work" course designed off of the original book (the textbook version seems too overdone) as a gen-ed class. Your idea would work well at a range of institutions.
I'd like to see Chad's book as well. Sean seems a bit bugs about the Boltzmann's Brain concept, and I suspect would convey the mistaken impression to the lay public that it's taken seriously by mainstream physicists. If there was something out there to counter such an impression, that would be nice.