Faster Than Light

Albert Einstein knew already in the early 1900s, when he first published his famous paper about the constancy of the speed of light, that not only did this constancy imply that mass contains energy (E = m c squared), but that faster-than-light motion could lead to paradoxes -- some that seemed to involve backwards time travel.

What are these paradoxes? Why is light and its speed relevant? This book will lead you through an obstacle course of conundrums and oddities, building up your understanding of how light's speed creates simple but mind-expanding paradoxes -- one conceptual riddle at a time.

This is not your average popular science book. This is also not a textbook. This book takes one theme -- the universally constant speed of light -- and shows how it may appear compromised on scales from the quantum mechanics of the very small to the cosmology of the very large, and the resulting surprising implications can result.

"Imagine embarking on a journey to comprehend the physics of the entire universe with a guide who's not only an expert but makes the concepts digestible and entertaining. Robert J. Nemiroff offers such a journey in Faster Than Light, a book that initially describes the speed of light, then touches on subjects as esoteric as time travel using the theory of relativity and speculation on how to send information back in time, among other subjects." -- BlueInk Reviews (starred review)

" ... takes readers on a wild ride through the ins and outs of the speed of light in this mind-bending guide. His primary approach is through a series of humorous thought experiments ... explanations are clear and concise, and most of them require only logic to sort out, making the book more accessible than similar titles." -- Booklife

"A fresh and joyous ride through the mind-bending puzzles at the heart of nature's most fundamental speed that remind us that the universe is strange beyond belief" -- Caleb Scharf (Author: The Ascent of Information)

"Better than a new particle collider!" -- Sabine Hossenfelder (Author: Existential Physics)

Dr. Robert Nemiroff is a Professor of Physics at Michigan Technological University. He is quite proud of his award as an "exceptional graduate student mentor." He holds a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania and became a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2022. Dr. Nemiroff is perhaps best known as a creator and editor for one of NASA's most popular science websites: The Astronomy Picture of the Day at /. This book is a humorous popularization of surprising research published in top physics and astrophysics journals. In his spare time, Robert likes to play basketball, read and watch science fiction, and think about concepts in science that are both very simple and very strange.

This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.