Everyone knows that there are things no one can see, for example, the air you're breathing or a black hole, to be more exotic. But not everyone knows that what we can see makes up only 5 percent of the Universe. The rest is totally invisible to us.

The invisible stuff comes in two varieties--dark matter and dark energy. One holds the Universe together while the other tears it apart. What these forces really are has been a mystery for as long as anyone has suspected they were there, but the latest discoveries of experimental physics have brought us closer to that knowledge. Particle physicist Dan Hooper takes his readers, with wit, grace, and a keen knack for explaining the toughest ideas science has to offer, on a quest few would ever have expected: to discover what makes up our dark cosmos.

A new look at the first few seconds after the Big Bang-and how research into these moments continues to revolutionize our understanding of our universe Scientists in recent decades have made crucial discoveries about how our cosmos evolved over the past 13.8 billion years. But we still know little about what happened in the first seconds after the Big Bang. At the Edge of Time focuses on what we have learned and are striving to understand about this mysterious period at the beginning of cosmic history. Delving into the remarkable science of cosmology, Dan Hooper describes many of the extraordinary questions that scientists are asking about the origin and nature of our world. Hooper examines how the Large Hadron Collider and other experiments re-create the conditions of the Big Bang, how we may finally discover the way dark matter was formed during our universe's first moments, and how, with new telescopes, we are lifting the veil on the era of cosmic inflation. At the Edge of Time presents an accessible investigation of our universe and its birth.

A graduate-level introduction to the interface between particle physics, astrophysics, and cosmology This book explores the exciting interface between the fields of cosmology, high-energy astrophysics, and particle physics, at a level suitable for advanced undergraduate to graduate level students as well as active researchers. Without assuming a strong background in particle physics or quantum field theory, the text is designed to be accessible to readers from a range of backgrounds and presents both fundamentals and modern topics in a modular style that allows for flexible use and easy reference. It offers coverage of general relativity and the Friedmann equations, early universe thermodynamics, recombination and the cosmic microwave background, Big Bang nucleosynthesis, the origin and detection of dark matter, the formation of large-scale structure, baryogenesis and leptogenesis, inflation, dark energy, cosmic rays, neutrino and gamma-ray astrophysics, supersymmetry, Grand Unified Theories, sterile neutrinos, and axions. The book also provides numerous worked examples and homework problems, many with solutions. Particle Cosmology and Astrophysics provides readers with an invaluable entrée to this cross-disciplinary area of research and discovery. • Accessible to advanced undergraduate to graduate students, as well as researchers in cosmology, high-energy astrophysics, and particle physics • Does not assume a strong background in particle physics or quantum field theory, and contains two chapters specifically for readers with no background in particle physics. • Broad scope, covering many topics across particle physics, astrophysics, and particle-cosmology • Modular presentation, for easy reference and flexible use • Provides more than 200 homework problems, many with solutions • Ideal for course use or self-study and reference