Time

Guido Tonelli is a prize-winning physicist and one of the leaders in the discovery of the Higgs boson. He is Professor of General Physics at the University of Pisa and a physicist at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva. His many publications include the bestselling books Genesis: The Story of How Everything Began and Matter: The Magnificent Illusion.

"Tonelli pays warm, poetic tribute to our very human relationship with time, from the mythology of ancient Greece to contemporary physics and cosmology. An extraordinary achievement and a remarkable book."Jim Baggott, author of Discordance: The Troubled History of the Hubble Constant"Does time flow or stand still? Does it exist? Can we do without it? Can Chronos be killed?’La Nazione"A journey of adventure with surprising discoveries and profound insights."La Voce e Il Tempo"The science described by Tonelli succeeds in showing us the future."Il Messagger"Guido Tonelli leads us along the torturous gateway to understanding worlds dominated by relativistic effects, where there is a future that arrives before the past and indeed creates it."Coast Magazine

• IntroductionPart 1: The fascination of spinning tops1. The desire to master timeWhen the spell is brokenLife's timeUrns and sepulchres: the birth of past, present and future2. Our timeThe sense of timeWhen Chronos ran wild and freeCaging timeThe Triumph of ChronosPart 2: Where time stops1. The odd coupleTime which melts and shatters: Soft clocks: Fantastic accuracy: making money from relativity: Great philosophers and Little Red Riding-Hood2. The long history of timeThe beginning of timeThe end of timeTime in the world of great cosmic distancesMagnificent illusions and fantastic chimerasWhen the energy of three suns travels lightly over the waves of Space-time3. When time stopsThe clocks of the Paris CommuneThe Hellish places where time vanishesThe spectacular end of BetelgeuseThe terror championsPhysics at the points of empty timePart 3: Between ephemeral existence and eternal life1. The life of particlesA world full of weirdnessMasses which explode and times which dilate disproportionatelyCosmic super-acceleratorsThe little red and white brick house2. The time of the infinitely smallA handful of chosen onesIn the ivanescent realm of the ephemeralThe reckless life of muonsBeauty, charm and the timidity of quarks3. A very special relationshipA Castor and Pollux like-existenceGrabbing Kairos by the hairMeasuring time with energyThe raids of the messengers, Hermes' protégésThe perfect couple4. Can time's arrow be reversed?An equation reveals a world whose existence nobody had suspectedThe Holy Grail of symmetryThe secret of a poem, or a fine wineEntropy and the irreversibility of time5. The dream of killing ChronosThe ancient poetry of the idea of stopping timeTime's assassinsNosferatuEpilogue: The brief timeAcknowledgementsIndex