This book is a synopsis of modern deep-field astronomy, based on the powerful telescopes and instruments developed in recent years. It is organized along topical themes, such as the extragalactic background radiation at different wavelengths, the evolution of galaxies, the history of star formation, the nature of absorbers, the reionization of the intergalactic medium, the validity of photometric redshifts, gravitational lensing, and clustering of galaxies. Stellar and substellar objects were not neglected, however, and one session was devoted to nearby bodies such as trans-Neptunian solar system objects, brown dwarfs, and stars with special characteristics.
Mangrove rice farming on West Africa's Rice Coast was the mirror image of tidewater rice plantations worked by enslaved Africans in 18th-century South Carolina and Georgia. This book reconstructs the development of rice-growing technology among the Baga and Nalu of coastal Guinea, beginning more than a millennium before the transatlantic slave trade. It reveals a picture of dynamic pre-colonial coastal societies, quite unlike the static, homogenous pre-modern Africa of previous scholarship. From its examination of inheritance, innovation, and borrowing, Deep Roots fashions a theory of cultural change that encompasses the diversity of communities, cultures, and forms of expression in Africa and the African diaspora.
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER As you read these words, copies of you are being created. Sean Carroll, theoretical physicist and one of this world’s most celebrated writers on science, rewrites the history of twentieth-century physics. Already hailed as a masterpiece, Something Deeply Hidden shows for the first time that facing up to the essential puzzle of quantum mechanics utterly transforms how we think about space and time. His reconciling of quantum mechanics with Einstein’s theory of relativity changes, well, everything. Most physicists haven’t even recognized the uncomfortable truth: Physics has been in crisis since 1927. Quantum mechanics has always had obvious gaps—which have come to be simply ignored. Science popularizers keep telling us how weird it is, how impossible it is to understand. Academics discourage students from working on the "dead end" of quantum foundations. Putting his professional reputation on the line with this audacious yet entirely reasonable book, Carroll says that the crisis can now come to an end. We just have to accept that there is more than one of us in the universe. There are many, many Sean Carrolls. Many of every one of us. Copies of you are generated thousands of times per second. The Many-Worlds theory of quantum behavior says that every time there is a quantum event, a world splits off with everything in it the same, except in that other world the quantum event didn't happen. Step-by-step in Carroll's uniquely lucid way, he tackles the major objections to this otherworldly revelation until his case is inescapably established. Rarely does a book so fully reorganize how we think about our place in the universe. We are on the threshold of a new understanding—of where we are in the cosmos, and what we are made of.
This book was originally published in 1957. During the First World War, German use of unrestricted submarine warfare, supported by extensive mining and surface raids, very nearly forced Britain out of the war in 1917. The island’s heavy dependence on seaborne supplies was gravely threatened again in 1939, supplemented this time by air attacks on shipping. After the war, Commanders Waters and Barley wrote a Naval Staff History which has long been recognised as an authoritative study of the impact of the German campaign and its ultimate defeat by Britain and her allies. It remains an indispensable basis for any serious study of the Battle of the Atlantic and has here been updated and revised by Dr Grove, who also contributes a perceptive introduction outlining its significance.
Awarded the American Astronomical Society (AAS) Rodger Doxsey Travel Prize, and with a foreword by thesis supervisor Professor Shardha Jogee at the University of Texas at Austin, this thesis discusses one of the primary outstanding problems in extragalactic astronomy: how galaxies form and evolve. Galaxies consist of two fundamental kinds of structure: rotationally supported disks and spheroidal/triaxial structures supported by random stellar motions. Understanding the balance between these galaxy components is vital to comprehending the relative importance of the different mechanisms (galaxy collisions, gas accretion and internal secular processes) that assemble and shape galaxies. Using panchromatic imaging from some of the largest and deepest space-based galaxy surveys, an empirical census of galaxy structure is made for galaxies at different cosmic epochs and in environments spanning low to extremely high galaxy number densities. An important result of this work is that disk structures are far more prevalent in massive galaxies than previously thought. The associated challenges raised for contemporary theoretical models of galaxy formation are discussed. The method of galaxy structural decomposition is treated thoroughly since it is relevant for future studies of galaxy structure using next-generation facilities, like the James Webb Space Telescope and the ground-based Giant Magellan Telescope with adaptive optics.
Written by one of the leading authorities in the field, this is one of the first book's to describe one of today's most important problems in cosmology - the formation of galaxies. The book tackles this great puzzle by discusses the beginnings of the process from cosmological observations and calculations, considers the broad features of galaxies that we need to explain and what we know of their later history. The author compares the competing theories for galaxy formation and considers the progress expected from new generations of powerful telescopes both on earth and in space. An intriguing text on one of today's greatest and most profound puzzles.
The high-redshift galaxies became a distinct research ?eld during the ?nal decade of the20thcentury. AtthattimetheLyman-breaktechniquemadeitpossibletoidentify signi?cant samples of such objects, and the new generation of 8 to 10-m telescopes resulted in ?rst good spectroscopic data. Today the high-redshift galaxies have developed into one of the important topics of astrophysics, accounting for about 5–10% of the publications in the major scienti?c journals devoted to astronomy. Because high-redshift galaxies is a rapidly developing ?eld and since new results are published constantly, writing a book on this topic is challenging. On the other hand, in view of the large amount of individual results now in the literature, and in view of the still growing interest in this topic, it appears worthwhile to summarize and evaluate the available data and to provide an introduction for those who wish to enter this ?eld, or who, for various reasons, might be interested in its results. The end of the ?rst decade of the 21st century appears to be a good point in time to attempt such a summary. The current generation of ground-based 8 to 10-m - optical telescopes, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the most important large radio telescopes have by now been in operation since about one or two decades. Although these instruments will continue to produce important scienti?c results for some time to come, many of the initial programs exploiting their unique new possibilities have been completed.
Delineating the huge strides taken in cosmology in the past ten years, this much-anticipated second edition of Malcolm Longair's highly appreciated textbook has been extensively and thoroughly updated. It tells the story of modern astrophysical cosmology from the perspective of one of its most important and fundamental problems – how did the galaxies come about? Longair uses this approach to introduce the whole of what may be called "classical cosmology". What’s more, he describes how the study of the origin of galaxies and larger-scale structures in the Universe has provided us with direct information about the physics of the very early Universe.
A majestic account of the most fascinating phenomena in our universe—and the science behind them. In this vibrant, eye-opening tour of milestones in the history of our universe, Chris Impey guides us through space and time, leading us from the familiar sights of the night sky to the dazzlingly strange aftermath of the Big Bang. What if we could look into space and see not only our place in the universe but also how we came to be here? As it happens, we can. Because it takes time for light to travel, we see more and more distant regions of the universe as they were in the successively greater past. Impey uses this concept—"look-back time"—to take us on an intergalactic tour that is simultaneously out in space and back in time. Performing a type of cosmic archaeology, Impey brilliantly describes the astronomical clues that scientists have used to solve fascinating mysteries about the origins and development of our universe. The milestones on this journey range from the nearby to the remote: we travel from the Moon, Jupiter, and the black hole at the heart of our galaxy all the way to the first star, the first ray of light, and even the strange, roiling conditions of the infant universe, an intense and volatile environment in which matter was created from pure energy. Impey gives us breathtaking visual descriptions and also explains what each landmark can reveal about the universe and its history. His lucid, wonderfully engaging scientific discussions bring us to the brink of modern cosmology and physics, illuminating such mind-bending concepts as invisible dimensions, timelessness, and multiple universes. A dynamic and unforgettable portrait of the cosmos, How It Began will reward its readers with a deeper understanding of the universe we inhabit as well as a renewed sense of wonder at its beauty and mystery.
