The traditional association between time and creation is at the heart of science, cosmology, and religion. When scientists began to explore the implications of Einstein's time for the universe as a whole, they discovered that time is elastic, and can be warped by rapid motion or gravitation, that time cannot be meaningfully divided into past, present, and future, nor does time flow in the popular sense. And they made one of the most important discoveries in the history of human thought: that time, and hence all of physical reality, must have had a definite origin in the past. There can be both a beginning and an end to time. But important though Einstein's theory of time turned out to be, it still did not solve "the riddle of time, " and the search for a deeper understanding of time and its relationship with the rest of the physical universe remains at the top of the scientific agenda. From black holes, where time stands still, to the bizarre world of quantum physics, where time vanishes completely, Professor Davies finds evidence that our current theories of time simply don't add up. Why, for instance, does the universe appear younger than some of the objects within it? And how does the concept of time emerge from the timeless chaos of the big bang? Is the passage of time merely an illusion? Can time run backwards? Is time travel possible?

保羅·戴維斯是阿德萊德大學的自然哲學教授。他在倫敦大學獲得哲學博士學位，並在倫敦大學、劍橋大學以及泰恩畔的紐卡斯爾大學從事藝術研究。他於1990年移居澳大利亞。他的研究興趣在黑洞、宇宙學和量子引力方麵，至今已發錶100多篇學術論文，並有多本專著麵世。

戴維斯教授因其能用淺顯的語言闡明深奧的科學思想而飲譽世界。他共有20多本專著，包括《超級力》、《上帝和新物理學》、《其他世界》、《物質神話》、《上帝的心靈》、《無限的邊緣》、《宇宙的藍圖》、《最手三分鍾》以及《我是唯一的嗎》。