Einstein's Dreams

Einstein's Dreams - Alan Lightman

10.09.07


Obviously, these are not Einstein's dreams. If they were, then the author would be Einstein himself, for how the hell would Alan Lightman come to know of Einstein's dreams? Instead, the stories contained herein revolve around various conceptions of time, as the author understands it.

A few scenarios are, as Wikipedia puts is, "exaggerations of true phenomena related to relativity," e.g. the stilts, the flying buildings; the others are simply fantastic, or nonsensical (time going backwards? Yeah, right.). It's interesting, but its value to me ends there. A glaring problem for me is that in most, if not all of the fantastical scenarios, the properties of "time" change, whereas the physical laws as we currently know them remain constant. Nonsense!

It's a nice time-waster. It can get you to think about time, but there are other books more suited to the topic.