Book Catalog
Parallel Universes
The Search For Other Worlds
By Fred Wolf
Our Price: $12.00
Our Item Code: parallel
Postage Code: book1
351 Pages, Trade Paperback
Cover Size: 6 x 9 inches
Simon & Schuster
Related listings: Weird Physics
Date: 1988
ISBN: 0-671-69601-7
Country of Origin: USA
Added to Catalog: 1/13/97
(Revised 1/6/97)
Availability: This item is usually in stock and available for immediate
Priority Mail shipment. Order it today (by 8pm Eastern/5pm Pacific),
and you will probably have it in 2-3 days (in USA).
Features: Table of Contents, Index, Glossary
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Our Review |
Opinion of the webmaster, subject to debate |
This is similar in some ways to
The Holographic Universe
and
The Dancing Wu Li Masters
in that it uses current
quantum theory to derive some interesting
possibilities regarding
parallel universes.
It is a bit more accessible for the layman, however.
While not a technical
book, it manages to expose the reader to a number of the oddities of
quantum physics quite painlessly.
Wolf touches on the UFO phenonmenon,
as well as ESP and ghosts with a fine sense of humor.
-- Glenn Campbell
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Information from the Publisher |
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An excerpt from Parallel Universes:
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the
Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be
replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another which states that it has already happened
Douglas Adams - The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
No experiences, ordinary, everyday, usual or unusual, whether impressions,
ideas, dreams, visions or memories, strange, bizarre, familar, weird,
psychotic, or sane, are objective facts.
R.D. Lang
None who has gazed into a full-lenght mirror has not at some time thought
about the right-for-left twisted world that exists on the other side of the
looking glass. Indeed Lewis Carroll's Alice has capture our imagination
through her magical adventure in a through-the-looking-glass parallel
universe consisting of talking playing cards, walruses, ships, and sealing
wax. In our imagination we believe that the parallel looking-glass world is
as real as our own. Probably you have had the experience of holding up
a mirror paralled to another mirror and gazing at the infinite number of
images were somehow a vision of a truer but stranger reality ?
Parallel universes have existed in the fantasies of science-fiction writers
probably ever since the genre began. Apparently science-fiction writers have
a firm grasp of this rather startling idea. Yet when I try to explain
scientifically just what a parallel universe is, I find myself stumbling over
words. Perhaps the reason is that these universes which are "old hat" to
science-fiction writers are rather new to physicists.
Numerous examples of parallel universes from science fiction come to mind. I
remember one outstanding Star Trek episode. The Enterprise had encountered
one of those space-warping ionized gas clouds that seem to exist "out there"
while in the routine operation of "beaming up" Captain Kirk and some of his
crew from a planet below. The ionized cloud interfered with the operation
of the "transporter" and Captain Kirk and party found themselves on board a
parallel Enterprise, where the remainder of the crew and the space-ship
environment, while much the same as on the old Enterprise, were surprisingly
different.
Mr. Spock, for example, had sprouted a black pointed beard and, while as
logical as his counterpart on the other Enterprise, was amazingly evil. In
fact, the whole ship that Kirk and party had come upon was as evil as the old
Enterprise was good in their voyages through the final frontier. Meanwhile,
on the "good" old Enterprise, an evil Kirk and crew had beamed aboard, and
because of their abhorrent behavior and "good " Mr, Spock quickly had them
locked up in the "brig".
Both Spocks soon figured out what the trouble was. The Enterprise, because
of the ionized gas storm, had encountered a parallel universe where a
duplicate of the original Enterprise and crew existed. In fact the
duplication was nearly exact in every regard with the exception of some minor
details like what was good and what was evil. Neither universe would have
even suspected the other's existence if the ion storm hadn't occured and
caused a rip in the spacetime fabric alowing the universes access to each
other. However, the parallel Kirks had crossed over into the other's
spaceships through the intersection or joining of the two universes. The
"good" ship Enterprise had an "evil" Kirk locked up in its brig and the
"evil" Enterprise found itself coping with a "good" Captain Kirk, who soon
learned how to pretend he was evil while attempting to right some wrongs.
And therein lay a good tale.
Paralled or distorted duplication of what already exists is indeed an
important feature of paralled universes according to the way some physicists
view them. Accordingly, there are parallel yous and mes somehow existing in
the same space and time that we live in but normally not seen or sensed by
us. In these universes, choices and decisions are being made at the very
instant you are choosing and deciding. Only the outcomes are different,
leading to different but similar worlds.
From the Book Cover
"Amazing speculations on time travel, the nature of reality and existence and
the role of consciousness"
--San Francisdco Chronicle-Examiner
"A wild intellectual rile ...An enthralling read."
--Publishers Weekly
Is science fact stranger than science fiction? In an "outrageous ride along
the frontiers of science" (New Age Journal), physicist Fred Alan Wolf
explore the startling concept of parallel universes--worlds that resemble and
perhaps even duplicate our own--and puts a refreshing and illuminating spin
on the complex theories challenging our perceptions of the universe. Through
such lively examples as a superspace theater and zero-time ghosts, Wolf
deftly guides the reader through the paradoxes of today's physics to explore
a realm of scientific speculation in which black holes are gateways of
information between universes, and alter egos spring into existence at the
flip of a coin.
Wolf explores a future when time travelers will make history-and alter the
past-while testing Earth's first time machine; when lucid dreaming and
schizophrenia may mark the overlap of parallel universes; when quantum
computers may predict the stock market.
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION
- Quantum Physics: Bringing in an Observer
- Relativity: Relationships--Weird and Wonderful
- Cosmology: A Search for the Beginning
- Psychology: Consciousness and Machine Intelligence
- Parallel Universes and Communication with the Future
PART ONE:
WHAT ARE PARALLEL UNIVERSES?
CHAPTER 1: HOW QUANTUM PHYSICS PREDICTS THE EXISTENCE
OF PARALLEL UNIVERSES
- The New Physics Had Strange Ideas
CHAPTER 2: THE PENULTIMATE EXPERIMENT: SHOOTING
THROUGH DOUBLE SLITS
- The Mystery Persists
- The Wave Was Not Real
- Why Parallel Universes Were Invented
CHAPTER 3: RIDING THE WAVE THROUGH PARALLEL WORLDS
- A Dizzy Atom in an lnfinity of Worlds
- The Quantum Magic Lantern Theater
- The Electron Exists in Parallel Universes
CHAPTER 4: A WAVE PASSES THROUGH COPENHAGEN
- Trouble in the New Physics
- The Observer Participates Whether She Wants to or Not
CHAPTER 5: THE MEANING OF A QUANTUM WAVE FUNCTION
- The Wave Was Invisible
- The Emperor's New Clothes: The Quantum Wave Function
- Does the Universe Quantum Jump?
PART TWO: A REAPPRAISAL: WHAT HAPPENED TO THE UNITY IN UNIVERSE?
CHAPTER 6: THE BUSINESS OF ISNESS
- Infinity, Infinity Everywhere and Not a Spot to Think
- The First lnfinity: A Straight Line
- Infinity Number 2--It's All Done with Mirrors
CHAPTER 7: HOW THINGS THAT ARE DEPEND ON THINGS THAT
AREN'T AND HOW WE AREN'T NORMALLY AWARE THAT
ANYTHING IS ANY DIFFERENT
- Reflections in a Parallel Universe
- In-Betweenness or Room for one More Reflection
CHAPTER 8: SELF-REFERENCE: ISNESS AND AIN'TNESS
- It's a Complementary World After AIl
- An Example: A Coin in Four Universes
CHAPTER 9: LOOK UP IN THE AIR IT'S SUPERSPACE!
- Superspace Broadway Theater Style
- Uncertainty in Superspace
- What If Newton Was Right? Silly Superspace
- A Pattern of order in Superspace: Consciousness Emerging
CHAPTER 10: A MOUSE, A COIN, AND A QUANTUM CONSPIRACY
- A Conspiracy of Universes
PART THREE: INSIDE AND OUTSIDE: TIME BENDS AND SPACE WARPS
CHAPTER 11: RELATIVITY AND TIME AS A DIMENSION OF SPACE
- Primal Time
- The First Time l Saw Spacetime
- The Popular Dimension of Time
- How Time Can Be Viewed as the Fourth Dimension
- The Democratization of Space and Time
- A Relativistic Game of Catch
- What Does a Four-Dimensional Obiect Look Like?
- Time Is Space Is Time Is...
CHAPTER 12: REAL TIME, ZERO TIME, IMAGINARY TIME AND REAL
SPACE, AND IMAGINARY SPACE
- Invariance in Geometry
- Invariance in Spacetime
- Imaginary Space
- A Change in Time
- Going Down Fifth Avenue in Spacetime
- An Ordinary Particle
- A Zero-Time Ghost
- An lmaginary Time Superman
CHAPTER 13: EINSTEIN'S PARALLEL UNIVERSE
- If Pythagoras Is Right, Spacetime Is Flat
- Visualizing a Curved Space
- Einstein's Curves
- Einstein Going Around the Bend
- Measuring Time Warps
- A Bend in Time Means a Parallel Universe
CHAPTER 14: BLACK HOLES: GATEWAYS TO PARALLEL UNIVERSES
- SpaceWarps
- How Space Curvature Creates a Black Hole
- What's a Black Hole?
CHAPTER 15: HOW BLACK HOLES PREDICTED PARALLEL
UNIVERSES
- My Meeting with a Black Hole Map Maker
- What's Black and White and Dread All Over?
CHAPTER 16: AN IMAGINARY JOURNEY TO PARALLEL UNIVERSES
THROUGH A BLACK HOLE
- Sending Tachyons to Do a Photon's Work
- How a Rotating Black Hole Is a Bridge to Many Universes
- An lnfinity of ParaIIel Universes
PART FOUR: "IN THE BEGINNING THERE WAS ..."
- The First Inconsistency, Not Enough Time to Start the Universe
- Inflationary Models
- Inflation Is Not Enough
- Parallel Universes Solve Another Problem
CHAPTER 17: THE FIRST OBSERVER OF THE BIG BANG
- The Names of God
- A Cloud and the Observer Effect
- The Observe rDisturbs and Creates
- The Grand Prix at the Beginning of Time
- Timeat the Beginning of Time
- Space: Where No One Has Gone Before
- Black Holes: Another Way to a Parallel Universe
- The Scale of the Universe
-
CHAPTER 18: PROBLEMS IN EDEN
- Singularities Do Not Admit Laws of Physics in Their Domains
- In the Beginning There Was Uncertainty
CHAPTER 19: THE GROUND UPON WHICH THE UNIVERSE STOOD
- An Electron in an Atom and a Universe in a Universe of Universes
- The Universe at Time Zero: Energy or Location?
CHAPTER 20: WHO SAW WHAT WHEN?
- The Measure of AII Things
- Classical Gas on the Mind
- Classical Coin Flipping
- Quantum Spin Flipping
PART FIVE: HOW PARALLEL UNIVERSES PREDICT A NEW NOTION OF TIME
- Do Thoughts and Wishes Time Travel?
- Neutron Star Time Machines
CHAPTER 21: TIME TRAVEL
CHAPTER 22: TIME TRAVEL PARADOX RESOLUTION BY PARALLEL UNIVERSES
CHAPTER 23: CLASHING WAVES OF TIME
- Time ls Invisible
- Classical Physics Has No Time Order
- Quantum Physics Has No Time Order
- Time Waves
- A New Picture of Time
- Which Future Sends the Message?
- Me in the Future Talks to Me in the Now
CHAPTER 24: WHEELER'S CHOICE
- A Photon from the Dawn of Time
- Experimental Verification of Backward-Through-Time Travel
- Now Makes the Past
- Does the Future Influence the Present?
- Resolving the Paradox: Time Travel and Parallel Universes
- Time Is Self-Consistently Connected to Parallel Universes
CHAPTER 25: BUILDING A TIME MACHINE
- DatelineDecember3, 2587: GaIaxy News Report
- Dateline December 15, 2587: Galaxy News Report
- Back to the Present
PART SIX: TIME AND MIND IN PARALLEL UNIVERSES
- The Mind in Parallel Worlds
CHAPTER 26: MIND IN PARALLEL UNIVERSES
- Quantum Rules of the Game According to Hoyle
- A Knight's Alter Egos
- The Spouse-of-the-Day
CHAPTER 27: QUANTUM "TWO-TIMERS" AND MORE MESSAGES FROM THE FUTURE
- How to Violate the Uncertainty Principle: Talk to Yourself in the Future
CHAPTER 28: TAKING A PHOTOGRAPH OF ANOTHER PARALLEL UNIVERSE
- Get Your Cameras Ready
- The Rules of Parallel Universe Photography
- Taking the Photograph of a Parallel World
- Using Parallel Universes to Predict the Stock Market
CHAPTER 29: HOW IS SOMETHING KNOWN?
CHAPTER 30: QUANTUM COMPUTERS AND QUANTUM ETHICS
CHAPTER 31: TALKING TO TOMORROW'S PARALLEL UNIVERSE
- The Infinite Number of Parallel Universes... Inside Your Head
- The Scientist's Brain Is Split by the Atom
- Information Flows from Past to Present and from Future to Present
CHAPTER 32: ALPHA AND OMEGA
- Both the Future and the Past Exist
- The Omega Point
- An OveraIl View
CHAPTER 33: REALITY AND EXISTENCE
NOTES
GLOSSARY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
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About the Author
Fred Alan Wolf is a physicist and the author of five books, including Taking
the Quantum Leap, which won an American Book Award. He has taught at San
Diego State University, the University of Paris, the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem, and other colleges and universities in the United States and
abroad. He also lectures and consults worldwide. He received his Ph, D, in
theoretical physics from the University of California, Los Angeles, and he
lectures extensively around the world. He and his wife make their home in
Santa Fe, New Mexico.
-- From the Publisher
Promotional Material from the Publisher
Universal praise for Fred Alan Wolf:
"Fred Alan Wolf has built a remarkable bridge in his book between the
scientific intelligence and the creative imagination."
--Norman Cousins,author of Anatomy of an Illness and The Healing Heart
"He has an extraordinary ability to make complex subjects seem easy to
understand, through simple models and amusing examples."
--Willis Harman, President, Institure of Noetic Sciences
"Fred Alan Wolf has done it again. In another remarkable book he shows us,
in his unique and penetrating way, that the world is not as it seems. Wolf is
emerging as one of the leading interpreters of the new world view contained
in modern physics."
---Larry Dossey, author of Space, Time and Medicine
"If parallel universes really exist, then we should be thankful we are living
in this one, That way we can experience Fred Alan Wolf, whose special talent
it is to tell us about all the others. In Parallel Universes Wolf instructs,
challenges, confounds, perplexes, and outrages our sense of what is."
--Richard M, Restak, M.D., author of The Brain
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