Cosmos
The Theory of Relativity is quite clear about time and space:
In relativistic terms there is no such thing as time and no such thing
as space. Spacetime however does exist as a history of an entire universe,
that is, the set of all of the events that happened (past tense) in that
universe. Feynman described a history track composed of frames which we
"observe" in succession in a "forward" direction (the prime requisite of
consciousness -- if the arrow is "halted" or moved backward, no conscious
observation is made).
Stephen Hawking's attempts to popularize his work in book form for the
general public leave a great deal to be desired (from a technical standpoint).
Fortunately, his papers are available, and his early technical work which
built on the previous work of Penrose is available in book form. See: Hawking,
S.W., Ellis. G.F.R. (1973) The Large Scale Structure of Spacetime (Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, England). See also: Penrose, R. (1967) "Structure
of Space-Time", in Battelle Rencontres: 1967 Lectures in Mathematics and
Physics edited by C.M. DeWitt and J.A. Wheeler (Benjamin,
New York).
Jim Belec
from a post to the Virtropy
mail list
Sun, 9 May 1999
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