Illustrated Cosmic Monopole


Book Description

Reviews on Amazon from the first edition of Cosmic Monopole: Truly bizarre, utterly unique I've never read a novel quite like this before. The author takes you on an exciting adventure full of unforgettable and vivid imagery. Solidly written with each character's personality shining through. If you find physics fascinating you will not be disappointed by the author's keen intellect and clear understanding of this most challenging (for me anyway) scientific subject. This is not a novel I will forget anytime soon, I would highly recommend it. Andrewly Very imaginative tale Anybody interested in a very imaginative and engrossing sci fi story needs to check this one out. I have been reading sci fi for decades and this story has elements that surprise me which is very unusual considering the number of novels and stories I have over the years. ric freeman A fascinating book An amazing book - I literally could not put it down… and I was reading it in Acrobat! Not the easiest format but it didn't matter, I wanted to know what happened next each time I had to leave it. I have a huge interest in The Hadron Collider so it was a foregone conclusion that I would enjoy this book and I wasn't disappointed. A great story - one that I can not wait to read the next episode of - with very complex characters and even more complex relationships. The author manages to combine his obvious extensive knowledge of the subject with an incredible imagination. I loved it! Vicki Time Crystal (of which this is the first book) is perhaps the first work of fiction which takes the reader on a journey back through the whole history of the universe. The author has gone to extraordinary lengths to make this novel as accurate as possible within the constraints of writing a superb story. This book includes a Glossary, Character Descriptions and Bibliography. So what’s it about? The cosmic monopole has been wandering the Universe since it was created in the Big Bang. Its existence is fundamental to the way the Universe works. It is finally trapped by the powerful magnetic fields inside the ATLAS detector at CERN, Geneva, and begins to absorb protons from the LHC. Soon it is transformed into a black hole, and absorbs Irish school-teacher Sam and Chinese-Irish scientist Michael Zhang. Moments later, time stops everywhere in the universe except near fragments of mysterious blue crystals: Time Crystals! Thus begins an adventure which will see Sam's step-daughter Catriona embark on an adventure which will take her back to the Big Bang (and beyond!) in the ultimate adventure: to save the very universe itself.




Post-Planck Cosmology


Book Description

This book gathers the lecture notes of the 100th Les Houches Summer School, which was held in July 2013. These lectures represent a comprehensive pedagogical survey of the frontier of theoretical and observational cosmology just after the release of the first cosmological results of the Planck mission. The Cosmic Microwave Background is discussed as a possible window on the still unknown laws of physics at very high energy and as a backlight for studying the late-time Universe. Other lectures highlight connections of fundamental physics with other areas of cosmology and astrophysics, the successes and fundamental puzzles of the inflationary paradigm of cosmic beginning, the themes of dark energy and dark matter, and the theoretical developments and observational probes that will shed light on these cosmic conundrums in the years to come.




An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics


Book Description

An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics is a comprehensive, well-organized and engaging text covering every major area of modern astrophysics, from the solar system and stellar astronomy to galactic and extragalactic astrophysics, and cosmology. Designed to provide students with a working knowledge of modern astrophysics, this textbook is suitable for astronomy and physics majors who have had a first-year introductory physics course with calculus. Featuring a brief summary of the main scientific discoveries that have led to our current understanding of the universe; worked examples to facilitate the understanding of the concepts presented in the book; end-of-chapter problems to practice the skills acquired; and computational exercises to numerically model astronomical systems, the second edition of An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics is the go-to textbook for learning the core astrophysics curriculum as well as the many advances in the field.







Monopole ’83


Book Description

Ten years have passed since It Hooft and Polyakov demonstrat ed that superheavy magnetic monopoles were a natural consequence of any Grand Unified Theory (GUT) in which the unifying group contains a U(l) factor as a subgroup. An analysis of these GUTs in an expanding, cooling universe yields a phase transition at an energy ~l015 GeV and at a cosmic time ~lO-35 seconds after the big bang. The general consequences of GUTs and this phase transition are the prediction of proton decay, the production of superheavy magnetic monopoles, and an understanding of the observed excess of matter over anti-matter in the universe. Attempts to provide experimental verification of GUTs has led to valiant experimental efforts in recent years to observe nucleon decay in massive underground detectors. Experiments to search for superheavy monopoles may eventually require similar efforts. Since the unification scale is unreachable in the laboratory, monopole detectors must search for relics of the big bang. Much theoretical groundwork has been accomplished in recent years with the development of GUTs. In Part I of this book, Erick Weinberg gives a theoretical overview of the role of magnetic monopoles in the various unification schemes. Monopoles in the context of the newly revived Kaluza-Klein theories are presented by several authors and are summarized by Qaisar Shafi. Mike Turner begins Part II with a discussion of monopoles in standard big bang cosmology. Paul Steinhardt follows with his perspectives on the inflationary universe; C.




Old and New Questions in Physics, Cosmology, Philosophy, and Theoretical Biology


Book Description

Simply to say that this is a collection of essays in honor of the late Wolfgang Yourgrau (1908-1979) is to explain, at least for-the obviously many-"insiders," the unusually wide-ranging title of the present volume. In a Foreword to the Proceedings of the First International Colloquium (focusing on logic, physical reality, and history), held at the University of Denver in May of 1966 under their leadership, Wolfgang Y ourgrau and Allen Breck wrote, in an oblique reference to C. P. Snow: "Indeed there are not two or three or four cultures: there is only one culture; our generation has lost its awareness of this . . . . Historians, logicians, physicists-all are banded in one common enterprise, namely in their des ire to weave an enlightened fabric of human knowledge. " Augment, if you will, the foregoing categories of scholars with biologists, philos ophers, cosmologists, and theologians-all of whom, in addition to historians, Wolf gang Yourgrau, by dint of his inextinguishable enthusiasm and charismatic qualities, assembled in Denver for the Second and Third International Colloquia (in 1967 and 1974, respectively)-and a few other besides, and one arrives at a statement of the credo wh ich Y ourgrau not only professed, but consistently exemplified throughout his adult life.




Defect Evolution in Cosmology and Condensed Matter


Book Description

This book sheds new light on topological defects in widely differing systems, using the Velocity-Dependent One-Scale Model to better understand their evolution. Topological defects – cosmic strings, monopoles, domain walls or others - necessarily form at cosmological (and condensed matter) phase transitions. If they are stable and long-lived they will be fossil relics of higher-energy physics. Understanding their behaviour and consequences is a key part of any serious attempt to understand the universe, and this requires modelling their evolution. The velocity-dependent one-scale model is the only fully quantitative model of defect network evolution, and the canonical model in the field. This book provides a review of the model, explaining its physical content and describing its broad range of applicability.




Cosmological Physics


Book Description

A comprehensive and authoritative introduction to contemporary cosmology for advanced undergraduate and graduate students.




Magnetic Monopoles


Book Description

In 1269 Petrus Peregrinus observed lines of force around a lodestone and noted that they were concentrated at two points which he designated as the north and south poles of the magnet. Subsequent observation has confirmed that all magnetic objects have paired regions of' opposite polarity, that is, all magnets are dipoles. It is easy to conceive of an isolated pole, which J.J. Thomson did in 1904 when he set his famous problem of the motion of an electron in the field of a magnetic charge. In 1931 P.A.M. Dirac solved this problem quantum mechanically and showed that the existence of a single magnet pole anywhere in the universe could explain the mystery of charge quantization. By late 1981, theoretical interest in monopoles had reached the point where a meeting was organized at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste. Many mathematical properties of monopoles were discussed at length but there was only a solitary account describing experiments. This imbalance did not so much reflect the meeting's venue as it indicated the relative theoretical and experimental effort at that point.




Classical and Quantum Cosmology


Book Description

This comprehensive textbook is devoted to classical and quantum cosmology, with particular emphasis on modern approaches to quantum gravity and string theory and on their observational imprint. It covers major challenges in theoretical physics such as the big bang and the cosmological constant problem. An extensive review of standard cosmology, the cosmic microwave background, inflation and dark energy sets the scene for the phenomenological application of all the main quantum-gravity and string-theory models of cosmology. Born of the author's teaching experience and commitment to bridging the gap between cosmologists and theoreticians working beyond the established laws of particle physics and general relativity, this is a unique text where quantum-gravity approaches and string theory are treated on an equal footing. As well as introducing cosmology to undergraduate and graduate students with its pedagogical presentation and the help of 45 solved exercises, this book, which includes an ambitious bibliography of about 3500 items, will serve as a valuable reference for lecturers and researchers.