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Our understanding of the physical universe underwent a revolution in the early twentieth century - evolving from the classical physics of Newton, Galileo, and Maxwell to the modern physics of relativity and quantum mechanics. The dominant figure in this revolutionary change was Albert Einstein. In a single year, 1905, Einstein produced breakthrough works in three areas of physics: on the size and the effects of atoms; on the quantization of the electromagnetic field; and on the special theory of relativity. In 1916 he produced a fourth breakthrough work, the general theory of relativity. A Student's Guide to Einstein's Major Papers focuses on Einstein's contributions, setting his major works into their historical context, and then takes the reader through the details of each paper, including the mathematics. This book helps the reader appreciate the simplicity and insightfulness of Einstein's ideas and how revolutionary his work was, and locate it in the evolution of scientific thought begun by the ancient Greek natural philosophers.

Plasticity Theory is characterized by many competing and often incompatible points of view. This book seeks to strengthen the foundations of continuum plasticity theory, emphasizing a unifying perspective grounded in the fundamental notion of material symmetry. Steigmann's book offers a systematic framework for the proper understanding of established models of plasticity and for their modern extensions and generalizations. Particular emphasis is placed on the differential-geometric aspects of the subject and their role in illuminating the conceptual foundations of plasticity theory. Classical models, together with several subjects of interest in contemporary research, are developed in a unified format. The book is addressed to graduate students and academics working in the field of continuum mechanics.

Accelerating Expansion explores some of the philosophical implications of modern cosmology, focused on the significance that the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe has for our understanding of time, geometry, and physics. The appearance of the cosmological constant in the equations of general relativity allows one to model universes in which space has an inherent tendency towards expansion. This constant, introduced by Einstein but subsequently abandoned by him, returned to centre stage with the discovery of the accelerating expansion. This pedagogically-oriented essay begins with a study of the most basic and elegant relativistic world that involves a positive cosmological constant, de Sitter spacetime. It then turns to the relatives of de Sitter spacetime that dominate modern relativistic cosmology. Some of the topics considered include: the nature of time and simultaneity in de Sitter worlds; the sense in which de Sitter spacetime is a powerful dynamical attractor; the limited extent to which observation can give us information about the topology of space in a world undergoing accelerated expansion; and cosmologists'favourite sceptical worry about the reliability of evidence and the possibility of knowledge, the problem of Boltzmann brains.

'Includes exciting recent advances in studying gravity and its cosmic manifestations.'Lord Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal, former President of the Royal Society A fascinating historical account of how we have reached our current understanding of gravity. There have been sensational developments in gravitational physics in recent years. The detection of gravitational waves - ripples in the fabric of space - has opened a new window on the universe. These waves are produced by the most cataclysmic events in the universe - the collisions and mergers of black holes and neutron stars. There have also been great strides in our understanding of supermassive black holes. We now know that a black hole with a gargantuan mass lies at the heart of every galaxy, and we even have an image of one such beast. Gravity: From Falling Apples to Supermassive Black Holes provides an engaging and accessible account of how we have reached our current understanding of gravity and places these amazing discoveries in their true context. Gravity: From Falling Apples to Supermassive Black Holes is written in a captivating historical style with stories about the researchers of the past and present that illuminate many key ideas in astronomy and physics. The historical material leads from discussions of the early cosmologies to the great breakthroughs of Tycho and Kepler. We then consider Galileo's contributions to astronomy and mechanics, and the significance of Jeremiah Horrocks's ideas to the Newtonian revolution that would follow. Newton's theories brought about a new scientific age and his description of gravity was unrivalled for over two centuries until it was superseded by Einstein's description in terms of curved spacetime. The outlandish predictions of Einstein's theory have been confirmed again and again, including black holes and gravitational waves. Finally, we move on to more speculative ideas including Hawking radiation and primordial black holes and attempts to find a quantum theory of gravity.

'An incredible tour of our universe's greatest mysteries'Professor Dan Hooper This cutting-edge book investigates the extraordinary potential of multimessenger astronomy to revolutionise our understanding of the universe The spectacular advances of modern astronomy have opened our horizon on an unexpected cosmos: a dark, mysterious universe, populated by enigmatic entities we know very little about, like black holes, or nothing at all, like dark matter and dark energy. This book discusses the extraordinary potential of a new discipline dubbed'multimessenger astronomy', combining the traditional approach based on the observation of light from celestial objects, with a new method based on other'messengers'- such as gravitational waves, neutrinos, and cosmic rays - that carry information from otherwise inaccessible corners of the universe. Interweaving the discussion of multimessenger astronomy with an exploration of the surprising connections between the study of the universe on the largest scales, and the physics of the infinitely small, this text provides an accessible and fascinating introduction to cutting-edge findings in recent cosmology which could soon revolutionize our understanding of the universe.

The topic of the CVIII session of the Ecole de Physique des Houches, held in July 2017, was Effective Field Theory in Particle Physics and Cosmology. Effective Field Theory (EFT) is a general method for describing quantum systems with multiple length scales in a tractable fashion. It allows to perform precise calculations in established models (such as the Standard Models of particle physics and cosmology), as well as to concisely parametrise possible effects from physics beyond the Standard Models. The goal of this school was to offer a broad introduction to the foundations and modern applications of Effective Field Theory in many of its incarnations. This is all the more important as there are preciously few textbooks covering the subject, none of them in a complete way. In this book, the lecturers present the concepts in a pedagogical way so that readers can adapt some of the latest developments to their own problems. The chapters cover almost all the lectures given at the school and will serve as an introduction to the topic and as a reference manual to students and researchers.

Albert Einstein is often viewed as the icon of genius, and his theories are admired for their beauty and correctness. Yet the final judge of any theory is the rigorous test of experiment, not the fame of its inventor or the allure of its mathematics. For decades, general relativity has passed test after test with flying colors, including some remarkable new tests using the recently detected gravitational waves. Still, there are reasons for doubt. Einstein's theory of gravity, as beautiful as it is, seems to be in direct contradiction with another theory he helped create: quantum mechanics. Until recently, this was considered to be a purely academic affair. But as more and more data pour in from the most distant corners of the universe, hinting at bizarre stuff called'dark energy'and'dark matter,'some scientists have begun to explore the possibility that Einstein's theory may not provide a complete picture of the cosmos. This book chronicles the latest adventures of scientists as they put Einstein's theory to the test in ever more precise and astonishing ways, and in ever more extreme situations, when gravity is unfathomably intense and rapidly churning. From the explosions of neutron stars and the collisions of black holes to the modern scientific process as a means to seek truth and understanding in the cosmos, this book takes the reader on a journey of learning and discovery that has been 100 years in the making.

This book is an introduction to gravitational waves and related astrophysics. It provides a bridge across the range of astronomy, physics and cosmology that comes into play when trying to understand the gravitational-wave sky. Starting with Einstein's theory of gravity, chapters develop the key ideas step by step, leading up to the technology that finally caught these faint whispers from the distant universe. The second part of the book makes a direct connection with current research, introducing the relevant language and making the involved concepts less mysterious. The book is intended to work as a platform, low enough that anyone with an elementary understanding of gravitational waves can scramble onto it, but at the same time high enough to connect readers with active research - and the many exciting discoveries that are happening right now. The first part of the book introduces the key ideas, following a general overview chapter and including a brief reminder of Einstein's theory. This part can be taught as a self-contained one semester course. The second part of the book is written to work as a collection of'set pieces'with core material that can be adapted to specific lectures and additional material that provide context and depth. A range of readers may find this book useful, including graduate students, astronomers looking for basic understanding of the gravitational-wave window to the universe, researchers analysing data from gravitational-wave detectors, and nuclear and particle physicists.

Scientific and popular literature on modern cosmology is very extensive; however, scholarly works on the historical development of cosmology are few and scattered. The Oxford Handbook of the History of Modern Cosmology offers a comprehensive and authoritative account of the history of cosmology from the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century. It provides historical background to what we know about the universe today, including not only the successes but also the many false starts. Big Bang theory features prominently, but so does the defunct steady state theory. The book starts with a chapter on the pre-Einstein period (1860-1910) and ends with chapters on modern developments such as inflation, dark energy and multiverse hypotheses. The chapters are organized chronologically, with some focusing on theory and others more on observations and technological advances. A few of the chapters discuss more general ideas, relating to larger contexts such as politics, economy, philosophy and world views.

Einstein's general theory of relativity -- currently our best theory of gravity -- is important not only to specialists, but to a much wider group of physicists. This short textbook on general relativity and gravitation offers students glimpses of the vast landscape of science connected to general relativity. It incorporates some of the latest research in the field. The book is aimed at readers with a broad range of interests in physics, from cosmology, to gravitational radiation, to high energy physics, to condensed matter theory. The pedagogical approach is'physics first': readers move very quickly to the calculation of observational predictions, and only return to the mathematical foundations after the physics is established. In addition to the'standard'topics covered by most introductory textbooks, it contains short introductions to more advanced topics: for instance, why field equations are second order, how to treat gravitational energy, and what is required for a Hamiltonian formulation of general relativity. A concluding chapter discusses directions for further study, from mathematical relativity, to experimental tests, to quantum gravity. This is an introductory text, but it has also been written as a jumping-off point for readers who plan to study more specialized topics.

The Great Silence explores the multifaceted problem named after the great Italian physicist Enrico Fermi and his legendary 1950 lunchtime question'Where is everybody?'In many respects, Fermi's paradox is the richest and the most challenging problem for the entire field of astrobiology and the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) studies. This book shows how Fermi's paradox is intricately connected with many fields of learning, technology, arts, and even everyday life. It aims to establish the strongest possible version of the problem, to dispel many related confusions, obfuscations, and prejudices, as well as to offer a novel point of entry to the many solutions proposed in existing literature. Milan Cirkovic argues that any evolutionary worldview cannot avoid resolving the Great Silence problem in one guise or another.

What force do the Big Bang, the expansion of the Universe, dark matter and dark energy, black holes, and gravitational waves all have in common? This book uncovers gravity as a key to understanding these fascinating phenomena that have so captivated public interest in recent years. Readers will discover the latest findings on how this familiar force in our everyday lives powers the most colossal changes in the Universe. Written by the widely recognized French public scientist and leading astrophysicist Pierre Binétruy, the book also explains the recent experimental confirmation of the existence of gravitational waves.

This advanced undergraduate text introduces Einstein's general theory of relativity. The topics covered include geometric formulation of special relativity, the principle of equivalence, Einstein's field equation and its spherical-symmetric solution, as well as cosmology. An emphasis is placed on physical examples and simple applications without the full tensor apparatus. It begins by examining the physics of the equivalence principle and looks at how it inspired Einstein's idea of curved spacetime as the gravitational field. At a more mathematically accessible level, it provides a metric description of a warped space, allowing the reader to study many interesting phenomena such as gravitational time dilation, GPS operation, light deflection, precession of Mercury's perihelion, and black holes. Numerous modern topics in cosmology are discussed from primordial inflation and cosmic microwave background to the dark energy that propels an accelerating universe. Building on Cheng's previous book,'Relativity, Gravitation and Cosmology: A Basic Introduction', this text has been tailored to the advanced student. It concentrates on the core elements of the subject making it suitable for a one-semester course at the undergraduate level. It can also serve as an accessible introduction of general relativity and cosmology for those readers who want to study the subject on their own. The proper tensor formulation of Einstein's field equation is presented in an appendix chapter for those wishing to glimpse further at the mathematical details.

The book gathers the lecture notes of the Les Houches Summer School that was held in August 2011 for an audience of advanced graduate students and post-doctoral fellows in particle physics, theoretical physics, and cosmology, areas where new experimental results were on the verge of being discovered at CERN. Every Les Houches School has its own distinct character. This one was held during a summer of great anticipation that at any moment contact might be made with the most recent theories of the nature of the fundamental forces and the structure of space-time. In fact, during the session, the long anticipated discovery of the Higgs particle was announced. The book vividly describes the fruitful and healthy'schizophrenia'that is the rule among the community of theoreticians who have split into several components: those doing phenomenology, and those dealing with highly theoretical problems, with a few trying to bridge both domains. The lectures by theoreticians covered many directions in the theory of elementary particles, from classics such as the Supersymmetric Standard Model to very recent ideas such as the relation between black holes, hydrodynamics, and gauge-gravity duality. The lectures by experimentalists explained in detail how intensively and how precisely the LHC collider has verified the theoretical predictions of the Standard Model, predictions that were at the front lines of experimental discovery during the 70's, 80's and 90's, and how the LHC is ready to make new discoveries. They described many of the ingenious and pioneering techniques developed at CERN for the detection and the data analysis of billions of billions of proton-proton collisions.

This book journeys into one of the most fascinating intellectual adventures of recent decades - understanding and exploring the final fate of massive collapsing stars in the universe. The issue is of great interest in fundamental physics and cosmology today, from both the perspective of gravitation theory and of modern astrophysical observations. This is a revolution in the making and may be intimately connected to our search for a unified understanding of the basic forces of nature, namely gravity that governs the cosmological universe, and the microscopic forces that include quantum phenomena. According to the general theory of relativity, a massive star that collapses catastrophically under its own gravity when it runs out of its internal nuclear fuel must give rise to a space-time singularity. Such singularities are regions in the universe where all physical quantities take their extreme values and become arbitrarily large. The singularities may be covered within a black hole, or visible to faraway observers in the universe. Thus, the final fate of a collapsing massive star is either a black hole or a visible naked singularity. We discuss here recent results and developments on the gravitational collapse of massive stars and possible observational implications when naked singularities happen in the universe. Large collapsing massive stars and the resulting space-time singularities may even provide a laboratory in the cosmos where one could test the unification possibilities of basic forces of nature.

This book gathers the lecture notes of the 100th Les Houches Summer School, which was held in July 2013. These lectures represent a comprehensive pedagogical survey of the frontier of theoretical and observational cosmology just after the release of the first cosmological results of the Planck mission. The Cosmic Microwave Background is discussed as a possible window on the still unknown laws of physics at very high energy and as a backlight for studying the late-time Universe. Other lectures highlight connections of fundamental physics with other areas of cosmology and astrophysics, the successes and fundamental puzzles of the inflationary paradigm of cosmic beginning, the themes of dark energy and dark matter, and the theoretical developments and observational probes that will shed light on these cosmic conundrums in the years to come.

Living with the Stars tells the fascinating story of what truly makes the human body. The body that is with us all our lives is always changing. We are quite literally not who we were years, weeks, or even days ago: our cells die and are replaced by new ones at an astonishing pace. The entire body continually rebuilds itself, time and again, using the food and water that flow through us as fuel and as construction material. What persists over time is not fixed but merely a pattern in flux. We rebuild using elements captured from our surroundings, and are thereby connected to animals and plants around us, and to the bacteria within us that help digest them, and to geological processes such as continental drift and volcanism here on Earth. We are also intimately linked to the Sun's nuclear furnace and to the solar wind, to collisions with asteroids and to the cycles of the birth of stars and their deaths in cataclysmic supernovae, and ultimately to the beginning of the universe. Our bodies are made of the burned out embers of stars that were released into the galaxy in massive explosions billions of years ago, mixed with atoms that formed only recently as ultrafast rays slammed into Earth's atmosphere. All of that is not just remote history but part of us now: our human body is inseparable from nature all around us and intertwined with the history of the universe.

This book provides an extensive survey of all the physics necessary to understand the current developments in the field of fundamental cosmology, as well as an overview of the observational data and methods. It will help students to get into research by providing definitions and main techniques and ideas discussed today. The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 summarises the fundamentals in theoretical physics needed in cosmology (general relativity, field theory, particle physics). Part 2 describes the standard model of cosmology and includes cosmological solutions of Einstein equations, the hot big bang model, cosmological perturbation theory, cosmic microwave background anisotropies, lensing and evidence for dark matter, and inflation. Part 3 describes extensions of this model and opens up current research in the field: scalar-tensor theories, supersymmetry, the cosmological constant problem and acceleration of the universe, topology of the universe, grand unification and baryogenesis, topological defects and phase transitions, string inspired cosmology including branes and the latest developments. The book provides details of all derivations and leads the student up to the level of research articles.

An extraordinary discovery has recently shaken the foundations of Cosmology and Particle Physics, sparking a scientific revolution that has profoundly modified our understanding of our Universe and that is still far from over. Pioneering astronomers in the 1920s and 1930s had already noticed suspicious anomalies in the motion of celestial bodies in distant galaxies and clusters of galaxies, but it wasn't until the late 20th century that the scientific community was confronted with an astonishing conclusion: the Universe is filled with an unknown, elusive substance that is fundamentally different from anything we have ever seen with our telescopes or measured in our laboratories. It is called dark matter, and it constitutes one of the most pressing challenges of modern science. In this book, aimed at the general reader with an interest in science, the author illustrates in non-technical terms, borrowing concepts and ideas from other branches of art and literature, the far-reaching implications of this discovery. It has led to a worldwide race to identify the nature of this mysterious form of matter. We may be about to witness a pivotal paradigm shift in Physics, as we set out to test the existence of dark matter particles with a wide array of experiments, including the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, as well as with a new generation of Astroparticle experiments underground and in space.

This book is about black holes, one of the most intriguing objects of modern theoretical physics and astrophysics. For many years, black holes have been considered as interesting solutions of the Theory of General Relativity with a number of amusing mathematical properties. Now after the discovery of astrophysical black holes, the Einstein gravity has become an important tool for their study. This self-contained textbook combines physical, mathematical, and astrophysical aspects of black hole theory. Pedagogically presented, it contains'standard'material on black holes as well as relatively new subjects such as the role of hidden symmetries in black hole physics, and black holes in spacetimes with large extra dimensions. The book will appeal to students and young scientists interested in the theory of black holes.

The investigation of discrete symmetries is a fascinating subject which has been central to the agenda of physics research for 50 years, and has been the target of many experiments, ongoing and in preparation, all over the world. This book approaches the subject from a somewhat less traditional angle: while being self-contained and suitable to the reader who wants to acquire a solid knowledge of the topic, it puts more emphasis on the experimental aspects of the field, trying to provide a wider picture than usual and to convey the intellectual challenge of experimental physics. The book includes the related connection to phenomenology, a purpose for which the precision experiments in this field - often rather elegant and requiring a good amount of ingenuity - are very well suited. The book discusses discrete symmetries (parity, charge conjugation, time reversal, and of course CP symmetry) in microscopic (atomic, nuclear, and particle) physics, and includes the detailed description of some key or representative experiments. The book discusses their principles and challenges more than the historical development. The main past achievements and the most recent developments are both included. The level goes from introductory to advanced. While mainly addressed to graduate students, the book can also be useful to undergraduates (by skipping some of the more advanced sections, and utilizing the brief introductions to some topics in the appendices), and to young researchers looking for a wider modern overview of the issues related to CP symmetry.

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.

This book is a historical account of how natural philosophers and scientists have endeavoured to understand the universe at large, first in a mythical and later in a scientific context. Starting with the creation stories of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, the book covers all the major events in theoretical and observational cosmology, from Aristotle's cosmos over the Copernican revolution to the discovery of the accelerating universe in the late 1990s. It presents cosmology as a subject including scientific as well as non-scientific dimensions, and tells the story of how it developed into a true science of the heavens. Contrary to most other books in the history of cosmology, it offers an integrated account of the development with emphasis on the modern Einsteinian and post-Einsteinian period. Starting in the pre-literary era, it carries the story onwards to the early years of the 21st century.

Galileo, Newton, Herschel, Huggins, Hale, Eddington, Shapley and Hubble: these astronomers applied ideas drawn from physics to astronomy and made dramatic changes to the world-pictures that they inherited. They showed that celestial objects are composed of the same materials as the earth and that they behave in the same way. They displaced successively the earth, the sun and finally the milky way galaxy from being the centre of the universe. This book contains their biographies and outlines their greatest discoveries. Hard work, physical insight, desire for fame and a strong belief in the rightness of their own ideas were characteristics of all eight. Their often quirky personalities led them into bitter controversies with their contemporaries. But their successes arose from the outstanding clarity of their thoughts, their practical ability and their strong sense of direction in science.

The book begins with a brief review of supersymmetry, and the construction of the minimal supersymmetric standard model and approaches to supersymmetry breaking. General non-perturbative methods are also reviewed leading to the development of holomorphy and the Affleck-Dine-Seiberg superpotential as powerful tools for analysing supersymmetric theories. Seiberg duality is discussed in detail, with many example applications provided, with special attention paid to its use in understanding dynamical supersysmmetry breaking. The Seiberg-Witten theory of monopoles is introduced through the analysis of simpler N=1 analogues. Superconformal field theories are described along with the most recent development known as'amaximization'. Supergravity theories are examined in 4, 10, and 11 dimensions, allowing for a discussion of anomaly and gaugino mediation, and setting the stage for the anti- de Sitter/conformal field theory correspondence. This book is unique in containing an overview of the important developments in supersymmetry since the publication of'Suppersymmetry and Supergravity'by Wess and Bagger. It also strives to cover topics that are of interest to both formal and phenomenological theorists.

From time immemorial, poets and philosophers have looked in awe and wonder at the Universe. Such awe is shared by astrophysicists, too, as they seek to understand its nature, and whether it has any limits. In The Infinite Cosmos, Joseph Silk, Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford University, cosmologist and well-known science writer, brings together the modern understanding of the Universe, its structure, its evolution, and its possible fate, combining the latest from theory and observation. The narrative is peppered with quotations from literature and philosophy, and reflects, too, on the process of scientific discovery, and the implications of our discoveries.

Recent discoveries in astronomy, especially those made with data collected by satellites such as the Hubble Space Telescope and the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, have revolutionized the science of cosmology. These new observations offer the possibility that some long-standing mysteries in cosmology might be answered, including such fundamental questions as the ultimate fate of the universe. Foundations of modern cosmology provides an accessible, thorough and descriptive introduction to the physical basis for modern cosmological theory, from the big bang to a distant future dominated by dark energy. This second edition includes the latest observational results and provides the detailed background material necessary to understand their implications, with a focus on the specific model supported by these observations, the concordance model. Consistent with the book's title, emphasis is given to the scientific framework for cosmology, particularly the basics concepts of physics that underlie modern theories of relativity and cosmology; the importance of data and observations is stressed throughout. The book sketches the historical background of cosmology, and provides a review of the relevant basic physics and astronomy. After this introduction, both special and general relativity are treated, before proceeding to an in-depth discussion of the big bang theory and physics of the early universe. The book includes current research areas, including dark matter and structure formation, dark energy, the inflationary universe, and quantum cosmology. The authors'website (http://www.astro.virginia.edu/~jh8h/Foundations) offers a wealth of supplemental information, including questions and answers, references to other sources, and updates on the latest discoveries.

Modern physics has revealed the universe as a much stranger place than we could have imagined. The puzzle at the centre of our knowledge of the universe is time. Michael Lockwood takes the reader on a fascinating journey into the nature of things. He investigates philosophical questions about past, present, and future, our experience of time, and the possibility of time travel. And he provides the most careful, lively, and up-to-date introduction to the physics of time and the structure of the universe.He guides us step by step through relativity theory and quantum physics, introducing and explaining the ground-breaking ideas of Newton and Boltzmann, Einstein and Schroedinger, Penrose and Hawking. We zoom in on the behaviour of molecules and atoms, and pull back to survey the expansion of the universe. We learn about entropy and gravity, black holes and wormholes, about how it all began and where we are all headed. Lockwood's aim is not just to boggle the mind but to lead us towards an understanding of the science and philosophy. Things will never seem the same again after a voyage through The Labyrinth of Time.

How old is the universe? How far away are the galaxies and how fast are they travelling away from us? What is dark matter and why do astronomers think it pervades the universe? How heavy is the vacuum? How do galaxies form? Michael Rowan-Robinson answers these and many more questions in a highly original and intriguing way. He encapsulates our current knowledge (both what we do and don't know) of the origin and the nature of the universe into nine numbers. These cosmic numbers appear to be independent characteristics of our universe and include its age, the Hubble constant (a measure of its rate of expression), and the density of matter in the universe. Only one of the nine numbers is known with real precision, and four of them only poorly known. The complex ideas that underpin modern cosmology such as the origin of the elements and quantum theory are explained clearly and accessibly, and more speculative ideas like inflation and superstrings are also covered, but with a refreshing scepticism. While most of what we know has been learnt during the 20th century, Rowan-Robinson provides a historical perspective, paying homage to the achievements of the Greeks, Renaissance astronomers, and the age of Newton. He ends the book with a look to the future, predicting that with the further space missions we will accurately know the nine numbers described in this book by the year 2015, but concludes that the origin of the Big Bang itself will still be a mystery by the end of the twenty-first century, and perhaps even in the year 3000.