Deep Time
David Darling
This is one of my all-time favorite books. If I were stranded on a desert
island this is the book I would want with me. I have read it at least four
times over the years and am captivated by it each time. Diane always
razzes me about my proclivity for the epic novel (Michener’s Hawaii starts
out with under-sea volcanoes erupting to create the Hawaiian islands;
Rutherfurd’s London begins when the British Isles are still attached to
mainland Europe; Michener’s The Source begins in pre-history). Deep
Time trumps them all and starts at the beginning of the universe, “Without
time, without space. Without matter or energy . . . there is nothing – not
even a point, not even a void.” It is the quintessential epic.
Darling, with degrees in physics and astronomy, is a proponent of the
anthropic principle that life and intelligence had to arise in the universe in
order for it to be real. Humanity is literally the consciousness of the
universe.
The book follows a proton from the moment of creation 18 billion years ago
all the way to “deep time” trillions of years into the future when the universe
will become an incredibly dilute soup of photons. The proton sees the
quasars flare into brilliance and the galaxies condense around massive
vibrating cosmic strings. It becomes forged into a gold atom and is
incorporated into the phonograph album that was attached to the Voyager
2 spacecraft as a message from Earth to unknown civilizations and
launched in 1977. It is from this vantage that the proton watches as the
universe ages and grows dark. Eventually even the proton evaporates.
It is not very often that I would describe a book as beautiful. This is a
beautiful book. Darling paints such pictures with his words that you will
stop every so often during the reading, put the book down and imagine.
This small volume is like a large chunk of Dagoba chocolate. It is to be
savored a small piece, a phrase, a sentence, a paragraph at a time.
/tdw/
David Darling
This is one of my all-time favorite books. If I were stranded on a desert
island this is the book I would want with me. I have read it at least four
times over the years and am captivated by it each time. Diane always
razzes me about my proclivity for the epic novel (Michener’s Hawaii starts
out with under-sea volcanoes erupting to create the Hawaiian islands;
Rutherfurd’s London begins when the British Isles are still attached to
mainland Europe; Michener’s The Source begins in pre-history). Deep
Time trumps them all and starts at the beginning of the universe, “Without
time, without space. Without matter or energy . . . there is nothing – not
even a point, not even a void.” It is the quintessential epic.
Darling, with degrees in physics and astronomy, is a proponent of the
anthropic principle that life and intelligence had to arise in the universe in
order for it to be real. Humanity is literally the consciousness of the
universe.
The book follows a proton from the moment of creation 18 billion years ago
all the way to “deep time” trillions of years into the future when the universe
will become an incredibly dilute soup of photons. The proton sees the
quasars flare into brilliance and the galaxies condense around massive
vibrating cosmic strings. It becomes forged into a gold atom and is
incorporated into the phonograph album that was attached to the Voyager
2 spacecraft as a message from Earth to unknown civilizations and
launched in 1977. It is from this vantage that the proton watches as the
universe ages and grows dark. Eventually even the proton evaporates.
It is not very often that I would describe a book as beautiful. This is a
beautiful book. Darling paints such pictures with his words that you will
stop every so often during the reading, put the book down and imagine.
This small volume is like a large chunk of Dagoba chocolate. It is to be
savored a small piece, a phrase, a sentence, a paragraph at a time.
/tdw/
| Thom's Review DEEP TIME |
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