Accounting for the enormous and amazing development cosmology has made in the past ten years, the long awaited second edition of this highly appraised textbook has been extensively and thoroughly updated. It tells the story of modern astrophysical cosmology from the perspective of one of its most important and fundamental problems - how did the galaxies come about? The author uses this approach to introduce the whole of what may be called "classical cosmology". Moreover he describes how the study the origin of galaxies and larger-scale structures in the Universe has provided us with unique and direct information about the physics of the very early Universe. The material is presented in an informal pedagogical manner, emphasizing the underlying physical content of the subject, and the book is destined to become a favorite text for students.

Klappentext

Delineating the huge strides taken in cosmology in the past ten years, this much-anticipated second edition of Malcolm Longair's highly appreciated textbook has been extensively and thoroughly updated. It tells the story of modern astrophysical cosmology from the perspective of one of its most important and fundamental problems - how did the galaxies come about? Longair uses this approach to introduce the whole of what may be called "classical cosmology". What's more, he describes how the study of the origin of galaxies and larger-scale structures in the Universe has provided us with direct information about the physics of the very early Universe.

Inhalt

Preliminaries.- A Brief History of Cosmology and Galaxy Formation.- The Large-Scale Structure of the Universe.- Galaxies.- Clusters of Galaxies.- The Basic Framework.- The Theoretical Framework.- An Introduction to Relativistic Gravity.- The Friedman World Models.- The Robertson-Walker Metric for an Empty Universe.- The Determination of Cosmological Parameters.- The Thermal History of the Universe.- Nucleosynthesis in the Early Universe.- The Development of Primordial Fluctuations Under Gravity.- The Evolution of Perturbations in the Standard Big Bang.- More Tools and Problems.- Dark Matter and Galaxy Formation.- Correlation Functions and the Spectrum of the Initial Fluctuations.- Fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation.- The Post-Recombination Universe.- The Post-Recombination Era.- The Evolution of Galaxies and Active Galaxies with Cosmic Epoch.- The Intergalactic Medium.- Making Real Galaxies.- The Very Early Universe.