This book gathers the lecture notes of the 100th Les Houches Summer School, which was held in July 2013. These lectures represent a comprehensive pedagogical survey of the frontier of theoretical and observational cosmology just after the release of the first cosmological results of the Planck mission. The Cosmic Microwave Background is discussed as a possible window on the still unknown laws of physics at very high energy and as a backlight for studying the late-time Universe. Other lectures highlight connections of fundamental physics with other areas of cosmology and astrophysics, the successes and fundamental puzzles of the inflationary paradigm of cosmic beginning, the themes of dark energy and dark matter, and the theoretical developments and observational probes that will shed light on these cosmic conundrums in the years to come.

This volume comprises nine articles on Islamic astronomy published since 1989 by Benno van Dalen. Van Dalen was the first historian of Islamic astronomy who made full use of the new possibilities of computers in the early 1990s. He implemented various statistical and numerical methods that can be used to determine the mathematical properties of medieval astronomical tables, and utilized these to obtain entirely new, until then unattainable historical results concerning the interdependence of individual tables and hence of entire astronomical works. His programmes for analysing tables, making sexagesimal calculations and converting calendar dates continue to be widely used. The five articles in the first part of this collection explain the principles of a range of statistical methods for determining unknown parameter values underlying astronomical tables and present extensive step-by-step examples for their use. The four articles in the second part provide extensive studies of materials in unpublished primary sources on Islamic astronomy that heavily depend on these methods. The volume is completed with a detailed index.

Relativistic cosmology has in recent years become one of the most exciting and active branches of current research. In conference after conference the view is expressed that cosmology today is where particle physics was forty years ago, with major discoveries just waiting to happen. Also gravitational wave detectors, presently under construction or in the testing phase, promise to open up an entirely novel field of physics.
It is to take into account such recent developments, as well as to improve the basic text, that this second edition has been undertaken. The most affected is the last part on cosmology, but there are smaller additions, corrections, and additional exercises throughout.
The books basic purpose is to make relativity come alive conceptually. Hence the emphasis on the foundations and the logical subtleties rather than on the mathematics or the detailed experiments per se. Aided by some 300 exercises, the book promotes a deep understanding and the confidence to tackle any fundamental relativistic problem.

The great theoretical physicist and Nobel Prize winnder, Richard Feynman, left an indelible imprint on scientific thought. On 14 March 1964 he delivered a remarkable lecture which, until now, was believed to be lost. His lecture was about a single fact, though by no means a small one. When a planet or a comet or any other body arcs through space under the influence of gravity, it traces out one of a very special set of mathematical curves, known as the conic sections. But why does nature choose to describe those, and only those, elegant geometrical constructions ? In this book Feynman's lost lecture has been reconstructed and explained in meticulous, accessible detail, together with a history of ideas of the planets' motions.

It can be enjoyed by the specialist and non-specialist alike and provides us all with an invaluable insight into the mind of one of this century's greatest scientists.

The Comprehensibility of the Universe puts forward a radically new conception of science. Nicholas Maxwell argues that the prevailing view of the relation between scientific theory and evidence is untenable; he calls for a new orthodoxy which sees science as making a hierarchy of assumptions about the comprehensibility of the universe. This new conception has significant implications for both philosophy and science, and promises to heal the rift between the two.

Through the lens of Chinese food, the authors address recent theories in social science concerning cultural identity, ethnicity, boundary formation, consumerism and globalization, and the invention of local cuisine in the context of rapid culture change in East and Southeast Asia.

This volume of original articles, collected papers and commentaries by contemporary scholars illustrates the work of Tullio Regge, a giant in the panorama of theoretical physics in the second half of the 20th century, probably the most influential Italian physicist after Enrico Fermi. His brilliant contributions to quantum theory and to general relativity have marked significant turning points in the development of scientific knowledge: Regge poles, Regge behaviour, Regge calculus and his geometric approach to general relativity and its extensions, and they continue to have a profound impact on the work of the large theoretical community today. Moreover, his public engagement for the dissemination of scientific culture, his mastering of multimedia technology for outreach and play, and his support for important social causes such as the fight against pseudosciences and the rights of the disabled make him a charismatic character across time, space and disciplines.

Relativity theory is based on a postulate of locality, which means that the past history of the observer is not directly taken into account. This book argues that the past history should be taken into account. In this way, nonlocality--in the sense of history dependence--is introduced into relativity theory. The deep connection between inertia and gravitation suggests that gravity could be nonlocal, and in nonlocal gravity the fading gravitational memory of past events must then be taken into account. Along this line of thought, a classical nonlocal generalization of Einstein's theory of gravitation has recently been developed. A significant consequence of this theory is that the nonlocal aspect of gravity appears to simulate dark matter. According to nonlocal gravity theory, what astronomers attribute to dark matter should instead be due to the nonlocality of gravitation. Nonlocality dominates on the scale of galaxies and beyond. Memory fades with time; therefore, the nonlocal aspect of gravity becomes weaker as the universe expands. The implications of nonlocal gravity are explored in this book for gravitational lensing, gravitational radiation, the gravitational physics of the Solar System and the internal dynamics of nearby galaxies, as well as clusters of galaxies. This approach is extended to nonlocal Newtonian cosmology, where the attraction of gravity fades with the expansion of the universe. Thus far, scientists have only compared some of the consequences of nonlocal gravity with astronomical observations.

There is a crisis in modern science that few theorists are willing to confront. In The Virtue of Heresy: Confessions of a Dissident Astronomer, renowned physicist and astronomer Hilton Ratcliffe, founding member of the Alternative Cosmology Group and co-discoverer of the CNO nuclear fusion cycle on the Sun’s surface, delivers to science aficionados his straightforward and highly compelling explanation of, and challenge to, many widely-held scientific beliefs that fall apart under scrutiny.

Ratcliffe not only points out the fallacy of commonly held beliefs often promoted by the global scientific community, but, through a close (and sometimes humorous) examination of theoretical physics, presents a convincing argument for alternative theory. The heresy of which he writes—that is, our unwillingness to accept at face value all that is spooned to us by ‘the experts’—is presented not as a liability, but as a virtue essential to the progress of scientific thought.

This book summarizes and presents the scientific search for life in the universe, and the current level of scientific understanding of how life begins, grows, and becomes intelligent in our Solar System and beyond. This engaging book promises to appeal not only to the general reader but to scientists as well, many of whom strive to acquire an informed perspective on the search for extraterrestrial life in fields not their own.

For Akiva Jaap Vroman "a day in the infinite past" is nonsense. All the days that have elapsed belong to a past of countable days; they started on a first day a finite number of days ago. Time began this first day. It follows that an eternal past does not exist. Vroman bases his reasoning on a simple mathematical law: an infinite quantity remains the same infinite quantity if a finite quantity, however large, is subtracted from it. "On God, Space, and Time" devotes itself to this proof. "On God, Space, and Time" is rooted in the epistemological thinking of Immanuel Kant and Jean Piaget and the law of Leucippus, and draws from the somewhat disparate fields of psychology, physiology, mathematics, and physics. Vroman discusses the modern vindication of the existence of the Creator using ontological arguments, which observe the cosmos solely through our sense-perceptions and the world of space and matter. He balances this worldview with a discussion of brain chemistry and physiology in "God, Mind, and Body" showing that the world of space and matter is nothing but an interpretation made by our working mind. Vroman also describes the Spanish-based Jewish philosophers of the Middle Ages who came close to solving the Genesis-Creation contradiction, which cannot be reconciled through the external world of Greek philosophy. As we travel through time with Vroman, who ranges easily and poetically over important concepts and influential thinkers, we encounter a variety of subjects: Spinoza's new definition of God and the authority of reason in the age of Descartes, Leibniz, and Newton; Jewish idealists, such as Nachman Krochmal, Solomon L. Steinman, Solomon Formstecher, and Samuel Hirsch; the concept of space-time; and Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Arthur Schopenhauer, Max Wentscher, and Charles Darwin. He presents engaging, worthwhile discussions of futurology; the astrological world of sub-lunar events; religious eschatology, specifically the Jewish and Christian Messiah; apocalyptic revelation in psychological science, the future of the universe, God and moral virtue, the medical approach to the question of life and death, and finally, personal thoughts on religious worship and service based on reason and moral sense. "On God, Space, and Time"a valuable historical synthesis of Western thought on man's vision of God, and consequently reality. This volume will interest many, particularly those intrigued by philosophy, religion, and futurology.

Dynamical systems provide powerful methods for the study of profound properties of many-dimensional nonlinear systems. In this unique book, the authors offer a consistent geometrical treatment of observational cosmology from the concepts of the theory of dynamical systems. The dynamics of clusters of galaxies differ drastically from stellar dynamics, thus requiring a mathematical approach to large-scale problems. Since mathematical techniques are not a familiar tool in this field, a full summary of the elementary ideas of differential geometry, ergodic theory and catastrophe theory are also considered in this exploratory text. Readership: Mathematicians, astrophysicists, and cosmologists, as well as anyone interested in the many subject disciplines related to geometrical and topological aspects of the large-scale universe.

Big Data in Radio Astronomy: Scientific Data Processing for Advanced Radio Telescopes provides the latest research developments in big data methods and techniques for radio astronomy. Providing examples from such projects as the Square Kilometer Array (SKA), the world's largest radio telescope that generates over an Exabyte of data every day, the book offers solutions for coping with the challenges and opportunities presented by the exponential growth of astronomical data. Presenting state-of-the-art results and research, this book is a timely reference for both practitioners and researchers working in radio astronomy, as well as students looking for a basic understanding of big data in astronomy.

This volume, together with Volumes 22 and 23 of the same series, contains Euler's contributions to the theory of the movement of the sun and especially of the moon. Time and again Euler worked on the program of applying Newton's principles of mechanics to improve our unterstanding of the movement of the celestial bodies. Euler's monumental "Theoria motuum Lunae nova methodo pertractata" of 1772 (his "Second Theory of the Moon") forms Volume 22, whereas Volume 23 mainly contains his early Astronomical Tables and his "First Theory of the Moon" of 1753. In the present volume the reader will find early papers by Euler pertaining to the preparation of his Astronomical Tables, a series of articles written between his two Theories of the Moon, and finally three substantial essays closely related to his "Second Theory of the Moon." The texts are reprinted in the original language most commonly French or Latin.

The orbits of the planets are ellipses - Keplera (TM)s Law is a relation on spatial coordinates where time t is eliminated. In this treatise we first develop a static equation of motion for the Moon by separating space and time in Keplera (TM)s sense; this lunar distance formula can be applied in tidal dynamics. Next, a static geodesic equation is derived for the restricted 3-body problem. Then we handle the resonance phenomena in the solar system; small divisors do not interfere as they disappear together with time t. Finally, with two rotating primaries and a test body we proceed with the investigation into gravitational waves.

The subject of high-energy astrophysics is typically linked with satellite missions, though it was launched by a balloon looking for sources of radioactivity other than those found on Earth. The balloon experiments discovered what came to be called "cosmic" radiation. The study of cosmic rays has since been a fruitful field of high-energy astrophysics, yielding the discovery of the positron and currently focused on what their highest energies might be. Other high-energy particles include neutrinos from the Sun and other sources and a variety of particles more theoretical in nature, ranging from WIMPS (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles) to magnetic monopoles. All of these types of high-energy particles and sources will be discussed, including the modern missions used to detect them, their findings, discoveries that resulted from them, and details on the technical aspects of the experiments designs.

The subject of high-energy astrophysics is typically linked with satellite missions, though it was launched by a balloon looking for sources of radioactivity other than those found on Earth. The balloon experiments discovered what came to be called "cosmic" radiation. The study of cosmic rays has since been a fruitful field of high-energy astrophysics, yielding the discovery of the positron and currently focused on what their highest energies might be. Other high-energy particles include neutrinos from the Sun and other sources and a variety of particles more theoretical in nature, ranging from WIMPS (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles) to magnetic monopoles. All of these types of high-energy particles and sources will be discussed, including the modern missions used to detect them, their findings, discoveries that resulted from them, and details on the technical aspects of the experiments designs.