Statistical literacy is critical for the modern researcher in Physics and Astronomy. This book empowers researchers in these disciplines by providing the tools they will need to analyze their own data. Chapters in this book provide a statistical base from which to approach new problems, including numerical advice and a profusion of examples. The examples are engaging analyses of real-world problems taken from modern astronomical research. The examples are intended to be starting points for...

"Glorious."—Wall Street JournalRescued from obscurity, Feynman's Lost Lecture is a blessing for all Feynman followers. Most know Richard Feynman for the hilarious anecdotes and exploits in his best-selling books "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" and "What Do You Care What Other People Think?" But not always obvious in those stories was his brilliance as a pure scientist—one of the century's greatest physicists. With this book and CD, we hear t...

'An ideal introduction [to Stephen Hawking]' - Independent'Astonishingly comprehensive - clearer than Hawking himself' - FocusStephen Hawking was a world-famous physicist with a cameo in The Simpsons on his CV, but outside of his academic field his work was little understood. To the public he was a tragic figure - a brilliant scientist and author of the 9 million-copy-selling A Brief History of Time, and ye...

Special relativity is the basis of many fields in modern physics: particle physics, quantum field theory, high-energy astrophysics, etc. This theory is presented here by adopting a four-dimensional point of view from the start. An outstanding feature of the book is that it doesn’t restrict itself to inertial frames but considers accelerated and rotating observers. It is thus possible to treat physical effects such as the Thomas precession or the Sagnac effect in a simple yet precise manner...

In physics, the idea of extra spatial dimensions originates from Nordstöm’s 5-dimensional vector theory in 1914, followed by Kaluza-Klein theory in 1921, in an effort to unify general relativity and electromagnetism in a 5 dimensional space-time (4 dimensions for space and 1 for time). Kaluza–Klein theory didn’t generate enough interest with physicist for the next five decades, due to its problems with inconsistencies. With the advent of supergravity theory (the theory that unifies general...

Here is an accurate and readable translation of a seminal article by Henri Poincaré that is a classic in the study of dynamical systems popularly called chaos theory. In an effort to understand the stability of orbits in the solar system, Poincaré applied a Hamiltonian formulation to the equations of planetary motion and studied these differential equations in the limited case of three bodies to arrive at properties of the equations’ solutions, such as orbital resonances and horseshoe orbi...

This thesis explores advanced Bayesian statistical methods for extracting key information for cosmological model selection, parameter inference and forecasting from astrophysical observations. Bayesian model selection provides a measure of how good models in a set are relative to each other - but what if the best model is missing and not included in the set? Bayesian Doubt is an approach which addresses this problem and seeks to deliver an absolute rather than a relative measure of how goo...

Introduction to General Relativity and Cosmology gives undergraduate students an overview of the fundamental ideas behind the geometric theory of gravitation and spacetime. Through pointers on how to modify and generalise Einstein's theory to enhance understanding, it provides a link between standard textbook content and current research in the field.Chapters present complicated material practically and concisely, initially dealing with the mathematical foundations of the theory of relativ...

This book introduces an analytic method to describe the shadow of black holes. As an introduction, it presents a survey of the attempts to observe the shadow of galactic black holes. Based on a detailed discussion of the Plebański–Demiański class of space-times, the book derives analytical formulas for the photon regions and for the boundary curve of the shadow as seen by an observer in the domain of outer communication. It also analyzes how the shadow depends on the motion of the observer...

This book, written for a general readership, reviews and explains the three-body problem in historical context reaching to latest developments in computational physics and gravitation theory. The three-body problem is one of the oldest problems in science and it is most relevant even in today’s physics and astronomy.The long history of the problem from Pythagoras to Hawking parallels the evolution of ideas about our physical universe, with a particular emphasis on understanding gra...

This volume contains the proceedings from the conference "The Labyrinth of Star Formation" that was held in Crete, Greece, in June 2012, to honour the contributions to the study of star formation made by Professor Anthony Whitworth of Cardiff University.The book covers many aspects of theoretical and observational star formation: low-mass star formation; young circumstellar discs; computational methods; triggered star formation; the stellar initial mass function; high-mass star for...

This book addresses all scientists and others interested in the origins, development and fate of intelligent species in the observable part of our universe. In particular, the author scrutinizes what kind of information about extraterrestrial intelligent life can be inferred from our own biological, cultural and scientific evolution and the likely future of mankind. The first part of the book provides the necessary background information from space and life sciences, thus making the book a...