Cosmology category: 730 books

'A promising debut.' New Scientist Icy, rocky, sometimes dusty, always mysterious – comets and asteroids are among the Solar System's very oldest inhabitants, formed within a swirling cloud of gas and dust in the area of space that eventually hosted the Sun and its planets. Locked within...

The astonishing science of black holes and their role in understanding the history and future of our universe. Black holes are the most extreme objects in the universe, and yet they are ubiquitous. Every massive star leaves behind a black hole when it dies, and every galaxy harbors a supermassive...

This book explores the role of singularities in general relativity (GR): The theory predicts that when a sufficient large mass collapses, no known force is able to stop it until all mass is concentrated at a point. The question arises, whether an acceptable physical theory should have a singularity,...

Aimed at students and researchers entering the field, this pedagogical introduction to numerical relativity will also interest scientists seeking a broad survey of its challenges and achievements. Assuming only a basic knowledge of classical general relativity, the book develops the mathematical formalism...

Comprehensive coverage of all aspects of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) and its Curiosity rover, scheduled for launch on an Atlas rocket in late November 2011, is provided in this unique compilation of official NASA material. There is complete data on the MSL mission, science investigations,...

This NASA report describes a renewed strategic outlook to provide essential space environment knowledge for the benefit of society and for space exploration. It communicates our progress made to date, our plans for the future, and our opportunities for supporting the Agency's vision and mission. The...

Have you seen someone from a movie that made you wonder if someone like that exists in real life? Like Superman, or Wonderwoman. Someone with extraordinary qualities that only lives by your imagination. I thought they are just like that, from my fantasy. Until... I came across...

Considering transport of light through space-time, following the laws of physical transactions it may be said that there must be a spreading effect on it. Over suitable distances from a source of light, an observer's perception is bound to be affected due to this spreading. In the following paper, these...

This book reflects the resurgence of interest in the quantum properties of black holes, culminating most recently in controversial discussions about firewalls. On the thermodynamic side, it describes how new developments allowed the inclusion of pressure/volume terms in the first law, leading...

This thesis explores the connection between gravity and thermodynamics and provides a unification scheme that opens up new directions of exploration. Further elaborating on the Hawking effect and the possibility of singularity avoidance, the author not only discusses the information loss paradox at...

One of the open challenges in fundamental physics is to combine Einstein's theory of general relativity with the principles of quantum mechancis. In this thesis, the question is raised whether metric quantum gravity could be fundamental in the spirit of Steven Weinberg's seminal asymptotic safety...

This extensive thesis work covers several topics, including intensity and polarization, focusing on a new polarization bias reduction method. Vidal studied data from the WMAP satellite, which is low signal-to-noise and as such has to be corrected for polarization bias. He presents a new method for...

Does Spacetime Exist? If spacetime does not exist, it certainly does so in a curiously conspicuous way, not at all like other geometric abstractions. Consider this mindbender: spacetime does not exist at all, but it doesn't exist in the void even more than it doesn't exist in the universe....

The Universe is a very big place and has many mysteries. Most people don’t realize just how mysterious it is. Scientists are stumped by many of the conundrums which Astronomy reveals. In this book I want to give readers a sense of the grandeur, mystery, and puzzles which the Universe poses...