eBooks

Wolfgang Rindler, Relativity: Special, General, and Cosmological 2nd edition
Oxford University Press | ISBN:0198567324 | 2006 | PDF | 2 MB | 447 pages
Relativistic cosmology has in recent years become one of the most active and exciting branches of research, often considered to be today where particle physics was forty years ago, with major discoveries just waiting to happen. Consequently the part most affected by this second edition is the last part on cosmology. But there are additions, improvements, and new exercises throughout. The book’s basic purpose is unchanged. It is to make relativity come alive conceptually, and to display the grand theoretical edifice that it is, with consequences in many branches of physics. The emphasis is on the foundations, on the logical subtleties, and on presenting the necessary mathematics - including differential geometry and tensors - but always as late and in as palatable a form as possible. Aided by over 300 exercises, the book seeks to promote an in-depth understanding, and the confidence to tackle any basic problem in relativity.

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Mario Livio , “The Accelerating Universe: Infinite Expansion, the Cosmological Constant, and the Beauty of the Cosmos”
Wiley; 1 edition (December 8, 2000) | ISBN: 0471399760 | 288 pages | PDF | 1,1 Mb

One of the most important recent discoveries in cosmology–and science in general–is that the expansion rate of the universe is not staying steady or getting slower, as most scientists had assumed; on the contrary, it is accelerating. Something is counteracting gravity and making it so that in billions of years, the universe will be an even vaster, emptier realm, filled with stars and galaxies flickering out one by one until there is only darkness. In this book, Livio, a senior scientist at Baltimore’s Space Telescope Science Institute, evaluates current theories about the universe in terms of whether or not they are “beautiful.” Livio defines beauty for purely scientific purposes: a beautiful scientific theory, he explains, must be symmetric and simple (reductionist), and it must follow the Copernican principle that man is not the center of the universe–it need not be elegant. Livio’s discussion, however, carefully constructed (like a well-laid-out mathematical proof), certainly is elegant. Readers who only hazily remember high school math and science classes will enjoy the author’s clear, jargon-free explanation of such complicated astronomical concepts as inflationary theory, “pocket” or multiple universes and the anthropic principle. Although the opening chapters are weighed down with extraneous references to art and literature, once Livio gets into his subject, he employs such references more selectively. Any educated individual interested in current theories about the past and future of the universe will want to read this lucid book. 10 b&w photos and drawings.
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John Chiravalle, “Pattern Asterisms: A New Way to Chart the Stars”
Springer | ISBN: 1846283272 | 1 edition (March 20, 2006) | PDF | 182 pages | 15942 KB

Since the very beginning of astronomy, people have looked up sky and constructed patterns the constellations out of the almost random scattering of stars in the night sky. The fact that the constellations are still used to day reflects not their historical origins, but their usefulness in identifying bright stars in the rotating dome of the sky. Most people (and all astronomers) are familiar with, for example, the constellation of Orion and can thus easily point to Betelguese and Bellatrix as being Orions “shoulders”. It is the pattern made by the constellation that makes them easy to identify. What applies to big groups of stars can also be applied to smaller ones, and this book provides a set of memorable mini-constellations to help in identifying and remembering stars in the binocular or low magnification telescopic field. Suitable for observers using binoculars and medium size telescopes, this catalog includes star pictures, dot-to-dot outlines of the objects ( on a negative photograph for clarity ), and an artistic image next to the star patterns. Size, stellar magnitudes, and coordinates are provided, along with north direction, star-hopping instructions & Sky Atlas 2000 references. There are sixty-seven “pattern asterisms” in this catalog. Most are easy to see in sixty millimetre binoculars, and few are what observers describe as “challenging”. The imaginative observer will surely begin to develop a new insight into star patterns, and will start seeing patterns of his own, under this catalog’s influence!
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