Finding the Big Bang

A collection of essays on research on CMBR in the 1960s by eminent cosmologists who pioneered the work.

P. James E. Peebles (Edited by), Lyman A. Page, Jr. (Edited by), R. Bruce Partridge (Edited by)

9780521519823, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 26 March 2009

596 pages, 33 b/w illus.
25.3 x 18 x 3.1 cm, 1.3 kg

'… includes a wealth of - mostly undocumented - details, some of which would have been lost were it not for this project.' Journal of the History of Astronomy

Cosmology, the study of the universe as a whole, has become a precise physical science, the foundation of which is our understanding of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) left from the big bang. The story of the discovery and exploration of the CMBR in the 1960s is recalled for the first time in this collection of 44 essays by eminent scientists who pioneered the work. Two introductory chapters put the essays in context, explaining the general ideas behind the expanding universe and fossil remnants from the early stages of the expanding universe. The last chapter describes how the confusion of ideas and measurements in the 1960s grew into the present tight network of tests that demonstrate the accuracy of the big bang theory. This book is valuable to anyone interested in how science is done, and what it has taught us about the large-scale nature of the physical universe.

1. Introduction
2. A guide to modern cosmology
3. Origins of the cosmology of the 1960s
4. Recollections of the 1960s Dave Hogg, Neville Woolf, George B. Field, Patrick Thaddeus, Donald E. Osterbrock, Yuri Nikolaevich Smirnov, Igor Dmitriyevich Novikov, Andrei Georgievich Doroshkevich, Rashid Alievich Sunyaev, Malcolm S. Longair, Arno Penzias, Robert W. Wilson, Bernard F. Burke, Kenneth C. Turner, P. James E. Peebles, David T. Wilkinson, Peter G. Roll, R. Bruce Partridge, Malcolm S. Longair, John Faulkner, Robert V. Wagoner, Martin Rees, Geoffrey R. Burbidge, Jayant V. Narlikar, David Layzer, Michele Kaufman, Jasper V. Wall, John Shakeshaft, William Welch, Kazimir S. Stankevich, Paul Boynton, Robert A. Stokes, Martin Harwit, Judith L. Pipher, Kandiah Shivanandan, Rainer Weiss, Jer-tsang Yu, Rainer K. Sachs, Arthur M. Wolfe, Joe Silk, George F. R. Ellis, Ronald N. Bracewell, Edward K. Conklin, Stephen Boughn, Karl C. Davis, Paul S. Henry
5. Cosmology and the CMBR since the 1960s Dick Bond
Appendixes
Glossary
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Cosmology & the universe [PGK], History of science [PDX]