For a quantitative understanding of the physics of the universe - from the solar system through the milky way to clusters of galaxies all the way to cosmology - these edited lecture notes are perhaps among the most concise and also among the most critical ones: Astrophysics has not yet stood the redundancy test of laboratory physics, hence should be wary of early interpretations. Special chapters are devoted to magnetic and radiation processes, supernovae, disks, black-hole candidacy, bipolar flows, cosmic rays, gamma-ray bursts, image distortions, and special sources. At the same time, planet earth is viewed as the arena for life, with plants and animals having evolved to homo sapiens during cosmic time.

This text is unique in covering the basic qualitative and quantitative tools, formulae as well as numbers, needed for the precise interpretation of frontline phenomena in astrophysical research. The author compares mainstream interpretations with new and even controversial ones he wishes to emphasize.

The second edition includes numerous updates throughout the book and, in addition, it contains a list of alternative explanations to astrophysical findings that can be seen as a serious testing ground for young scientists.

This volume is the documentation of the first Course on 'Neutron Stars, Active Galactic Nuclei and Jets', of an Erice School with a wide astro physical scope. The choice of the subject was made because of an apparent similari ty - stressed already at earlier meetings - of four classes of astrophy sical jet sources: Active Galactic Nuclei, Young Stellar Objects, Binary Neutron Stars and Binary White Dwarfs. They share important properties such as their morphology, high variability and large veloci ty gradients as well as - with some inference - their broad spectrum, hypersonic outflow and core/lobe power ratio. Despite this apparent similarity of the four source classes, quite different models have been put forward for their description: (i) The central engine of active galactic nuclei has been generally thought to be a black hole, in contrast to the central engine of young stellar objects and cometary nebulae which apparently is a pre-T-Tauri star, some six orders of magnitude less compact, and to the central engine of planetary nebulae which mayor may not be a binary white dwarf. (ii) The elongated lobes, or flow patterns, have been often interpreted as highly directional stellar wind outflows whereas in a few well mapped cases, the elongated flow appears to be 'pumped up' through a much narrower channel, or jet, both in the extragalactic and stellar sources."

Devised for a quantitative understanding of the physics of the universe from the solar system through the milky way to clusters of galaxies all the way to cosmology, this acclaimed text offers among the most concise and most critical ones of extant works. Special chapters are devoted to magnetic and radiation processes, disks, black-hole candidacy, bipolar flows, cosmic rays, gamma-ray bursts, image distortions, and special sources. At the same time, planet earth is viewed as the arena for life, with plants and animals having evolved to homo sapiens during cosmic time. This text is unique in covering the basic qualitative and quantitative tools, formulae as well as numbers, needed to for the precise interpretation of frontline phenomena.

For a better understanding of supernova explosions the contributors to this volume provide researchers and graduate students in astrophysics with a broad spectrum of alternatives. The confrontation of different theories in one volume should prompt further exploration of the driving piston for the explosions and deeper understanding of the experimental data. Properties of supernova shells are discussed, such as their kinematics, ages, sizes, temperatures, spectra, polarizations, energetics and morphologies. Special attention is given to a few shells of extreme age, viz. G 70.68+1.20, Kepler's SN, and CTB 80, as well as to their statistics.

Jets are ubiquitous in the Universe, but ill-understood. Conservative books base their interpretations on focused stellar winds, ejected "bullets," black-hole central engines, and in-situ upgrading of electron energies via shocks. This volume, however, attempts a uniform interpretation of the bipolar-flow family, involving extremely relativistic pair plasma as the jet substance, and rotating magnets (possibly burning disks) as the central engines. Among the discussed sources are SS 433, YSO jets, planetary nebulae, our galactic center, and the class of extragalactic QSOs, both radio-loud and radio-quiet.

This volume is the documentation of the first Course on 'Neutron Stars, Active Galactic Nuclei and Jets', of an Erice School with a wide astro physical scope. The choice of the subject was made because of an apparent similari ty - stressed already at earlier meetings - of four classes of astrophy sical jet sources: Active Galactic Nuclei, Young Stellar Objects, Binary Neutron Stars and Binary White Dwarfs. They share important properties such as their morphology, high variability and large veloci ty gradients as well as - with some inference - their broad spectrum, hypersonic outflow and core/lobe power ratio. Despite this apparent similarity of the four source classes, quite different models have been put forward for their description: (i) The central engine of active galactic nuclei has been generally thought to be a black hole, in contrast to the central engine of young stellar objects and cometary nebulae which apparently is a pre-T-Tauri star, some six orders of magnitude less compact, and to the central engine of planetary nebulae which mayor may not be a binary white dwarf. (ii) The elongated lobes, or flow patterns, have been often interpreted as highly directional stellar wind outflows whereas in a few well mapped cases, the elongated flow appears to be 'pumped up' through a much narrower channel, or jet, both in the extragalactic and stellar sources.

This volume is the documentation of the second Course on 'Neutron Stars, Active Galactic Nuclei and Jets', held at Erice in September 1988. This second Course was devoted to our knowledge about neutron-star sources. The poster spoke of: pulsars, accreting X-ray sources and jet englnes, perhaps also UHE pulsars, X ra~' bursters and black-hole candidat.es. Neutron stars have even been proposed as the primary cosmic-ray boosters. Most of theil' properties are stil1 controversial, such as their birth mechanism (neutrino versus magnetic piston), internal structure (neutrons, quarks, strange particles), magnetic, thermal and spin histories, wind generation (hydrogen versus pair plasma, radiation versus centrifugal pressure), magnetospheric structure and accretion modes (along field lines versus quasi-Keplerian). The listed controversies have largely survived through the Course and entered into the proceedings. Several lecturers speak of 'magnetic-field decay' in neutron stars, of the 'recycling' of old pulsars, and of 'accretion-induced collapse' of white dwarfs as though such processes were textbook knowledge. Terms and abbreviations like RPSR (=recycled pulsar), spinup line, AIC, and ADC (=accretion disk corona) help to foster the assumptions. It is not clear to me at this time whether any of these notions has an application to reality.

""Diese eindrucksvolle Sammlung alternativer Vorstellungen der Autoren zu weit verbreiteten Gedankenbildern der Bio-, Geo-, Astro- und Quantenphysik wird jeden Leser begeistern - aber auch intellektuell herausfordern ""

Prof. Dr. Klaus Hasselmann
""Das beeindruckende Inhaltsverzeichnis und die Vorworte zu den Kapiteln machen neugierig Die Lektuere
dieses Buches, welches zehn Gebiete von Biophysik bis Astrophysik behandelt,
wird hoechst anspruchsvoll
sein und den Leser faszinieren und mit neuen Erkenntnissen und Ideen belohnen."""
"Prof. Dr. Sigrid Boege

Dieses Buch ist neu in der Physikgeschichte. Es verfolgt verwandte Ziele zu Fred Hoyles 'Frontiers of Astronomy', oder zu Freeman Dysons 'The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet': Es moechte Physik naeherbringen - aber anders, als andere zuvor.

Der Senior-Autor dieses Buches, Wolfgang Kundt, wurde sozusagen in die Gegenwartsphysik hineingeboren. Als Schueler von Pascual Jordan lernte er fruehzeitig ein paar (weitere) Grossmeister persoenlich kennen: Wolfgang Pauli, Paul Dirac, Richard Feynman, Roger Penrose, Stephen Hawking, Hermann Bondi, Viktor Ambartsumian, John Archibald Wheeler, Martin Rees, Phil Morrison, Yakov Zel'dovic, David Layzer, Brandon Carter und vor allen Thomas Gold beeinflussten seine Gedanken. Lev Landau und Albert Einstein verpasste er nur um wenige Monate.

Das vorliegende Buch stellt Theorien uber unsere Welt auf, wobei es in ueber 135 Faellen von der Lehrmeinung der Physik abweicht. Es verabschiedet die nunmehr 40-jaehrigen Schwarzen Loecher - trotz ehemaliger Taufpatenschaft - holt die Quellen der Gammastrahlblitze aus dem fernen Kosmos in die Milchstrasse zurueck, diskutiert, wie Baeume ihr Trinkwasser in ihre Kronen heben, wie die Hochatmosphaere durch die Kosmischen Strahlen elektrisch aufgeladen wird, wodurch die Kontinentalplatten bewegt werden, wie Supernovae funktionieren, wie die astrophysikalischen Jets erzeugt werden und dass die Tunguska-Katastrophe von 1908 ein Erdgasausbruch war, kein Meteorit.

Diese Abweichungen geschehen nicht heimlich, sondern sind jeweils in Vorworten und Abstrakten vorangestellt. Der eilige Leser kann sich bei seiner Lektuere auf die 85 Abstrakte be-
schraenken. Erklaertes Ziel ist es, Unstimmigkeiten in der heutigen Physik aufzuzeigen und alternative Loesungen anzubieten. Physik sollte konsistent und aesthetisch sein, meinen die Autoren.

Der Autor

Wolfgang Kundt: ist theoretischer Physiker, mit Hochschulprofessuren in Hamburg (1965-1977) und Bonn (seit 1978), emeritiert seit 1996.
---
Ole Marggraf: ist promovierter Nachwuchswissenschaftler am Bonner Argelander-Institut.
"

This volume is the documentation of the second Course on 'Neutron Stars, Active Galactic Nuclei and Jets', held at Erice in September 1988. This second Course was devoted to our knowledge about neutron-star sources. The poster spoke of: pulsars, accreting X-ray sources and jet englnes, perhaps also UHE pulsars, X­ ra~' bursters and black-hole candidat.es. Neutron stars have even been proposed as the primary cosmic-ray boosters. Most of theil' properties are stil1 controversial, such as their birth mechanism (neutrino versus magnetic piston), internal structure (neutrons, quarks, strange particles), magnetic, thermal and spin histories, wind generation (hydrogen versus pair plasma, radiation versus centrifugal pressure), magnetospheric structure and accretion modes (along field lines versus quasi-Keplerian). The listed controversies have largely survived through the Course and entered into the proceedings. Several lecturers speak of 'magnetic-field decay' in neutron stars, of the 'recycling' of old pulsars, and of 'accretion-induced collapse' of white dwarfs as though such processes were textbook knowledge. Terms and abbreviations like RPSR (=recycled pulsar), spinup line, AIC, and ADC (=accretion disk corona) help to foster the assumptions. It is not clear to me at this time whether any of these notions has an application to reality.