Currents in Astrophysics and Cosmology focuses primarily on cosmic-ray physics, X-ray, gamma-ray and neutrino astronomy and cosmology, the main research areas of Professor Maurice M. Shapiro, whose 75th birthday the collection of articles celebrates. Professor Shapiro is internationally distinguished for his contributions to the development of cosmic-ray physics. Each chapter is written by a leading scientist in the field. The scope extends from the inner solar system to distant radio galaxies. The book is ideal for graduate students and scientists working in cosmic-ray astrophysics. This valuable survey will be welcomed not only for its articles by world-renowned scientists but also for its coverage of many topics in high-energy astrophysics, the combination of which makes the book unique.

Cosmology and astroparticle physics have seen an avalanche of discoveries in the past decade (IceCube - high energy neutrinos, LIGO - gravitational waves, Fermi- gamma-ray telescope, Xenon-1T - dark matter detection, PLANCK- cosmic microwave radiation, EHT picture of black hole, SDSS -galaxy surveys), all of which require a multidisciplinary background for analyzing the phenomena. The arena for testing particle physics models is in the multimessenger astronomical observations and at the same time cosmology now requires a particle physics basis for explaining many phenomena. This book discusses the theoretical tools of particle physics and general relativity which are essential for understanding and correlating diverse astronomical observations.

At least eighty percent of the mass of the universe consists of some material which, unlike ordinary matter, neither emits nor absorbs light. This book collects key papers related to the discovery of this astonishing fact and its profound implications for astrophysics, cosmology, and the physics of elementary particles. The book focuses on the likely possibility that the dark matter is composed of an as yet undiscovered elementary particle, and examines the boundaries of our present knowledge of the properties such a particle must possess.

An innovative textbook that provides a unique approach to beginning research in cosmology and high energy astrophysics through a series of problems and answers.

A new look at the first few seconds after the Big Bang—and how research into these moments continues to revolutionize our understanding of our universe Scientists in the past few decades have made crucial discoveries about how our cosmos evolved over the past 13.8 billion years. But there remains a critical gap in our knowledge: we still know very little about what happened in the first seconds after the Big Bang. At the Edge of Time focuses on what we have recently learned and are still striving to understand about this most essential and mysterious period of time at the beginning of cosmic history. Delving into the remarkable science of cosmology, Dan Hooper describes many of the extraordinary and perplexing questions that scientists are asking about the origin and nature of our world. Hooper examines how we are using the Large Hadron Collider and other experiments to re-create the conditions of the Big Bang and test promising theories for how and why our universe came to contain so much matter and so little antimatter. We may be poised to finally discover how dark matter was formed during our universe’s first moments, and, with new telescopes, we are also lifting the veil on the era of cosmic inflation, which led to the creation of our world as we know it. Wrestling with the mysteries surrounding the initial moments that followed the Big Bang, At the Edge of Time presents an accessible investigation of our universe and its origin.

Driven by discoveries, and enabled by leaps in technology and imagination, our understanding of the universe has changed dramatically during the course of the last few decades. The fields of astronomy and astrophysics are making new connections to physics, chemistry, biology, and computer science. Based on a broad and comprehensive survey of scientific opportunities, infrastructure, and organization in a national and international context, New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics outlines a plan for ground- and space- based astronomy and astrophysics for the decade of the 2010's. Realizing these scientific opportunities is contingent upon maintaining and strengthening the foundations of the research enterprise including technological development, theory, computation and data handling, laboratory experiments, and human resources. New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics proposes enhancing innovative but moderate-cost programs in space and on the ground that will enable the community to respond rapidly and flexibly to new scientific discoveries. The book recommends beginning construction on survey telescopes in space and on the ground to investigate the nature of dark energy, as well as the next generation of large ground-based giant optical telescopes and a new class of space-based gravitational observatory to observe the merging of distant black holes and precisely test theories of gravity. New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics recommends a balanced and executable program that will support research surrounding the most profound questions about the cosmos. The discoveries ahead will facilitate the search for habitable planets, shed light on dark energy and dark matter, and aid our understanding of the history of the universe and how the earliest stars and galaxies formed. The book is a useful resource for agencies supporting the field of astronomy and astrophysics, the Congressional committees with jurisdiction over those agencies, the scientific community, and the public.

This is the first scholarly collection of articles focused on the cultural astronomy of the African continent. It weaves together astronomy, anthropology, and Africa and it includes African myths and legends about the sky, alignments to celestial bodies found at archaeological sites and at places of worship, rock art with celestial imagery, and scientific thinking revealed in local astronomy traditions including ethnomathematics and the creation of calendars.