The Hidden Hypotheses Behind the Big Bang It is quite unavoidable that many philosophical a priori assumptions lurk behind the debate between supporters of the Big Bang and the anti-BB camp. The same battle has been waged in physics between the determinists and the opposing viewpoint. Therefore, by way of introduction to this symposium, I would like to discuss, albeit briefly, the many "hypotheses", essentially of a metaphysical nature, which are often used without being clearly stated. The first hypothesis is the idea that the Universe has some origin, or origins. Opposing this is the idea that the Universe is eternal, essentially without beginning, no matter how it might change-the old Platonic system, opposed by an Aristote lian view! Or Pope Pius XII or Abbe Lemaitre or Friedmann versus Einstein or Hoyle or Segal, etc. The second hypothesis is the need for a "minimum of hypotheses" -the sim plicity argument. One is expected to account for all the observations with a mini mum number of hypotheses or assumptions. In other words, the idea is to "save the phenomena", and this has been an imperative since the time of Plato and Aristotle. But numerous contradictions have arisen between the hypotheses and the facts. This has led some scientists to introduce additional entities, such as the cosmologi cal constant, dark matter, galaxy mergers, complicated geometries, and even a rest mass for the photon. Some of the proponents of the latter idea were Einstein, de Broglie, Findlay-Freundlich, and later Vigier and myself.

It is perhaps surprising that a process which was one of the first to be studied on an atomic scale, and a process which first received attention over seven decades ago, continues to be the object of diverse and intense research efforts. Such is the case with the (seemingly) conceptually simple and familiar mechanism of electron impact ionization of atoms, molecules, and ions. Not only has the multi-body nature of the collision given ground to theoretical effort only grudgingly, but also the variety and subtlety of processes contributing to ionization have helped insure that progress has come only with commensurate work: no pain - no gain. Modern experimental methods have made it possible to effectively measure and explore threshold laws, differential cross sections, partial cross sections, inner-shell ionization, and the ionization of unstable species such as radicals and ions. In most instances the availability of experimental data has provided impetus and guidance for further theoretical progress."

Written in a pedagogical way, the articles in this book address graduate students as well as researchers and are well suited for seminar work. Subjects at the forefront of nuclear research, bordering other areas of many-particle physics, such as electron scattering at different energy scales, new physics with radioactive beams, multifragmentation, relativistic nuclear physics, high spin nuclear problems, chaos, the role of the continuum in nuclear physics or recent calculations with the shell model are presented. It is felt that the topics treated in this book address the main future lines of development of nuclear physics.

In this book, a number of the world's leading researchers in quantum, classical and atomic physics cooperate to present an up-to-date account of the recent progress in the field. The first part highlights the latest advances in semiclassical theory, whilst the second one is devoted to applications to atomic systems. The authors present the material in pedagogical form to make it easy reading for non-specialists, too. Among the topics treated, the reader will find a new quasiclassical quantization scheme for Hamiltonian dynamics, an application of the semiclassical formalism to photodissociation of small molecules and to the Lorentz gas and discussions of tunneling corrections. Furthermore, one finds papers on chaotic ionization, on the behaviour of hydrogen atoms in external fields, e.g. magnetic or microwave fields.

The book contains the notes of the lectures presented by outstanding experts at the 7th EADN School on plasma astrophysics. It is an up-to-date review of a number of basic topics in the physics of cosmic plasmas. The subject is treated both from a theoretical point of view and from that of the observational and diagnostic tools that provide us with the physically relevant data. The reader will have at hands a comprehensive and rather complete presentation of the subject, thanks also to the parallel development of the theoretical and experimental aspects. The book addresses graduate students and researchers in different areas who want to have a rapid and up-to-date introduction to this subject.

A Nobel Foundation Symposium on the subject: "Nonlinear Effects 1n Plasmas," was held at Aspenasgarden, Lerum, in the G6teborg area of Sweden from June 11-17, 1976. The Symposium was the 36th in the series of Nobel Foundation Symposia, which have been held mainly within the areas of physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and peace prizes. Some 30 leading experts from the United States, Soviet Union, Japan and Western Europe attended the Symposium. The purpose of the Symposium was to discuss various topics in the field of modern plasma physics. We had to select from this vast area of active research a suitable common theme with a great number of new and interesting contributions. We decided to devote our Sym posium in particular to nonlinear effects in plasmas and to emphasize some areas where important developments seemed to be taking place. In recent years basic theory and experiments in nonlinear plasma physics have been stimulated largely by the need for an energy source based on fusion of light nuclei. In many laboratories all over the world attempts are being made to come closer to the final goal by studying magnetically confined plasmas and systems of inertial con finement. Heating of plasmas to fusion temperatures remains a key problem. There are good reasons to believe that the nonlinear effects in plasmas will play an important role for fusion, a long-range program which is still largely in its basic research phase."

The aesthetically pleasing molecular architectures of fullerenes and nanotubes are appealing not only because of their beauty but also because they are responsible for the many unprecedented chemical and physical properties of this compound class. Although succession of exciting new discoveries continues unabated fullerene research has become a mature science. It is now possible to predict fullerene chemistry, to design new structure variations like open fullerene clusters, heterofullerenes and endohedral fullerenes, and to develop fullerene materials and modified nanotubes with high potential for technological applications. This volume represents the state-of-the-art of fullerene research, focussing on areas showing high potential for future growth and practical applications. The authors are leading scientists whose groups are making major contributions in the field.

In this volume, experimentalists and theoreticians discuss which experiments and calculations are needed to make significant progress in the field and also how experiments and theoretical descriptions can be compared. The topics treated are the electromagnetic production of Goldstone bosons, pion--pion and pion--nucleon interactions, hadron polarizability and form factors.

This is the first volume of a series on a regular up-to-date coverage of important developments in astronomy and astrophysics jointly published by ESO and Springer-Verlag. Here the reader finds a thorough review of the abundances of the elements up to Boron. Special emphasis is laid on primordial abundances of interest to cosmologists in particular, and on stellar production or destruction respectively. The articles written for researchers and graduate students cover theory and most recent data from telescope observations.

This volume reports recent development in nuclear structure physics and closely related topics. Particularly, it centers on new methodologies and recent applications of the nuclear shell model such as quantum Monte Carlo methods, large-scale shell model calculations and microscopic theories of effective interactions. Each review focuses on one fundamental topic closely related to the nuclear shell model. Each topic is covered in sufficient depth and detail to be accessible to a wide audience including nuclear engineers and astrophysicists and those working in various fields of scientific computing and modelling.

Quantum many-body theories have become an essential tool for all physicists. The field is interdisciplinary, predicting the properties of macroscopic matter based on the fundamental interactions between the elementary constituents. This book presents a systematic and pedagogical approach to the coupled cluster method, correlated basis function theory and Monte Carlo methods. These topics are widely recognized and provide the most powerful and widely applicable theories of all available formulations of QMBT. As the future evolution of QMBT depends to a large measure on establishing links between these different methods, the authors discuss hyprid procedures that can build even further upon the huge strengths and great advantages of each theory.

Edgard Gunzig and Pasquale Nardone RGGR Universite Libre de Bruxelles CP231 1050 Bruxelles Belgium The NATO Advanced Research Workshop on "The Origin of Structure in the Universe" was organized to bring together workers in various aspects of relativistic cosmology with the aim of assessing the present status of our knowledge on the formation and evolution of structure. As it happened, the meeting was particularly timely. Only two days before the 30 or so physicists from many countries gathered for a week at the Chateau du Pont d'Oye, in the forests of the southern Belgian province of Luxembourg, newspaper headlines all over the world announced the results of the analysis of the first full year of data from the Cosmic Background Observer Satellite (COBE). This long-awaited confirmation of the theoretically predicted anisotropy in the microwave background radiation opened a new era in observational cos mology. The realization of the new relevance of the subject of the workshop and the questions raised by the observational results, in addition to bring ing TV crews and newspaper journalists, naturally influenced and stimulated many discussions among the participants. The success of the meeting as usual is due to a combination of factors. Besides the high quality of the talks, discussions were encouraged by the warm atmosphere of the Chateau, for which we are grateful to Mme. Camille Orts, and its beautiful surroundings, not to mention the marvelous cuisine.

The Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE) is a NASA Explorer mission that is the first space mission dedicated to imaging of the Earth's magnetosphere. IMAGE was launched from Vandenberg AFB into an elliptical polar orbit by a Delta II launch vehicle on March 25, 2000. The two-year prime sci entific mission of IMAGE began on May 25, 2000 after instrument commissioning was successfully completed. IMAGE has now been approved for operation until October 1,2005, and an additional two-year extension is now being considered by NASA. The papers in this volume represent many of the scientific results obtained dur ing the IMAGE prime mission and include some of the early correlative research with ground-based measurements, measurements from other spacecraft such as Cluster II, and relevant theory and modeling programs. All of the reported work is related to the overall IMAGE science objective: How does the magnetosphere respond globally to the changing conditions in the solar wind? IMAGE addresses this question with multi-spectral imaging of most of the important plasma pop ulations of the inner magnetosphere, combined with radio sounding of gradients of total plasma content. The new experimental techniques fall into the following areas: neutral atom imaging (NAI) over an energy range from 10 eV to 500 keY for detection of ionospheric outflow, the plasma sheet, and the ring current; far ultraviolet (FUV) imaging at 121-190 nm for detection of precipitating protons and the global aurora; extreme ultraviolet (EUV) imaging at 30.

It is 25 years since the seminal papers describing the relationships between the skeletal geometrics and closed shell electronic requirements of metal clusters were originally published. The electron counting rules which developed from these papers, are now to be found in all undergraduate inorganic textbooks. This volume provides a contemporary account of recent applications of the methodology and the mathematical foundations of the rules. In addition it describes how it is possible to accomondate acception to the rules within a wider framework. The authors are the foremost authorities in the field and give a broad introduction to the area.

Measuring the hydrogen content in materials is important both for research and for various applications in material and surface sciences, such as hydrogen embrittlement of steel, controlled thermonuclear reaction first wall studies, and changed material properties caused by dissolved hydrogen. Hydrogen is the most difficult atomic species to analyze by traditional methods, but nuclear physics methods are particularly suited for this purpose. President of the Uzbek SSR Academy of Sciences P.K. Khabibullaev and Professor B.G. Skorodumov discuss in this book the characteristics of these methods, such as lower detection limits, selectivity in respect to different isotopes, accuracy, depth resolution and maximum detection depth. Examples of applications that are dealt with include the determination of material humidity, the dating of objects, the study of hydrogen diffusion including non-stationary processes, and the investigation of changes in material properties like superconductivity, plasticity and electrical properties due to contamination by hydrogen.

Studying the interactions between heavy hydrogen isotopes and hydride forming metals or intermetallic compounds (IMC) is of importance for both fundamental and applied sciences. These systems offer, for example, the possibility of technical hydrogen isotope separation due to their considerable isotope effects. In addition, quite a lot of problems of hydrogen recovery, hydrogen purification, and tritium storage can be solved. This review deals with theoretical aspects of the interaction of heavy hydrogen isotopes with metals and IMC, and contains detailed information on phase and isotopic equilibrium and of the kinetics of isotope exchange in systems with hydride phases. Numerical data and results from theoretical and experimental studies are presented as well.

Prominent progress in science is inevitably associated with controversies. Thus, young researchers, in particular, have to learn how to persevere during the period of controversy and struggle for acceptance. Unfortunately, the skills needed are not taught in textbooks or monographs, which mostly describe the consensus of contemporary experts.
This book, which is based on my own experiences as a scientist, describes the history of the progress made in auroral science and magnetospheric physics by providing examples of ideas, controversies, struggles, acceptance, and success in some instances.
Although no general methodology (if any exists) is mentioned, I hope that the reader will learn about the history of progress in auroral science and examples (right or wrong) of dealing with the controversies.

photoacoustic and Photothermal Phenomena contains reviews and a large numberof selected contributed papers reporting progress in the application of new photoacoustic and photo- thermal techniques in physics, chemistry, biology, medicine and materials science. Theoretical and experimental work is presented on spectroscopy, kinetics and relaxation, trace analysis, mass and heat transport, surfaces and thin films, nondestructive evaluation, ultrasonics and semiconductors.

The broad field of conformational motion disorder in crystals is described with particular attention to the separation from the well known mesophases of liquid crystals and plastic crystals. Structure, thermodynamics and motion of a larger number of small and large molecules are discussed. Of special interest are the borderlines between smectic and high viscosity liquid crystals and condis crystals and between plastic crystals and condis crystals as complicated by pseudorotation, jumping between symmetry-related states and hindered rotation. This paper illustrates the wide distribution of conformational disorder in nature. Condis crystals and glasses ("Con"formational "Dis"order) can be found in small and large molecule systems made of organic, inorganic and biological compounds. The condis state was newly discovered only four years ago. In this article over 100 examples are discussed as example of the condis state. In many cases the condis state was suggested for the first time. Motion in the Condensed State, Condis Crystals and their Relation to Plastic Crystals, Condis Crystals of Flexible Macromolecules, Condis Crystals and their Relation to Liquid Crystals, Condis Crystals of Stiff Macromolecules.

The book addresses three major topics in mathematical physics: 1. recent rigorous results in potential theory with appli- cations in particle physics, 2. analyticity in quantum field theory and its applica- tions, and 3. fundamentals and applications of the inverse problem. In addition, the book contains some contributions on questions of general interest in quantum field theory such as nonperturbative solutions of quantum chromodynamics, bifurcation theory applied to chiral symmetry, as well as exactly soluable models. The volume closes with a brief review of geometric approaches to particle physics and a phenomenological discussion of Higgs interactions.

At the time when increasing numbers of chemists are being attracted by the fascination of supposedly easy computing and associated colourful imaging, this book appears as a counterpoint. The first part focuses on fundamental concepts of quantum chemistry, covering MCSCF theory, perturbation treatments, basis set developments, density matrices, wave function instabilities to correlation effects, and momentum space theory. The second part is devoted to more practical studies, ranging from the characterisation of exotic interstellar molecules, the accurate determination of spectroscopic constants, excited states structures and EPR parameters through photochemical and charge-transfer processes, cluster chemistry and fullerenes, muonium chemistry, to the possible prediction of the response of materials to electric fields in view of nonlinear optical applications. Audience: Graduate students and researchers whose work involves quantum chemistry, molecular physics, and materials modelling.