Name: From eternity to here
ISBN: 9780452296541

From eternity to here

A rising star in theoretical physics offers his awesome vision of our universe and beyond, all beginning with a simple question: Why does time move forward?Time moves forward, not backward-everyone knows you can't unscramble an egg. In the hands of one of today's hottest young physicists, that simple fact of breakfast becomes a doorway to understanding the Big Bang, the universe, and other universes, too. In From Eternity to Here, Sean Carroll argues that the arrow of time, pointing resolutely from the past to the future, owes its existence to conditions before the Big Bang itself-a period modern cosmology of which Einstein never dreamed. Increasingly, though, physicists are going out into realms that make the theory of relativity seem like child's play. Carroll's scenario is not only elegant, it's laid out in the same easy-to- understand language that has made his group blog, Cosmic Variance, the most popular physics blog on the Net.From Eternity to Here uses ideas at the cutting edge of theoretical physics to explore how properties of spacetime before the Big Bang can explain the flow of time we experience in our everyday lives. Carroll suggests that we live in a baby universe, part of a large family of universes in which many of our siblings experience an arrow of time running in the opposite direction.

What Hacker News says

rigrassmAug 2026

I love Sean Carroll (Something Deeply Hidden and From Eternity to Here are the root of my fascination with physics and endless pondering of the nature of time) but I have to disagree with his take on this.

Hypothesis - a proposed explanation for something (such as a phenomenon of unknown cause) that is tentatively assumed in order to test whether it agrees with facts that are known or can be determined.

Theory - a scientifically acceptable or plausible general principle or body of principles based on data and offered to explain phenomena

Just because those outside of scientific fields use them interchangeably doesn't change the fact that they carry different meanings in scientific contexts.

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jzlAug 2025

“From Eternity To Here” by Sean Carroll has some nice discussions of it. He can be a bit much at times and could stand to have better editing (the book is 25% too long), but he does have some of the most approachable modern writing on physics out there. Lots of videos on YouTube as well.

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jahnuJun 2024

His book From Eternity to Here on the subject of time is one of the very best science trade books I have ever read. It is chock full of end notes too which are a must read so bring two bookmarks to that party :)

I suspect though he would take issue with the description “illusion”. An illusion implies a trick, believing something that isn’t real. I think he would say emergent phenomena are real phenomena that we really experience and that time while it might not be fundamental it is very real.

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stillworksDec 2022

Would recommend reading Chapter 3 "From Eternity to Here" by Sean Carroll (or maybe read the entire book) for a "light weight" introduction. If you don't have the time then TL;DR : universe is expanding means literally that, i.e it is almost as if new space is getting created rather than "cosmological scale objects" hurtling away from each other because they "gained momentum (if one can even call it that)" because of that big bang.

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jzlDec 2022

I’ll check this one out, thanks. You might enjoy “From Eternity To Here” by Sean Carroll, which is a pretty deep exploration of similar topics.

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slowmovintargetOct 2021

From Eternity to Here by Sean Carroll is a worthwhile read.

The book isn't particularly about the Big Bang (it's more about the nature of the arrow of time), but it has to deal with the subject in passing.

I can also recommend the video series The Biggest Ideas in the Universe [1]. These are a superb explanation of how modern science has arrived at the conclusions it has. You can jump ahead to the Cosmology video, if you must, but you're missing the full experience of building up an understanding that goes far beyond the usual crayon drawings the press gives us.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrxfgDEc2NxZJcWcrxH3j...

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