Cosmology

Features

• Cover Type: Hard Cover with 544 pages
• Published by: Oxford University Press, USA April 28, 2008
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0198526822
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0198526827
• Book Dimensions: 9.8 x 7.2 x 1.4 inches
• Weighs: 3 pounds

Product 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.

Reader Reviews
Wow! This is the first review of the book in the whole of internet (had reviewed it in the amazon.co.uk website). I got a copy of Steven Weinberg's Cosmology two months back though Amazon and am happy! Reminds me of the day back in early 2000 when I pre-ordered Weinberg's Supersymmetry and the day I got it was full of intellectual thrills. All the other texts had a very superficial treatment of Supersymmetry and this was also the case with Cosmology - until now, when the biggest physicist in the post-world-war-2 era wrote on the subject! Any review of Weinberg's texts is far from complete without having to say something about the Preface. The reader will remember the preface of his book on Gravitation and Cosmology where Weinberg tells us how dissatisfied he was with the usual approach to studying Gravitation and how he sees General Relativity as a consequence of constraints imposed by the quantum theory of massless Spin-2 particles. The reason for Weinberg to write the texts on Quantum Field Theory was also spelled out in the preface - he wanted to address a deep question: "Why Quantum Fields?". In the preface of this book, the author tells us that he wanted to share his experience of learning the latest development of Cosmology, since lots has happened in this area recently. Plus of course, he indirectly (and correctly!) points out how incomplete the usual review articles on Cosmology are. That indeed is true! And this book precisely will help the reader in learning Cosmology in a way where equations are actually derived and not just mentioned with a reference. Usual treatment of cosmology is vague and superficial and in this text the reader will find not only the full derivation but also good explanations. The book can be divided in 2 parts. In Chapters 1-4 the reader is introduced to topics ranging from the Robertson-Walker metric to the expanding universe to inflation. The reader has to be familiar with General Relativity to start reading this book. There is a small Appendix in the book on GR: however it should be seen as a write-up for establishing conventions. The remainder of the book (Chapters 5-10) consider advanced topics such as anisotropies, growth of structure and multi-field inflation. Weinberg mentions that he did not want to cover speculative topics and this seems to make sense for such a book. (Though I would have loved a section on the Cosmic Anthropic Principle) To summarize, this is simply the best reference for Cosmology and Weinberg has once again written a text, noboby else could have.