This is a substantially revised and updates new edition of a classic introductory textbook. Although there are a wealth of cosmology texts at postgraduate level, Cosmology remains the classic introduction to modern cosmology for undergraduates. While designed as the main text for a course given at second or third year level, it is sufficiently self-contained for anyone with school science to understand. There is a strong emphasis on observational cosmology, with introductory chapters on the visible universe, our galaxy and other galaxies and the empirical basis for cosmological theory. After...

How old is the universe? What do the atoms in our bodies, our very existence, tell us about the history of the universe? How do galaxies form? Michael Rowan-Robinson answers these questions and encapsulates all that modern astronomy has discovered about the universe around nine numbers, only one of which is known with real precision, and four not at all. The reader emerges with a genuine feel for what we do really know about the universe--and also what we do not.
The complicated ideas that constitute modern cosmology--the origin of the elements, the General Theory of Relativity, quantum...