A world-renowned astrophysicist takes us through the huge, unfolding history of the universe The night sky is an endless source of wonder and mystery. For thousands of years it has been at the heart of scientific and philosophical inquiry, from the first star catalogues etched into ancient Mesopotamian clay tablets to the metres-wide telescopes constructed in Chile's Atacama Desert today. On a clear night it is hard not to look up and pick out familiar constellations, and to think of the visionary minds who pioneered our understanding of what lies beyond. In this thrilling new guide to our Universe and how it works, Professor of Astrophysics Jo Dunkley reveals how it only becomes more beautiful and exciting the more we discover about it. With warmth and clarity, Dunkley takes us from the very basics - why the Earth orbits the Sun, and how our Moon works - right up to massive, strange phenomena like superclusters, quasars, and the geometry of spacetime. As she does so, Dunkley unfurls the history of humankind's heroic journey to understand the history and structure of the cosmos, revealing the extraordinary, little-known stories of astronomy pioneers including Williamina Fleming, Vera Rubin and Jocelyn Bell Burnell. Illuminating and uplifting, this is your essential guide to the biggest subject of all.

This book is an introductory text in General Relativity, while also focusing some solutions to the cosmological constant problem, which consists in an amazing 100 orders of magnitude discrepancy between the value of this constant in the present Universe, and its estimated value in the very early epoch. The author suggests that the constant is in fact, a time-varying function of the age of the Universe. The book offers a wealth of cosmological models, treats up to date findings, like the verification of the Lense-Thirring effect in the year 2004, and the recently published research by Cooperstock and Tieu (2005) suggesting that "dark" matter is not a necessary concept in order to explain the rotational velocities of stars around galaxies' nuclei. This is a mathematical cosmology textbook that may lead undergraduates, and graduate students to one of the frontiers of research, while keeping the prerequisites to a minimum, because most of the theory in the book requires only prior knowledge of Calculus and a University Physics course.

In describing the effects of mescaline, Aldous Huxley's 'The Doors of Perception' literally opened a door. Watts walked through it with this classic account of the levels of insight consciousness-changing drugs can facilitate 'when accompanied with sustained philosophical reflection by a person who is in search, not of kicks, but of understanding'.

The meaning of "quark matter" is twofold: 1) It refers to compound states known as "subquarks" (the most fundamental constituents of matter), with quarks consisting of nuclear matter or "nucleons" (the constituents of the nucleus), and 2) compound states of quarks that consist of roughly equal numbers of up, down, and strange quarks, and which may be absolutely stable. Recently, both types of quark matter have become very intriguing subjects in physics and astronomy since the recently discovered Higgs boson, which may be taken as a composite object (possibly, a bound state of subquark-antisubquark pairs). Additionally, many recently observed compact stars have been considered "strange stars" (stars consisting of quark matter). In this book, these subjects in physics and astronomy are discussed without requiring readers to comprehend mathematical details. This book consists of three chapters: Chapter One: "Quark Matter and Strange Stars", Chapter Two: "Composites of Subquarks as Quark Matter", and Chapter Three: "Dark Energy, Dark Matter, and Strange Stars". Their contents include the following: In Chapter One, quark matter and strange stars are discussed in detail. In Chapter Two, the unified subquark model of all fundamental particles (quarks, leptons, and gauge and Higgs bosons) and forces (strong, electromagnetic, weak, and gravitational forces) is discussed in detail. In Chapter Three, pregeometry, in which the general theory of relativity for gravity can be derived as an approximate theory at long distances, is briefly reviewed. Furthermore, special and general theories of "inconstancy" in pregeometry in which fundamental physical constants may vary are introduced. Finally, possible solutions to the most puzzling problem in current cosmology of dark energy and dark matter in the universe are presented. Between Chapters One and Two, pictures of Dr. Abdus Salam added, as Dr. Salam was one of the founders of subquark models. Also, between Chapters Two and Three, pictures of Dr. Andrei Sakharov are added, as Dr. Sakharov was the founder of pregeometry.

Praise for "The Great Beyond": "A marvelous book-very clear, very readable. A brilliant introduction to the math and physics of higher dimensions, from Flatland to superstrings. Its greatest strength is a wealth of fascinating historical narrative and anecdote. I enjoyed it enormously." - Ian Stewart, author of "Flatterland". "A remarkable journey from Plato's cave to the farthest reaches of human thought and scientific knowledge. This mind-boggling book allows readers to dream strange visions of hyperspace, chase light waves, explore Klein's quantum odyssey and Kaluza's cocoon, leap through parallel universes, and grasp the very essence of conscience and cosmos. Buy this book and feed your head." - Clifford Pickover, author of "A Passion for Mathematics". "Halpern looks with a bemused eye at the wildest ideas currently afoot in physics. He takes us into the personal world of those who relish and explore seemingly outlandish notions, and does it with a light, engaging style." - Gregory Benford, author of "Foundation's Fear". "An informative, stimulating, and thoughtful presentation at the very frontiers of contemporary physics.;It is quite on a par with Brian Greene's "The Elegant Universe" or his more recent "The Fabric of the Cosmos", and as such, deserves to receive wide non-specialist coverage among an intelligent, curious, thinking public." - Professor E. Sheldon, "Contemporary Physics".

Does science deny God? Did the Universe and life appear by chance or is there evidence of a bigger scheme of thing behind them? In this context, I am concerned with answering these questions. This problem is addressed using knowledge in cosmology, physics and biology. The initial part describes the stages of the 'Genesis' according to physical cosmology from the Big Bang to the appearance of life on Earth. It will touch on problems of why the universe is dominated by matter, the theory of inflation, the limits of our knowledge on the early Universe, the lack of a theory that can allow us to study the phases immediately after the Big Bang, the relation between the concepts of quantum mechanics and the existence of God. It shows how the Universe is finely regulated, that is, the physical constants have been chosen so that life appears in the Universe. The regulation is so strong that we are forced to think the existence of a great designer who has created a particular Universe like the one we are observing. This conclusion can be avoided only if there is an infinity of universes, a multiverse. We ask ourselves if science can create the Universe from nothing and using the same arguments of cosmologists such as Krauss (author of The Universe from Nothing). It is now known that the current science does not allow the creation of a Universe from absolutely nothing. Physics and cosmology do not deny God. Indeed, the argument of the fine adjustment of constants is strongly indicative of the existence of a great designer. Other evidence confirming this comes from biology. Thousands of experiments in recent decades highlight the impossibility of generating life in the laboratory. There is an intrinsic order in life encoded in DNA that is not present in experiments. Simple calculations show that the 'blind and aimless' evolution described by neo-Darwinists such as Dawkins does not allow the generation of life.

Does science deny God? Did the Universe and life appear by chance or is there evidence of a bigger scheme of thing behind them? In this context, I am concerned with answering these questions. This problem is addressed using knowledge in cosmology, physics and biology. The initial part describes the stages of the 'Genesis' according to physical cosmology from the Big Bang to the appearance of life on Earth. It will touch on problems of why the universe is dominated by matter, the theory of inflation, the limits of our knowledge on the early Universe, the lack of a theory that can allow us to study the phases immediately after the Big Bang, the relation between the concepts of quantum mechanics and the existence of God. It shows how the Universe is finely regulated, that is, the physical constants have been chosen so that life appears in the Universe. The regulation is so strong that we are forced to think the existence of a great designer who has created a particular Universe like the one we are observing. This conclusion can be avoided only if there is an infinity of universes, a multiverse. We ask ourselves if science can create the Universe from nothing and using the same arguments of cosmologists such as Krauss (author of The Universe from Nothing). It is now known that the current science does not allow the creation of a Universe from absolutely nothing. Physics and cosmology do not deny God. Indeed, the argument of the fine adjustment of constants is strongly indicative of the existence of a great designer. Other evidence confirming this comes from biology. Thousands of experiments in recent decades highlight the impossibility of generating life in the laboratory. There is an intrinsic order in life encoded in DNA that is not present in experiments. Simple calculations show that the 'blind and aimless' evolution described by neo-Darwinists such as Dawkins does not allow the generation of life.

Covering 13.8 billion years in some 100 pages, a calculatedly concise, wryly intelligent history of everything, from the Big Bang to the advent of human civilization With wonder, wit, and flair-and in record time and space-geophysicist David Bercovici explains how everything came to be everywhere, from the creation of stars and galaxies to the formation of Earth's atmosphere and oceans, to the origin of life and human civilization. Bercovici marries humor and legitimate scientific intrigue, rocketing readers across nearly fourteen billion years and making connections between the essential theories that give us our current understanding of topics as varied as particle physics, plate tectonics, and photosynthesis. Bercovici's unique literary endeavor is a treasure trove of real, compelling science and fascinating history, providing both science lovers and complete neophytes with an unforgettable introduction to the fields of cosmology, geology, climate science, human evolution, and more.

In the ten years since its publication in 1988, Stephen Hawking's classic work has become a landmark volume in scientific writing, with more than nine million copies in forty languages sold worldwide. That edition was on the cutting edge of what was then known about the origins and nature of the universe. But the intervening years have seen extraordinary advances in the technology of observing both the micro- and the macrocosmic worlds. These observations have confirmed many of Professor Hawking's theoretical predictions in the first edition of his book, including the recent discoveries of the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite (COBE), which probed back in time to within 300,000 years of the universe's beginning and revealed wrinkles in the fabric of space-time that he had projected. Eager to bring to his original text the new knowledge revealed by these observations, as well as his own recent research, Professor Hawking has prepared a new introduction to the book, written an entirely new chapter on wormholes and time travel, and updated the chapters throughout.

This book discusses analogies between relativistic cosmology and various physical systems or phenomena, mostly in the earth sciences, that are described formally by the same equations. Of the two independent equations describing the universe as a whole, one (the Friedmann equation) has the form of an energy conservation equation for one-dimensional motion. The second equation is fairly easy to satisfy (although not automatic): as a result, cosmology lends itself to analogies with several systems. Given that a variety of universes are mathematically possible, several analogies exist. Analogies discussed in this book include equilibrium beach profiles, glacial valleys, the shapes of glaciers, heating/cooling models, freezing bodies of water, capillary fluids, Omori's law for earthquake aftershocks, lava flows, and a few mathematical analogies (Fibonacci's sequence, logistic equation, geodesics of various spaces, and classic variational problems). A century of research in cosmology can solve problems on the other side of an analogy, which in turn can suggest ideas in gravity. Finding a cosmic analogy solves the inverse variational problem of finding a Lagrangian and a Hamiltonian for that system, when nobody thought one exists. Often, the symmetries of the cosmological equations translate in new symmetries of the analogous system. The book surprises the reader with analogies between natural systems and exotic systems such as possible universes.