Time One

Time One tackles mankind’s most baffling question: How did the world begin? After challenging old thinking about forty-seven crucial scientific problems, Time One author Colin Gillespie solves forty-five of them and comes up with a strikingly simple answer to the most perplexing question of them all: How did the world begin?


Time One takes an iconoclastic look at contemporary physics, notably relativity, quantum mechanics and string theory. It connects the dots across centuries of philosophy, literature and religion. Yet despite its formidable scope and breadth, it remains accessible and even lighthearted.


It’s the ultimate mystery, and it takes a fictional detective to solve it. The protagonist—a beach bum—takes his cues not only from the likes of Aristotle, Newton and Einstein but also from Lewis Carroll, Raymond Chandler, Frank Herbert—and even Mariah Carey—among many others. And the most helpful if least likely source is the imaginary detective who becomes his sidekick. One of the book’s central (and most entertaining) premises is the detective’s use of science’s great stumbling blocks as clues to what happened before the Big Bang.