'Cosmic Paradoxes' was an outcome of a Conference-Summer Course on 'Astrophysical Cosmology: Frontier Questions' held at El Escorial, Madrid, on August 16–19, 1993. The Scientific Directors were John C Mather, Director of NASA's COBE (Cosmic Background Radiation Explorer), and Jose M Torroja, Secretary of the Spanish Academy of Sciences. Julio A Gonzalo, UAM, was in charge of coordinating the event. The first speaker was Ralph A Alpher, one of the pioneers who predicted very early the CBR (Cosmic Background Radiation). The CBR was observed by A Penzias and R Wilson, Bell Telephone Labs, in 1965. Thereafter it was measured with unprecedented precision by the COBE in 1989, characterizing the Planck spectral distribution of the CBR (J C Mather) and detecting its minute anisotropies (G Smoot). In 2003 the WMAP, NASA's satellite successor of the COBE, confirmed COBE's results, and gave an excellent quantitative estimate of the 'age' of the universe as 13.7 ± 0.2 Gyrs, in support of the Big Bang theory of cosmic origins.
In the Third Edition of this book, almost coincident with the launch reports of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), includes recent work discussing evidence in favor of an open finite universe. A further discussion of the Heisenberg–Lemaitre time (Appendix D) takes into consideration that the cosmic expansion velocity at very early times is Ṙ(yHL)≫c and reviews in more detail the thermal history of the universe.
Contents:
Facts and Principles:Energy ConservationEnergy Non-Conservation Means Too Much FreedomThe Four InteractionsMatter, Radiation, ParticlesThe Dark Night Sky and Olbers' ParadoxRelativistic Cosmology:General Relativity and CosmologyThe Friedmann–Lemaitre SolutionsThe Role of Radiation PressureThe Einstein–Lemaitre CorrespondenceThe Universal ConstantsRigorous Solutions of Einstein's Cosmological EquationMore Paradoxes:The Missing Mass and Dark Energy ParadoxesThe Accelerating Universe ParadoxThe Photon-to-Baryon Ratio ParadoxCosmic Zero-Point EnergyA Contingent Universe:The Universe is Finite, Open and ContingentThe Very Early Universe: Indeterminacy or UncertaintyWhy an Open (k < 0) Cosmic Model is BetterSingular Moments in Cosmic HistoryA Brief Outline: World Events and Cosmological Discoveries from –4500 to 2010Appendices:Constraints on the General Solutions of Einstein's Cosmological Equations by Hubble Parameter Times Cosmic Age: A Historical PerspectivePhysics and the Universe: From the Sumerians to the Late-Twentieth Century'Cosmos & Chaos' (Rome 2019)On the Heisenberg–Lemaitre Time vs Planck's TimeThe Medieval Roots of Contemporary Science
Readership: Students in physics and general public interested in science.
Review of the First Edition:This is a fascinating and compelling read for anyone concerned about the unresolved mysteries and paradoxes of the universe. - Contemporary Physics
