Hardcover: 544 pages
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (April 28, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0198526822
ISBN-13: 978-0198526827
Review
"A monumental book written by a leading authority in particle physics and cosmology. Since publication of Weinberg's famous book Gravitation and Cosmology 35 years ago, there has been a real revolution both in cosmological theory and observations. A major effort of a great expert has been required to summarize the main developments in one book, and to make this presentation both highly accurate and accessible. This book will be greatly appreciated by a broad readership, ranging from students who just enter the field to experts in modern cosmology. It should be on the desk of every actively working cosmologist."--Andrei Linde, Stanford University
"Time is right for a survey of the physics of what has become a large and well-developed subject. Weinberg has done it, in an impressive fashion. He presents a full and careful assessment of the broad range of physics of modern cosmology, from the tools for measurements of the structure and evolution of the universe we see around us to the puzzles of dark matter and dark energy and the ideas about what the universe was like in the remote past, before it could have been described by the well-tested part of the theory."--Jim Peebles, Princeton University
"This book tackles the main events of today's cosmology: cosmic acceleration observed with supernovae, the exquisite structure of the cosmic microwave background, and the evidence for dark matter. Weinberg pays close attention to the historical development and summarizes the observations with care. He brings deep knowledge of the underlying physics and weaves these threads together into a rich text that will be of great value to astronomers and physicists. The first half of this book is a wonderful introduction to cosmology, suitable for a graduate course or for someone coming into the field from a neighboring region of the scientific forest. The second half is an original development of the theory for the growth of inhomogeneities in the Universe. Everyone who works on cosmology will find something to learn in this book.--Robert P. Kirshner, Harvard University
Product Description
This book is unique in the detailed, self-contained, and comprehensive treatment that it gives to the ideas and formulas that are used and tested in modern cosmological research. It divides into two parts, each of which provides enough material for a one-semester graduate course. The first part deals chiefly with the isotropic and homogeneous average universe; the second part concentrates on the departures from the average universe. Throughout the book the author presents detailed analytic calculations of cosmological phenomena, rather than just report results obtained elsewhere by numerical computation. The book is up to date, and gives detailed accounts of topics such as recombination, microwave background polarization, leptogenesis, gravitational lensing, structure formation, and multifield inflation, that are usually treated superficially if at all in treatises on cosmology. Copious references to current research literature are supplied. Appendices include a brief introduction to general relativity, and a detailed derivation of the Boltzmann equation for photons and neutrinos used in calculations of cosmological evolution. Also provided is an assortment of problems.