Astrophysics: Decoding the Cosmos

Автор: Judith Ann Irwin
Издательство: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Год: 2007
Страниц: 456
Размер: 6,15 МБ

Knowledge of our Universe has grown explosively over the past few decades, with discoveries of cometary objects in the far reaches of our Solar System, new-found planets around other stars, detections of powerful gamma ray bursts, galaxies in the process of formation in the infant Universe, and evidence of a mysterious force that appears to be accelerating the expansion of the Universe. From exotic black holes to the microwave background, the modern understanding of our larger cosmological home could barely be imagined just a generation ago. Headlines exclaim astonishing properties for astronomical objects – stars with densities equivalent to the mass of the sun compressed to the size of a city, million degree gas temperatures, energy sources of incredible power, and luminosities as great as an entire galaxy from a single dying star.