Baker J. The Universe: 50 Ideas You Really Need to Know

Quercus, 2011. – 230 p. – ISBN: 0857381237; 1848660669For millennia humanity has gazed in wonder at the night sky, tracked the motions of the planets and attempted to explain our place in the Universe. But only in our own time has the true scale, the astonishing variety and the remarkable strangeness of the cosmos come clearly into focus.
The pace and sophistication of recent scientific discovery has been breathtaking, but breakthroughs are often difficult to understand and their impact is hard to fully appreciate. In 50 Ideas You Really Need to Know: Universe, Joanne Baker clearly and concisely explains all of the essential concepts, major discoveries and the very latest thinking in astrophysics, including: the basic principles of astronomy - from heliocentrism to Newton's theory of optics; the constituent parts of the Universe, its creation and evolution; the key concepts of cosmology including the theory of relativity, supermassive black holes and 'multiverses'; the very latest developments in our understanding of quasars, exoplanets and astrobiology.
From dwarf planets to dark energy; and from the Big Bang to the death of stars, this book is the perfect introduction to the cutting-edge science that is shaping our understanding of our place in the Universe and that could lead to the next great discovery - the detection of life beyond Earth.Revealing The Universe
Planets
Heliocentrism
Kepler’s laws
Newton’s law of gravitation
Newton’s theory of optics
The telescope
Fraunhofer lines
Doppler effect
Parallax
The Great Debate
Cosmology
Olbers’ paradox
Hubble’s law
Cosmic distance ladder
The Big Bang
Cosmic microwave background
Big Bang nucleosynthesis
Antimatter
Dark matter
Cosmic inflation
Cosmological constant
Spacetime and Beyond
Mach’s principle
Special relativity
General relativity
Black holes
Particle astrophysics
The God particle
String theory
Anthropic principle
Galaxies
Hubble galaxy sequence
Galaxy clusters
Large-scale structure
Radio astronomy
Quasars
X-ray background
Supermassive black holes
Galaxy evolution
Gravitational lensing
Stars
Stellar classifications
Stellar evolution
Stellar births
Stellar deaths
Pulsars
Gamma-ray bursts
Variability
The Sun
Exoplanets
Formation of the solar system
Moons
Astrobiology
Fermi paradox