Depuis le 21 Juillet 1969 une ere nouvelle s'est ouverte dans 3 notre connaissance du systeme Terre-Lune avec l'accu. mulation de mesures 3 de distances ultra-precises aux reflecteurs laser deposes sur la surface lunaire. Au cours des recherches effectuees a partir de cette nouvelle technique il s'est tres vite avere que le champ d'applications etait 3 considerable et qu'il fallait completement reviser certaines theories anterieures. Avec des observations au niveau de quelques centimetres 3 il n'est plus possible d'etudier des phenomenes isolement et3 quel que soit le pole d'interet fixe il est necessaire aussi d'etudier 3 conjointement les autres aspects du systeme. Tres vite3 il est alors apparu que les recherches potentielles relatives a ce type d'observa tions ne se bornaient pas seulement aux applications lunaires mais pouvaient recouvrir un domaine plus vaste en Astronomie Geodesie 3 3 Geophysique Cosmologie etc . . . C'est ainsi qu'est ne le programme 3 3 international EROLD avec comme but plus specifique l'etude de la 3 rotation terrestre mais avec des aspects connexes lies en particulier 3 a la dynamique du systeme Terre-Lune dans son ensemble. Il etait alors naturel de faire le bilan a un niveau eleve de ces annees de recher 3 3 ches dans cette nouvelle phase de la connaissance. Par ailleurs d)autres types de techniques modernes ont egale 3 ment vu le jour durant cette derniere decennie avec entre autres 3 applications la determination de la rotation de la Terre."

As evidenced by five Nobel Prizes in physics, radio astronomy in its 80-year history has contributed greatly to our understanding of the universe. Yet for too long, there has been no suitable textbook on radio astronomy for undergraduate students. Fundamentals of Radio Astronomy: Observational Methods is the first undergraduate-level textbook exclusively devoted to radio astronomy telescopes and observation methods. This book, the first of two volumes, explains the instrumentation and techniques needed to make successful observations in radio astronomy. With examples interspersed throughout and problems at the end of each chapter, it prepares students to contribute to a radio astronomy research team. Requiring no prior knowledge of astronomy, the text begins with a review of pertinent astronomy basics. It then discusses radiation physics, the collection and detection of astronomical radio signals using radio telescopes, the functioning of various components of radio telescopes, and the processes involved in making successful radio observations. The book also provides a conceptual understanding of the fundamental principles of aperture synthesis and a more advanced undergraduate-level discussion of real-world interferometry observations. Web ResourceA set of laboratory exercises is available for download on the book's CRC Press web page. These labs use the Small Radio Telescope (SRT) and the Very Small Radio Telescope (VSRT) developed for educational use by MIT's Haystack Observatory. The web page also includes a Java package that demonstrates the principles of Fourier transforms, which are needed for the analysis of interferometric data.

'David Christian's approach to understanding history can help all of us learn to prepare for the future' - Bill Gates A user's guide to the future: from the algorithms in DNA to why time is like a cocktail glass, interstellar migrations, transhumanism, the fate of the galaxy, and the last black hole... Every second of our lives - whether we're looking both ways before crossing the street, celebrating the birth of a baby, or moving to a new city - we must cope with an unknowable future by telling stories about what will happen next. Where is the future, the place where we set those stories? Can we trust our future stories? And what sort of futures do they show us? David Christian, historian and bestselling author of Origin Story, is renowned for pioneering the emerging discipline of Big History, which surveys the whole of the past. But with Future Stories, he casts his sharp analytical eye forward, offering an introduction to the strange world of the future, and a guide to what we think we know about it at all scales, from the predictive mechanisms of single-celled organisms and tomato plants to the merging of colossal galaxies billions of years from now. Drawing together science, history and philosophy from a huge range of places and times, Christian explores how we prepare for uncertain futures, including the future of human evolution, artificial intelligence, interstellar travel, and more. By linking the study of the past much more closely to the study of the future, we can begin to imagine what the world will look like in the next hundred years and consider solutions to the biggest challenges facing us all.

This book, written by leading experts of the field, gives an excellent up-to-date overview of modern neutrino physics and is useful for scientists and graduate students alike. The book starts with a history of neutrinos and then develops from the fundamentals to the direct determination of masses and lifetimes. The role of neutrinos in fundamental astrophysical problems is discussed in detail.

Markus Aschwanden introduces the concept of self-organized criticality (SOC) and shows that due to its universality and ubiquity it is a law of nature for which he derives the theoretical framework and specific physical models in this book. He begins by providing an overview of the many diverse phenomena in nature which may be attributed to SOC behaviour.

The author then introduces the classic lattice-based SOC models that may be explored using numerical computer simulations. These simulations require an in-depth knowledge of a wide range of mathematical techniques which the author introduces and describes in subsequent chapters. These include the statistics of random processes, time series analysis, time scale distributions, and waiting time distributions. Such mathematical techniques are needed to model and understand the power-law-like occurrence frequency distributions of SOC phenomena. Finally, the author discusses fractal geometry and scaling laws before looking at a range of physical SOC models which may be applicable in various aspects of astrophysics. Problems, solutions and a glossary will enhance the pedagogical usefulness of the book.

SOC has been receiving growing attention in the astrophysical and solar physics community. This book will be welcomed by students and researchers studying complex critical phenomena.

When Kai Zuber's pioneering text on neutrinos was published in 2003, the author correctly predicted that the field would see tremendous growth in the immediate future. In that book, Professor Zuber provided a comprehensive self-contained examination of neutrinos, covering their research history and theory, as well as their application to particle physics, astrophysics, nuclear physics, and the broad reach of cosmology; but now to be truly comprehensive and accurate, the field's seminal reference needs to be revised and expanded to include the latest research, conclusions, and implications. Revised as needed to be equal to the research of today, Neutrino Physics, Third Edition delves into neutrino cross-sections, mass measurements, double beta decay, solar neutrinos, neutrinos from supernovae, and high-energy neutrinos, as well as entirely new experimental results in the context of theoretical models. Written to be accessible to graduate students and readers from diverse backgrounds, this edition, like the first, provides both an introduction to the field as well as the information needed by those looking to make their own contributions to it. And like the second edition, it whets the researcher's appetite, going beyond certainty to pose those questions that still need answers. Features Presents the only single-author comprehensive text on neutrino physics Includes experimental and theoretical particle physics and examines solar neutrinos and astroparticle implications Offers details on new developments and recent experiments

Continuing to take readers on a uniquely accessible journey through physics, Superstrings and Other Things: A Guide to Physics, Third Edition, explains the basic concepts of motion, energy, and gravity, right up to the latest theories about the structure of matter, the origin and structure of the universe, and the beginning of time. Fully updated throughout, this book explores major historical discoveries and the scientists behind them. In addition, this comprehensive text details the breathtaking frontiers of physics being explored today. Offering nonscience students access to the highest peaks of physics, Dr. Calle translates concepts so they can be appreciated by those with willing curiosity and imagination. Features Provides up-to-date coverage of modern physics, Offers nonscience students and laymen access to the highest peaks of physics, Showcases modern applications of physics in our everyday world.

Large area sky surveys are now a reality in the radio, IR, optical and X-ray passbands. In the next few years, new surveys using optical, UV and IR mosaic cameras with high throughput digital detectors will expand the dynamic range and accuracy of photometry and astrometry of objects over a significant fraction of the entire sky. Parallel X-ray and radio surveys over the same areas will produce astronomical image and spectroscopic databases of unprecedented size and quality. The combined data sets will provide significant new constraints on star formation, stellar dynamics, Galactic structure, the evolution of galaxies and large scale structure, as well as new opportunities to identify rare objects in the solar system and the Galaxy. Large area surveys have formidable data acquisition, processing, archiving, and data distribution demands and this meeting provided a forum for sharing experiences amongst workers specializing in different wavebands as well as discussing how multiband observations can reveal fundamental relationships in our understanding of the Universe.

The historic detection of gravitational waves on September 14, 2015, prompted by the highly energetic fusion of two black holes, has made events in the universe "audible" for the first time. This expansion of the scientific sensorium has opened a new chapter in astronomy and already led to, among others, fascinating new insights about the abundance of black holes, the collision of neutron stars, and the origin of heavy chemical elements. The history of this event, which is epochal for physics, is reconstructed in this book, along with a walk-through of the main principles of how the detectors operate and a discussion of how the search for gravitational waves is conducted. The book concludes with an update of the latest detections and developments to date and a brief look into the future of this exciting research field. This book is accessible to non-specialist readers from a general audience and is also an excellent introduction to the topic for undergraduates in physics. Features: Provides an introduction to the historic discovery of gravitational waves Explains the inner workings of the detectors and the search to find the waves hidden in the data Authored by a renowned specialist involved in the ground-breaking discovery Hartmut Grote is a Professor of physics at Cardiff University, UK. His main expertise is in experimental gravitational-wave physics, and he has worked on building and improving gravitational wave detectors for over 20 years. From 2009 to 2017, he was the scientific leader of the British-German gravitational-wave detector: GEO600.

The book begins with a historical introduction, "Star Formation: The Early History", that presents new material of interest for students and historians of science. This is followed by two long articles on "Pre-Main-Sequence Evolution of Stars and Young Clusters" and "Observations of Young Stellar Objects". These articles on the fascinating problem of star formation from interstellar matter give a thorough overview of present-day theories and observations. The articles contain material so far unpublished in the astronomical literature. The book addresses graduate students and can be used as a textbook for advanced courses in stellar astrophysics.

This book introduces the current state of research on dark energy. It consists of three parts. The first part is for preliminary knowledge, including general relativity, modern cosmology, etc. The second part reviews major theoretical ideas and models of dark energy. The third part reviews some observational and numerical works. The aim of this book is to provide a sufficient level of understanding of dark energy problems, so that the reader can both get familiar with this area quickly and also be prepared to tackle the scientific literature on this subject. It will be useful for graduate students and researchers who are interested in dark energy.

'The book can be a good introduction to research in the area of black hole physics. Also, it can serve as a source book for the established researcher in the field. The book contains an extensive bibliography the contents of which are amply cited throughout the text. The book well documents the historical development of the theory of Hawking radiation and related topics. The book is a worthwhile addition to the physics literature on a topic of considerable interest.'zbMATH]The aim of this book is to provide the reader with a guide to Hawking radiation through a dual approach to the problem. After an introductory chapter containing some basic knowledge about black holes and quantum field theory in curved spacetime, the first part of the book consists in a survey of methods for deriving and studying Hawking radiation from astrophysical black holes, from the original calculation by S W Hawking to the most recent contributions involving tunneling and gravitational anomalies. In the second part, we introduce analogue gravity, and we focus our attention to dielectric black hole systems, to which the studies of the present authors are devoted. The mutual interchange of knowledge between the aforementioned parts is addressed to render a more comprehensive picture of this very fascinating quantum phenomenon associated with black holes.

In 2008, the European FP6 JETSET project ended. JETSET, for Jet, Simulations, Experiments, and Theory, was a joint research network of European expert teams on protostellar jets. The present proceedings are a collection of contributions presenting new results obtained by those groups since the end of the JETSET program. This is also the occasion to celebrate Kanaris Tsinganos' important contributions to this network and for his enlightening insight in the subject that inspired us all. Some of the former JETSET students are now in the academic world and the subject has never been so alive. So we present here a collection of results of what has been done in the field of protostellar jets in the past ten years from the theoretical, numerical, observational and experimental point of view. We also present new challenges in the field of protostellar jets and what we should expect from the development of new instruments and new numerical codes in the near future. We also gather results on the impact of the study of protostellar jets on other jet studies in particular on relativistic jets. As a matter of fact, it is time for a new network.

"An Introduction to Waves and Oscillations in the Sun" is intended for students and researchers who work in the area of solar and astrophysics. This book contains an introduction to the Sun, basics of electrodynamics, magneto-hydrodynamics for force-free and current-free fields. It deals with waves in uniform media with relevance to sound waves and Alfven waves, and with waves in non-uniform media like surface waves or waves in a slab and cylindrical geometry. It also touches on instabilities in fluids and observational signatures of oscillations. Finally, there is an introduction to the area of helio-seismology, which deals with the internal structure of the Sun.

Interest in and knowledge of the techniques utilised to investigate our solar system has been growing rapidly for decades and has now reached a stage of maturity. Therefore, the time has now arrived for a book that provides a cohesive and coherent account of how we have obtained our present knowledge of solar system objects, not including the Sun. Remote and Robotic Investigations of the Solar System covers all aspects of solar system observations: the instruments, their theory, and their practical use both on Earth and in space. It explores the state-of-the-art telescopes, cameras, spacecraft and instruments used to analyse the interiors, surfaces, atmospheres and radiation belts of solar system objects, in addition to radio waves, gamma rays, cosmic rays and neutrinos. This book would be ideal for university students undertaking physical science subjects and professionals working in the field, in addition to amateur astronomers and anyone interested in learning more about our local astronomical neighbours.

In this fascinating foray into the millennia-long relationship between science and military power, acclaimed astrophysicist and "the world's best science communicator" (Times Literary Supplement) Neil deGrasse Tyson and writer-researcher Avis Lang examine how the methods and tools of astrophysics have been enlisted in the service of war. "The overlap is strong, and the knowledge flows in both directions", say the authors, because astrophysicists and military planners care about many of the same things: multi-spectral detection, ranging, tracking, imaging, high ground, nuclear fusion and access to space. Tyson and Lang call it a "curiously complicit" alliance. "The universe is both the ultimate frontier and the highest of high grounds", they write. "Shared by both space scientists and space warriors, it's a laboratory for one and a battlefield for the other. The explorer wants to understand it; the soldier wants to dominate it. But without the right technology-which is more or less the same technology for both parties-nobody can get to it, operate in it, scrutinise it, dominate it or use it to their advantage and someone else's disadvantage." Spanning early celestial navigation to satellite-enabled warfare, Accessory to War is a richly researched and provocative examination of the intersection of science, technology, industry and power that will introduce Tyson's millions of fans to yet another dimension of how the universe has shaped our lives and our world.

Predicted long ago to be present on the surface of planetary bodies by theoreticians and recently shown by interplanetary spacecraft and ground- based instruments to be ubiquitous in the Solar System, ices in a broad sense have become an extremely important subject in planetary research. Ices found on objects formed in the remote parts of the Solar System contain a message about the composition and mode of formation of our planetary system. There are also objects that contain icy materials that bear signatures of past events on a geological timescale. Their study is one of the best means of inquiring about the origins, accessing the past and anticipating the future of our Solar System. The reviews in this book collect together a series of papers covering the physics and chemistry of ices, as well as the geology of icy surfaces. They present an extensive summary of their chemical and physical properties relevant to planetary astronomy. They also provide an overview of planetary bodies that contain ices and the outstanding problems of the field. Audience: The book is intended to become a reference for researchers and graduate students. It is accessible to senior graduate students with a background in planetary science.

This book provides insight into concept of the weak interaction and its integration into the conceptual structure of elementary particle physics. It exhibits the important role of the weak interaction in nuclear, particle and astrophysics together with the close connection between these areas.

This book addresses the fascinating subject of astrophysics from its theoretical basis to predominant research conducted in the field today. An accomplished researcher in the field and a well-known expositor, the author strikes a balance that allows the serious reader to appreciate the current issues without previous knowledge of the subject.Astronomy and Astrophysics * The Equations of Stellar Structure * The Gas Characteristics * The Structure of a Star * Computation of Stellar Evolution * Evolutionary Track * Binary Systems * Star Formation * Rotation of Stars * Supernova * Close Binary Systems * Special Topics * The Galaxy

The classical three-body problem is of great importance for its applications to astronomy and space navigation, and also as a simple model of a non-integrable Hamiltonian dynamical system. A central role is played by periodic orbits, of which a large number have been computed numerically. Here the author explains and organizes this material through a systematic study of generating families, which are the limits of families of periodic orbits when the mass ratio of the two main bodies becomes vanishingly small. The most critical part is the study of bifurcations. Many cases are distinguished and studied separately and detailed recipies are given. Their use is illustrated by determining generating families, and comparing them with numerical computations for the Earth+Moon and Sun-Jupiter systems.

Recent advances in the development of lasers with more energy, power, and brightness have opened up new possibilities for exciting applications. Applications of Laser-Plasma Interactions reviews the current status of high power laser applications. The book first explores the science and technology behind the ignition and burn of imploded fusion fuel, before describing novel particle accelerators. It then focuses on applications of high power x-ray sources and the development of x-ray lasers. The book also discusses how ultrahigh power lasers are used in nuclear and elementary particle physics applications as well as how the high power density of laser-plasma interactions is used to study matter under extreme conditions. The final chapters deal with femtosecond lasers, presenting applications in materials processing and nanoparticles. With contributions from a distinguished team of researchers, this work illustrates the many applications of high power lasers, highlighting their important roles in energy, biology, nanotechnology, and more.

Over the last decade, statisticians have developed new statistical tools in the field of spatial point processes. At the same time, observational efforts have yielded a huge amount of new cosmological data to analyze. Although the main tools in astronomy for comparing theoretical results with observation are statistical, in recent years, cosmologists have not been generally aware of the developments in statistics and vice versa. Statistics of the Galaxy Distribution describes both the available observational data on the distribution of galaxies and the applications of spatial statistics in cosmology. It gives a detailed derivation of the statistical methods used to study the galaxy distribution and the cosmological physics needed to formulate the statistical models. Because the prevalent approach in cosmological statistics has been frequentist, the authors focus on the most widely used of these methods, but they also explore Bayesian techniques that have become popular in large-scale structure studies. Describing the most popular methods, their latest applications, and the necessary mathematical and astrophysical background, this groundbreaking book presents the state of the art in the statistical description of the large-scale structure of the Universe. Cosmology's well-defined and growing data sets represent an important challenge for the statistical analysis, and therefore for the statistics community. Statistics of the Galaxy Distribution presents a unique opportunity for researchers in both fields to strengthen the connection between them and, using a common language, explore the statistical description of the universe.

After three decades of intense research in X-ray and gamma-ray astronomy, the time was ripe to summarize basic knowledge on X-ray and gamma-ray spectroscopy for interested students and researchers ready to become involved in new high-energy missions. This volume exposes both the scientific basics and modern methods of high-energy spectroscopic astrophysics. The emphasis is on physical principles and observing methods rather than a discussion of particular classes of high-energy objects, but many examples and new results are included in the three chapters as well.

Geophysical and Astrophysical Convection collects important papers from an international group of the world's foremost researchers in geophysical and astrophysical convection to present a concise overview of recent thinking in the field. Topics include: Atmospheric convection, solar and stellar convection, unsteady non-penetrative thermal convection, astrophysical convection and dynamos, dynamics of cumulus entertainment, turbulent convection: helical buoyant convection, transport phenomena, potential vorticity, rotating convective turbulence, and the modeling and simulation various types of convection and turbulence.