by Steven Weinberg
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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.
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Average Customer Review:
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Insightful look at modern cosmology, 2008-12-06
Cosmology has advanced at an extremely rapid pace in the past couple of decades, becoming inextricably linked with particle physics which itself is developing at a dizzying pace. The time is right for a summary of the current situation, bringing together the latest observational findings and theoretical developments in both these fields. There is no better scientist than Weinberg to carry out this task. "Cosmology" nicely complements his earlier, and oft-cited classic, "Gravitation and Cosmology" (1972), in his unique style - an inspiring blend of physical insight and self-contained mathematical derivations. For anyone with a good undergraduate-level understanding of physics, this book provides an excellent entry-point into the vast and rapidly-growing literature on many aspects of modern cosmology, and will position the reader well for understanding the true significance of new findings. With the persistent mysteries of Dark Matter and Dark Energy, the Large Hadron Collider expected soon to yield results, no time has been better to bring our current understanding of cosmology up to date, and no-one better than Weinberg to accomplish this task.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Excellent, likely the new standard, 2008-11-08
This book is the most complete and up-to-date book on cosmology I know of. It's extremely well written and very detailed. It's all so good, it's hard to say anything especially stands out. Nevertheless I especially enjoyed the discussions (done throughout the book) of the cosmic microwave background fluctuations, dark matter and dark energy. If you're read authors three volume set on quantum field theory or his graduate level text on gravitation, the writing in this book is exactly what you'd expect.
Obviously one can't understand cosmology without knowledge of general relativity, but this book doesn't require an especially strong knowledge of it. In addition to basic general relativity a couple of other things perspective readers would probably want some background in are statistical mechanics and the standard model of particle physics. The Robertson-Walker solution is pretty much taken as a given, solutions like Taub-NUT that clearly don't describe our universe are not covered. More speculative aspects of cosmology are not discussed. For example you won't find coverage of things like the Wheeler-DeWitt equation, quantum cosmology, non-standard topologies, topological defects (monopoles are mentioned briefly) or higher dimensional theories.
Aside from the speculative topics it covers everything most people would want to know. The topics include: the cosmological distance ladder, the cosmic microwave background, nucleosynthesis, structure formation, inflation, dark matter (baryonic and non-baryonic) and dark energy.
One of the striking features of this book is that it makes it very clear how precise the measurements in cosmology are. One example is Hubble's constant is give as 71+/- 6 (in the usual units), while in Peeble's excellent book (from 1993) was only known to be in the range 50-85. Another is that many measurements have been made to a fairly high precision and they fit together beautifully, the very realistic possibility (if the current model did not reflect reality quite well) that there are some conflicts is not realized.
All-in-all this is an excellent book that I would expect anyone seeking a deep knowledge or cosmology would enjoy. If one's interest in cosmology is more casual it may be too detailed.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
 A unique approach to observational Cosmology, 2008-10-23
The first chapter of this book is something that I've never seen on any Cosmology book. It has a very complete and up-to-date description of observational Cosmology that is missing on other texts.
2 of 31 people found the following review helpful:
Being not qualified enough to make any comment, but..., 2008-08-30
As a graduate in experimental nuclear physics (MSc, also now a retiree of 65), I read Prof. Weinberg's The First Three Minutes, and Dreams of a Final Theory, when I was actively working in the field of nuclear engineering. I bought the author's three volume books on the QED, and, of course, this book too, because of his mathematically rigorous descriptions of theoretical models of Nature. Because I have also read Prof. Andrei Linde's "Particle Physics and Inflationary Cosmology," I have wondered if Prof. Weinberg also writes something about "Consciousness," but no mention of it, maybe simply because "Consciousness" cannot be put on a mathematically rigorous basis as yet. What I have confirmed from this book is Prof. Weinberg is, apparently, mathematically rigorous a Materialist.
We know that there are many Dualists in the field of parapsychology, John Beloff, for example. I can understand these Dualists' position; they cannot deny the existence of Non-physical Realm as well as Physical Realm, both based on their convincing facts. But from my point of view, these Dualists are dualists because they cannot deny the existence of at least One Objective Physical Realm, i.e. our Universe. How can we, conscious Egos, (not the Unconscious) deny it! Maybe, our Universe was created as explained in this book, or as in Genesis, for example. However, we also have "Psychical Knowledge" given by the non-physical entity "Seth" through the trance-channeling of the late American writer-poet Jane Roberts (1929-1984); the knowledge tells us, the conscious Egos, that "Consciousness" is the origin of everything!
8 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
A complete and comprehensive manual to anyone who is curious about he functions of this science , 2008-07-12
How do modern scientists form a basis for their research? "Cosmology" is a complete and comprehensive manual to anyone who is curious about he functions of this science and wants to learn more. Covering countless topics in nearly six hundred pages, such as microwave background polarization, leptogenesis, multifield inflation, and others, "Cosmology" is an ideal text for students. Enhanced with appendices containing formulas, glossaries, and more, "Cosmology" is almost a science college course on its own. A top pick for college library science collections.
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