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Sir Isaac Newton famously said, regarding his discoveries, "If I
have seen further it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants."
The Evolving Universe and the Origin of Life describes, complete
with fascinating biographical details of the thinkers involved, the
ascent to the metaphorical shoulders accomplished by the greatest
minds in history. For the first time, a single book can take the
reader on a journey through the history of the universe as
interpreted by the expanding body of knowledge of humankind. From
subatomic particles to the protein chains that form life, and
expanding in scale to the entire universe, this book covers the
science that explains how we came to be. The Evolving Universe and
the Origin of Life contains a great breadth of knowledge, from
astronomy to physics, from chemistry to biology. It includes over
350 figures that enhance the comprehension of concepts both basic
and advanced, and is a non-technical, easy-to-read text at an
introductory college level that is ideal for anyone interested in
science as well as its history.
This book, written for a general readership, reviews and explains
the three-body problem in historical context reaching to latest
developments in computational physics and gravitation theory. The
three-body problem is one of the oldest problems in science and it
is most relevant even in today's physics and astronomy. The long
history of the problem from Pythagoras to Hawking parallels the
evolution of ideas about our physical universe, with a particular
emphasis on understanding gravity and how it operates between
astronomical bodies. The oldest astronomical three-body problem is
the question how and when the moon and the sun line up with the
earth to produce eclipses. Once the universal gravitation was
discovered by Newton, it became immediately a problem to understand
why these three-bodies form a stable system, in spite of the pull
exerted from one to the other. In fact, it was a big question
whether this system is stable at all in the long run. Leading
mathematicians attacked this problem over more than two centuries
without arriving at a definite answer. The introduction of
computers in the last half-a-century has revolutionized the study;
now many answers have been found while new questions about the
three-body problem have sprung up. One of the most recent
developments has been in the treatment of the problem in Einstein's
General Relativity, the new theory of gravitation which is an
improvement on Newton's theory. Now it is possible to solve the
problem for three black holes and to test one of the most
fundamental theorems of black hole physics, the no-hair theorem,
due to Hawking and his co-workers.
Generalising Newton's law of gravitation, general relativity is one
of the pillars of modern physics. While applications in the
beginning were restricted to isolated effects such as a proper
understanding of Mercury's orbit, the second half of the twentieth
century saw a massive development of applications. These include
cosmology, gravitational waves, and even very practical results for
satellite based positioning systems as well as different approaches
to unite general relativity with another very successful branch of
physics - quantum theory. On the occassion of general relativity's
centennial, leading scientists in the different branches of
gravitational research review the history and recent advances in
the main fields of applications of the theory, which was referred
to by Lev Landau as "the most beautiful of the existing physical
theories". Contributions from: Andy C. Fabian, Anthony L. Lasenby,
Astrophysical black Holes Neil Ashby, GNSS and other applications
of General Relativity Gene Byrd, Arthur Chernin, Pekka Teerikorpi,
Mauri Vaaltonen, Observations of general Relativity at strong and
weaks limits Ignazio Ciufolini, General Relativity and dragging of
inertial frames Carlo Rovelli, The strange world of quantum
spacetime
This work provides the current theory and observations behind the
cosmological phenomenon of dark energy. The approach is
comprehensive with rigorous mathematical theory and relevant
astronomical observations discussed in context. The book treats the
background and history starting with the new-found importance of
Einstein's cosmological constant (proposed long ago) in dark energy
formulation, as well as the frontiers of dark energy. The authors
do not presuppose advanced knowledge of astronomy, and basic
mathematical concepts used in modern cosmology are presented in a
simple, but rigorous way. All this makes the book useful for both
astronomers and physicists, and also for university students of
physical sciences.
How do three celestial bodies move under their mutual gravitational
attraction? This problem has been studied by Isaac Newton and
leading mathematicians over the last two centuries. Poincare's
conclusion, that the problem represents an example of chaos in
nature, opens the new possibility of using a statistical approach.
For the first time this book presents these methods in a systematic
way, surveying statistical as well as more traditional methods. The
book begins by providing an introduction to celestial mechanics,
including Lagrangian and Hamiltonian methods, and both the two and
restricted three body problems. It then surveys statistical and
perturbation methods for the solution of the general three body
problem, providing solutions based on combining orbit calculations
with semi-analytic methods for the first time. This book should be
essential reading for students in this rapidly expanding field and
is suitable for students of celestial mechanics at advanced
undergraduate and graduate level.
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