Kategoria BISAC: Science >> Space Science - Cosmology

In the last thirty years humans have probed the Universe, explored the Solar System and visited with spacecraft some of the most incredible places humans have ever laid eyes upon. We have expanded our knowledge slowly and surely, but still now only see a glimpse of the bigger picture. The Cosmic Keyhole explores the big discoveries of recent years and asks what's next? How prolific is life in the Universe? How far back to the Big Bang can we probe? And what hidden treasures still await us in the hidden corners of our Solar System?

'The whole of modern European philosophy', wrote F.W.J. Schelling in 1809, 'has this common deficiency - that nature does not exist for it.' Despite repeated echoes of Schelling's assessment throughout the natural sciences, and despite the philosophy of nature recently proposed but not completed by Gilles Deleuze, Philosophies of Nature After Schelling argues that Schelling's verdict remains accurate two hundred years later. Presenting a lucid account of Schelling's major works in the philosophy of nature alongside those of his scientific contemporaries who pursued and furthered that work,...

Terms such as "expanding Universe," "big bang," and "initial singularity," are nowadays part of our common language. The idea that the Universe we observe today originated from an enormous explosion (big bang) is now well known and widely accepted, at all levels, in modern popular culture. But what happens to the Universe before the big bang? And would it make any sense at all to ask such a question? In fact, recent progress in theoretical physics, and in particular in String Theory, suggests answers to the above questions, providing us with mathematical tools able in principle to...

Gravity, a Geometrical Course presents general relativity (GR) in a systematic and exhaustive way, covering three aspects that are homogenized into a single texture: i) the mathematical, geometrical foundations, exposed in a self consistent contemporary formalism, ii) the main physical, astrophysical and cosmological applications, updated to the issues of contemporary research and observations, with glimpses on supergravity and superstring theory, iii) the historical development of scientific ideas underlying both the birth of general relativity and its subsequent evolution. The book is...