During the last twenty years, dramatic improvements in methods of observing astrophysical phenomena from the ground and in space have added to our knowledge of what the universe is like now and what it was like in the past, going back to the hot big bang. In this overview of today's physical cosmology, P.J.E. Peebles shows how observation has combined with theoretical elements to establish the subject as a mature science, while he also discusses the most notable recent attempts to understand the origin and structure of the universe. A successor to Peebles's classic volume Physical...

Opinions on the large-scale structure of the early universe range widely from primeval chaos to a well-ordered mass distribution. P.J.E. Peebles argues that the evolution proceeded from a nearly uniform initial state to a progressively more irregular and clumpy universe. The discussion centers on the largest known structures, the clusters of galaxies, the empirical evidence of the nature of the clustering, and the theories of how the clustering evolves in an expanding universe.

In Chapter One the author provides an historical introduction to the subject. Chapter Two contains a...

P.J.E. Peebles teaches the often counterintuitive physics of quantum mechanics by working through detailed applications of general ideas. A principal example used in the book is the hyperfine structure of atomic hydrogen (the 21 cm line): the computation of the energy splitting and the induced and spontaneous transition rates. Peebles makes room for such calculations by omitting unneeded elements that can be readily found in the standard treatises after one fully understands the principles of quantum mechanics. To give a flavor of the discovery of the remarkable world picture of quantum...