Wonders of the Universe. Andrew Cohen

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СКАЧАТЬ The Big Bang

       Sub-atomic particles

       Timeline of the Universe: The Big Bang to the present

       Matter by numbers

       The most powerful explosion on Earth

       From Big Bang to Sunshine: The First Stars

       Red giant

       Star death

       Planetary nebulae

       The rarest of all

       Supernova: life cycle of a star

       The beginning and the end

       The orgin of life

      Chapter 3

      Falling

       Full Force

       The invisible string

       The apple that never fell

       The grand sculpture

       The geoid

       The Tug of the Moon

       The false dawn

       The Blue Marble

      Galactic cannibals

       Collision course

       When galaxies collide

       Feeling the Force

       The gravity paradox

       The land of little green men

       What is gravity?

       Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity

       Into the darkness

       The anatomy of a black hole

      Chapter 4

      Destiny

       The Passage of Time

       The cosmic clock

       The galactic clock

       Ancient life

       The arrow of time

       The order of disorder

       Entropy in action

       The life cycle of the Universe

       The life of the Universe

       The Destiny of Stars

       The demise of our universe

       The death of the Sun

       The last stars

       The beginning of the end

       A very precious time

      Searchable Terms

      Picture credits

      Acknowledgements

      About the Author

      Credits

       About the Publisher

      INTRODUCTION

      THE UNIVERSE

      At 13.7 billion years old, 45 billion light years across and filled with 100 billion galaxies – each containing hundreds of billions of stars – the Universe as revealed by modern science is humbling in scale and dazzling in beauty. But, paradoxically, as our knowledge of the Universe has expanded, so the division between us and the cosmos has melted away. The Universe may turn out to be infinite in extent and full of alien worlds beyond imagination, but current scientific thinking suggests that we need it all in order to exist. Without the stars, there would be no ingredients to build us; without the Universe’s great age, there would be no time for the stars to perform their alchemy. The Universe cannot be old without being vast; there may be no waste or redundancy in this potentially infinite arena if there are to be observers present to gaze upon its wonders.

      The СКАЧАТЬ