Thursday, November 6, 2008 @ 7:30pm
Hart House Library, 7 Hart House Circle
Free. Limited seating.
Interviewer CBC’s Quirks & Quarks host Bob McDonald.

A bold revision of one of the most successful theories of all time: Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

Physicists have long known that something is wrong with gravity. Einstein’s relativity and the theory of quantum mechanics are fundamentally incompatible, which has prompted the last 30 years of work in string theory and quantum gravity. However, John Moffat has identified a bigger problem: not only does Einstein’s theory not work in the world of the very small; it does not seem to work in the world of the very large either.

Moffat has developed a modified theory of gravity, or MOG, that can explain the behaviour of our universe as well as Einstein’s, without resorting to dubious, yet long-claimed excuse for the existence of invisible “dark matter.” As John Barrow of the University of Cambridge asserts, the simplicity of Moffat’s model demands that physicists take this daring new theory seriously.

Now, for the first time, “Reinventing Gravity” introduces general readers to Moffat’s groundbreaking new ideas about the universe.

An enjoyable and compelling ride through one of life’s most fascinating enigmas.

“What, then, is time? If no one ask of me, I know,” St. Augustine of Hippo lamented. “But if I wish to explain to him who asks, I know not.”

Who wouldn’t sympathize with Augustine’s dilemma? Time is at once intimately familiar and yet deeply mysterious. It is thoroughly intangible: We say it flows like a river — yet when we try to examine that flow, the river seems reduced to a mirage. No wonder philosophers, poets, and scientists have grappled with the idea of time for centuries.

The enigma of time has also captivated science journalist Dan Falk, who sets off on an intellectual journey In Search of Time. The quest takes him from the ancient observatories of stone-age Ireland and England to the atomic clocks of the U.S. Naval Observatory; from the layers of geological “deep time” in an Arizona canyon to Albert Einstein’s apartment in Switzerland. Along the way he talks to scientists and scholars from California to New York, from Toronto to Oxford. He speaks with anthropologists and historians about our deep desire to track time’s cycles; he talks to psychologists and neuroscientists about the mysteries of memory; he quizzes astronomers about the beginning and end of time. Not to mention our latest theories about time travel — and the paradoxes it seems to entail. We meet great minds from Aristotle to Kant, from Newton to Einstein — and we hear from today’s most profound thinkers: Roger Penrose, Paul Davies, Julian Barbour, David Deutsch, Lee Smolin, and many more.

As usual, Dan Falk’s style combines exhaustive research with a lively, accessible, and often humorous style, making In Search of Time a delightful tour through a most curious dimension.

John W. Moffat is professor emeritus of physics at the University of Toronto and an adjunct professor of physics at the University of Waterloo. He is also a resident affiliate member of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. Moffat earned a doctorate in Physics at the University of Cambridge.

Dan Falk has written about science for the Globe and Mail, National Post, Walrus, and New Scientist, and has been a regular contributor to the CBC Radio programs Ideas and Quirks and Quarks. He is the winner of the 2002 Canadian Science Writers’ Association Science in Society Journalism Award, the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia Margaret and John Savage First Book Award, for Universe on a T-shirt, and the 1999 American Institute of Physics’ Science Writing Award in Physics and Astronomy.

Bob McDonald is the host of CBC’s Quirks & Quarks. One of Canada’s best known science journalists, Bob has been presenting the program since 1992. Bob is also a weekly science commentator on CBC Newsworld Morning, and science correspondent for CBC TV’s The National. Before joining Quirks & Quarks, Bob was the host of CBC Televison’s children’s science program Wonderstruck. He is also the author of two books based on the program, Wonderstruck I and Wonderstruck II.