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Cosmology | 
 enlarge | Author: Steven Weinberg
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Category: Book
List Price: $90.00
Buy New: $70.45
You Save: $19.55 (22%)
New (16) from $70.45
Avg. Customer Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 20658
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 544
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3
Dimensions (in): 10 x 7 x 1.5
ISBN: 0198526822
Dewey Decimal Number: 523.1
EAN: 9780198526827
ASIN: 0198526822
Publication Date: April 28, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new hard cover just arrived from publisher - ships with tracking #
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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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| Customer Reviews:
A complete and comprehensive manual to anyone who is curious about he functions of this science July 12, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
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.
A Must have For Every Theoretical Physicist May 16, 2008
13 out of 16 found this review helpful
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.
Table of Contents May 3, 2008
13 out of 26 found this review helpful
This isn't a review, but here's the table of contents from the publisher's webpage:
1. The Expansion of the Universe
2. The Cosmic Microwave Radiation Background
3. The Early Universe
4. Inflation
5. General Theory of Cosmological Fluctuations
6. Evolution of Cosmological Fluctuations
7. Anisotropies in the Microwave Sky
8. The Growth of Structure
9. Gravitational Lensing
10. Fluctuations from Inflation
Appendices
A. Some Useful Numbers
B. Review of General Relativity
C. Energy Transfer Between Radiation and Electrons
D. The Ergodic Theorem
E. Gaussian Distributions
F. Newtonian Cosmology
G. Photon Polarization
H. The Relativistic Boltzmann Equation
Notation
Glossary of Symbols
Assorted Problems
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