Cover

Half-title

Title

Copyright

Contents

Preface

1 The starry night

Night, our window on the universe...

.. .and source of our questions

2 The universe, a thousand-year enigma

Some Roman cosmology..

3 A first look at the universe

Powers often notation

The size of the universe, in space and time

Building blocks of the universe

Gravitation

The electromagnetic interaction

The strong nuclear interaction

The weak interaction

Galaxies and stars

Galaxies

Radio galaxies

Quasars

Stars

Clusters of galaxies and filamentary structure

Two great discoveries in cosmology

The recession of the galaxies

The 3 °K microwave background radiation

4 The relativistic universe

Relativistic space

Four-dimensional spacetime

Curved space

General relativity

Einstein's equations

Relativistic model universes

The cosmological horizon

5 The quantum universe

Quantum uncertainty

Spin

Quantum fuzziness

Waves and particles

uncertainty of position times uncertainty ofmomentum = h

Strange particles

Antiparticles

Virtual particles

Quarks

Elementary particles

The interactions of natureA table

A table of interactions

Unification of the interactions

The disintegration of matter

Subquarks, supersymmetry and super-gravity

6 The inflationary universe

Weighing up the Big Bang

The inflation of the universe

The vacuum phase transition

The inflation of space

The universe in an apple

The second detonation

The origin of matter

The longest second

Time zero

Toward time zero

Monopoles, strings and domain walls

The universe of universes

Countless universes

7 The universe and ourselves

The trail to life

Planetary systems

Inhabitable planets

Life on Earth

The anthropic principle

The far future

Black holes

The Tunnel Effect

Epilogue