Cycles of Time: An Extraordinary New View of the Universe

From Nobel prize-winner Roger Penrose, this groundbreaking book is for anyone "who is interested in the world, how it works, and how it got here" (New York Journal of Books).

Penrose presents a new perspective on three of cosmology's essential questions: What came before the Big Bang? What is the source of order in our universe? And what cosmic future awaits us?

He shows how the expected fate of our ever-accelerating and expanding universe--heat death or ultimate entropy--can actually be reinterpreted as the conditions that will begin a new "Big Bang." He details the basic principles beneath our universe, explaining various standard and non-standard cosmological models, the fundamental role of the cosmic microwave background, the paramount significance of black holes, and other basic building blocks of contemporary physics. Intellectually thrilling and widely accessible, Cycles of Time is a welcome new contribution to our understanding of the universe from one of our greatest mathematicians and thinkers.

About the Author
Roger Penrose is Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University. He has received a number of prizes and awards, including the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on black hole formation, as well as the 1988 Wolf Prize for physics, which he shared with Stephen Hawking for their joint contribution to our understanding of the universe. His books include Cycles of Time, The Road to Reality, The Nature of Space and Time, which he wrote with Hawking, and The Emperor's New Mind. He has lectured extensively at universities throughout America. He lives in Oxford.