Lyth D.H. The History of the Universe

Springer International Publishing Switzerland, 2016. – 120 p. – ISBN: 978-3319227436.The way we view our world is changing dramatically. In the beginning of the previous century, we did not even know that other galaxies exist; some prominent astronomers thought that the Milky Way galaxy is the whole Universe. Indeed, our galaxy is incredibly large. It consists of about a hundred billion stars, many of which have planetary systems. Can we imagine anything bigger than that? Well, now we know that there are about a hundred billion of galaxies in the observable part of the Universe.
For a long time people believed that the Universe is static. Indeed, what else could it be? When we study physics at school, our teachers show us a three-dimensional reference frame with axes labeled by x, y, and z and explain how one can describe motion of particles with respect to it. This suggests that space and time are just a static set of coordinates. This picture was challenged by Albert Einstein in his general theory of relativity, but the consequences of this change were so dramatic that even Einstein could not fully appreciate it. When a mathematician Alexander Friedmann solved Einstein’s equations and found that they describe an expanding Universe, Einstein at first thought that this was a mistake, and then he attempted to modify his own theory in an effort to make the Universe static.The Universe
BeforeWe Begin
The Fundamental Theories
Atoms and Electromagnetism
The Present Universe 6 Collisions and Decays
A First Look at the History
Energy Density of the Universe
In the Beginning
Friedmann Tells the Time
Ripples in the Universe
Galaxy Formation
The Higgs Field
Inflation
Generating the Perturbation
Prehistory of the Big Bang
What About Us?