After the Beginning : A Cosmic... | Buy

Readership: General readers as well as undergraduates, graduate students and academics in cosmology, astrophysics, astronomy and theoretical physics.

Preface

xi

Acknowledgments

xiii

List of Figures

xv

Island Universes

1

(29)

The First Move

1

(3)

Looking Back

4

(14)

Age and Size of the Visible Universe

18

(6)

Expanding Universe

24

(2)

Cosmological Principle

26

(1)

Inflationary Epoch

27

(1)

Beyond the Visible Universe

27

(1)

Boxes 1--3

28

(2)

The Large and the Small

30

(29)

Face to Face

30

(1)

Space, Time, and Relativity

30

(2)

Physics of the Very Small: Quantum Mechanics

32

(5)

Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle

37

(1)

Radiation in the Early Universe

37

(7)

Other Planets Around Other Suns

44

(2)

Life on Other Planets

46

(3)

Different Points of View

49

(3)

Milky Way

52

(3)

Universe Without a Center

55

(2)

Cosmic Horizon as Small as a Nucleon

57

(1)

Box 4

58

(1)

Big Bang

59

(25)

Hubble's Discovery

59

(2)

Evidence for a Big Bang

61

(2)

A Day Without Yesterday

63

(5)

Temperature Measured at an Earlier Time

68

(1)

Model Universes

69

(4)

Scale Factor of the Universe

73

(4)

Theories of Expansion

77

(4)

The big crunch

78

(1)

Einstein--de Sitter universe

79

(1)

Accelerating universe

79

(1)

Recycling universe

80

(1)

Boxes 5--8

81

(3)

Elementary Particles --- Fundamental Forces

84

(34)

The Atom

84

(13)

Vacuum: Particles, Antiparticles, and Dirac

97

(4)

Antiparticles and Antiuniverses

101

(1)

The Particle Explosion

102

(3)

Cosmic rays

102

(2)

Laboratory beams of particles

104

(1)

So Many Riches

105

(4)

The Quarks and Leptons

109

(5)

The Force Carriers

114

(4)

The Primeval Fireball

118

(43)

Cosmic Evolution

118

(2)

Heat, Temperature, and Equilibrium

120

(1)

Planck Era (t < 10-43 Seconds)

121

(2)

Radiation-Dominated Era (t = 10-11 Seconds to 106 Years)

123

(23)

Superradiant era (t = 10-11 to 10-5 seconds)

126

(1)

Hadronic era (t = 10-5 to 10-3 seconds)

127

(2)

Leptonic era (t = 10-3 to 1 second)

129

(8)

Formation of the light elements (t = 100 seconds to 10 minutes)

137

(5)

Measurement of primordial abundances of elements

142

(2)

Decoupling of radiation and matter (t = 300 000 to 1 million years)

144

(2)

Close of the Radiation Era

146

(1)

Matter Dominance

147

(5)

Boxes 9--20

152

(9)

Galaxy Clusters, Galaxies, and Stars

161

(22)

Structure Formation

161

(4)

Cloud Collapse in the Radiation Era

165

(2)

Matter Era

167

(1)

Galaxy Formation

167

(3)

Galaxy Types

170

(2)

Star Formation

172

(1)

Nova and Supernova

172

(6)

Nova: creation of a white dwarf

175

(1)

Supernova: creation of a neutron star or black hole

176

(2)

Boxes 21--25

178

(5)

The Future Universe

183

(15)

Dark Matter, Dark Energy

183

(2)

The Three Ages of the Universe

185

(1)

The Great Cosmology Experiments

186

(8)

Supernova cosmology

187

(3)

The seed of our galaxy

190

(4)

Boxes 26--29

194

(4)

Books for Further Study

198

(3)

Index

201

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