Astrofysik

En moderne klassiker, som har slået alle udgivelsesrekorder med 237 uger på bestsellerlisten. ”Denne bog er en forening af et barns undren og et genis intellekt. Vi rejser med ind i Hawkings univers med dyb fascination.” Sunday Time ”En af de mest fremragende videnskabelige begavelser siden Einstein.” Daily Express ”Hawking forklarer kompleks kosmologisk fysik med en medrivende blanding af klarhed og humor … en hjerne af usædvanlig kraft.” Observer

Den 20. juli 1969 kl. 03.56 dansk tid satte Neil Armstrong som det første menneske sin fod på Månen. I denne bog med mere end 100 fotos fortæller Danmarks førerende astrofysiker, Anja C. Andersen hele den spændende historie om Jordens nærmeste nabo i rummet; kendsgerninger og konspirationsteorier, myter, fup og fakta. Frem til 1972 gennemførte NASA yderligere 5 bemandede månelandinger, og i alt 12 astronauter har betrådt Månen. Derudover har der været et utal af ubemandede månelandinger - senest den 3. januar 2019, da et kinesisk rumfartøj landede på Månens bagside. Men der er stadig meget, vi ikke ved: Hvordan er Månen opstået, og hvorfor har den kun vand på den side, der vender mod Jorden? Hvordan påvirker Månen os mennesker?

Der sker hele tiden noget nyt og spændende inden for rumforskningen. I 2022 lykkedes det forskerholdet Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration at optage et billede af det sorte hul i Mælkevejen. James Webb Teleskopet leverer billeder af galakser, der ligger 13 milliarder lysår borte. De opdagelser, som den danske forsker Albert Sneppen har gjort omkring neutronstjerners sammenstød, kan måske bruges til at beregne universets udvidelseshastighed. I ”Det gådefulde univers” giver Danmarks mest anerkendte astrofysiker et overblik over himmelrummet fra Solsystemet og ud til de fjerneste galakser og over universets udvikling fra Big Bang frem til i dag.Universet blev skabt for 13,7 milliarder år siden. Et lysår er ca. 9,5 billioner kilometer, og afstanden til de fjerne kvasarer er 12 milliarder lysår. Når man beskæftiger sig med universet, handler det om svimlende tidshorisonter og afstande; men Anja C. Andersen formår at gøre det uoverskuelige begribeligt. Stor gavebog med fantastisk billedmateriale.

Der er ikke otte, men milliarder af planeter i Universet, og mange af dem ligger i et lunt smørhul, hvor de potentielt kan huse liv. Den opdagelse er en af de største i den moderne astronomi, og vi er kun lige begyndt at forstå, hvad der egentlig gemmer sig derude i kosmos af bizarre kloder. 'Fjerne kloder' beskriver erkendelsesrejsen, fra Giordano Bruno blev brændt på bålet i år 1600 for sin kætterske idé om uendelig mange planeter – og til konstruktionen af små satellitter, som måske kan besøge de nærmeste af disse exoplaneter og lede efter livstegn på dem. Undervejs møder vi forskerne ved fronten, som kigger hinsides solsystemet og kæmper for at besvare det ultimative spørgsmål: Er vi alene?

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Stephen Hawking’s closest collaborator offers the intellectual superstar’s final thoughts on the cosmos—a dramatic revision of the theory he put forward in A Brief History of Time.“This superbly written book offers insight into an extraordinary individual, the creative process, and the scope and limits of our current understanding of the cosmos.”—Lord Martin ReesPerhaps the biggest question Stephen Hawking tried to answer in his extraordinary life was how the universe could have created conditions so perfectly hospitable to life. In order to solve this mystery, Hawking studied the big bang origin of the universe, but his early work ran into a crisis when the math predicted many big bangs producing a multiverse—countless different universes, most of which would be far too bizarre to ​harbor life. Holed up in the theoretical physics department at Cambridge, Stephen Hawking and his friend and collaborator Thomas Hertog worked on this problem for twenty years, developing a new theory of the cosmos that could account for the emergence of life. Peering into the extreme quantum physics of cosmic holograms and venturing far back in time to our deepest roots, they were startled to find a deeper level of evolution in which the physical laws themselves transform and simplify until particles, forces, and even time itself fades away. This discovery led them to a revolutionary idea: The laws of physics are not set in stone but are born and co-evolve as the universe they govern takes shape. As Hawking’s final days drew near, the two collaborators published their theory, which proposed a radical new Darwinian perspective on the origins of our universe. On the Origin of Time offers a striking new vision of the universe’s birth that will profoundly transform the way we think about our place in the order of the cosmos and may ultimately prove to be Hawking’s greatest legacy.

Do we have free will? Is the universe compatible with God? Do we live in a computer simulation? Does the universe think?Physicists are great at complicated research, but they are less good at telling us why it matters. In this entertaining and groundbreaking book, theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder breaks down why we should care. Drawing on the latest research in quantum mechanics, black holes, string theory and particle physics, Existential Physics explains what modern physics can tell us about the big questions.Filled with counterintuitive insights and including interviews with other leading scientists, this clear and yet profound book will reshape your understanding of science and the limits of what we can know.

"A concise and accessible introduction to exoplanets that explains the cutting-edge science behind recent discoveries. For centuries, people have speculated about the possibility of planets orbiting distant stars, but only since the 1990s has technology allowed astronomers to detect them. At this point, more than five thousand such exoplanets have been identified, with the pace of discovery accelerating after the launch of NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Satellite Survey and the Webb Space Telescope. In The Little Book of Exoplanets, Princeton astrophysicist Joshua Winn offers a brief and engaging introduction to the search for exoplanets and the cutting-edge science behind recent findings. In doing so, he chronicles the dawn of a new age of discovery-one that has rapidly transformed astronomy and our broader understanding of the universe. Scientists now know that many Sun-like stars host their own systems of planets, some of which may resemble our solar system and include planets similar to the Earth. But, Winn tells us, the most remarkable discoveries so far have been of planets with unexpected and decidedly un-Earth-like properties, which have upended what we thought we knew about the origins of planetary systems. Winn provides an inside view of the sophisticated detective work astronomers perform as they find and study exoplanets and describes the surprising-sometimes downright bizarre-planets and systems they have found. He explains how these discoveries are revolutionizing astronomy, and he explores the current status and possible future of the search for another Earth. Finally, drawing on his own and other scientists' work, he considers how the discovery of exoplanets and their faraway solar systems changes our perspectives on the universe and our place in it"--

"The discovery that the universe has been expanding from its fiery beginning fourteen billion years ago and has developed into stars, galaxies, life, and human consciousness is one of the most significant of human history. It is taught throughout the world and has become our common creation story for every culture with modern educational processes. It holds the promise of a new human unity. In terms of this story of the universe's development, we humans are not primarily French or Chinese, Democrat or Republican. We are primarily cosmological beings. Though An Unveiling of the Expanding Universe narrates the same cosmological events as thousands of other books, it has one unique feature. It tells the story of the universe while simultaneously telling the story of the storyteller. If indeed cosmogenesis is one of the greatest discoveries of human history, it will necessarily have an immense impact on humanity, at least as profound as the Copernican revolution. And yet, to my knowledge, none of the science books published in English explores the effects cosmogenesis has on human consciousness. An Unveiling of the Expanding Universe tells the story of how my mind was deconstructed by the impact of this new story and then reassembled. In shorthand: I began with the mind of a cartesian scientist and ended with a mind aligned with the creativity of the universe"--

"Stephen Hawking's closest collaborator offers the intellectual superstar's final thoughts on the cosmos-a dramatic revision of the theory that made him the heir to Einstein's legacy. Perhaps the biggest question Stephen Hawking tried to answer in his extraordinary life was how the universe could have created conditions so perfectly hospitable to life. Pondering this mystery led Hawking to study the big bang origin of the universe, but his early work ran into a crisis when the math predicted many big bangs producing a multiverse-countless different universes, most far too bizarre to harbor life. Holed up in the theoretical physics department at Cambridge, Stephen Hawking and his friend and collaborator Thomas Hertog worked shoulder to shoulder for twenty years on a new quantum theory of the cosmos. As their journey took them deeper into the big bang, they were startled to find a deeper level of evolution in which the physical laws themselves transform and simplify until particles, forces, and even time itself fades away. Once upon a time, perhaps, there was no time. This led them to a revolutionary idea: the laws of physics are not set in stone but are born and co-evolve as the universe they govern takes shape. On the Origin of Time takes the reader on a quest to understand questions bigger than our universe, peering into the extreme quantum physics of black holes and the big bang and drawing on the latest developments in string theory. As Hawking's final days drew near, the two collaborators developed a final theory proposing their radical new Darwinian perspective on the origins of our universe. Hertog offers a striking new vision that ties together more deeply than ever the nature of the universe's birth with our existence. This new theory profoundly transforms the way we think about our place in the order of the cosmos and may ultimately prove Hawking's biggest legacy"--

Stephen Hawking var et enestående menneske. På én gang en ikonisk skikkelse i vores populærkultur, skelsættende forfatter og formidler af videnskabeligt stof til den almene læser, en dreven spøgefugl – og sidst, men ikke mindst en helt afgørende forsker, der bidrog med grundlæggende indsigter til vores forståelse af, hvordan den verden og det univers, som har skabt os, er dannet og fungerer.Fysikeren og forfatteren Leonard Mlodinow mødte første gang Stephen Hawking, da de skrev deres første bog sammen. Leonard og Stephen blev venner – og Mlodinow har været personligt og professionelt tæt på både Hawking, menneskene omkring ham og hans videnskabelige resultater. I ‘Stephen Hawking’ beskriver Leonard Mlodinow i seks kapitler, hvorfor Stephen Hawking var så stor og vigtig en videnskabsmand – og forklarer det, så vi alle kan være med. Det bliver en rejse, hvor vi bevæger os med Hawking ind i det mærkværdige og de vilde sorte huller, ser ham bevise, at tiden måske slet ikke findes og følger ham i hans arbejde med teorien om, at der findes mange verdener og parallelle universer. Og hvor vi samtidig møder ham som menneske. Medrivende, bevægende og storslået. Et indblik i et rigt sind og en stor ånds univers.

This book focuses on nonextensive statistical mechanics, a current generalization of Boltzmann-Gibbs (BG) statistical mechanics.Conceived nearly 150 years ago by Maxwell, Boltzmann and Gibbs, the BG theory, one of the greatest monuments of contemporary physics, exhibits many impressive successes in physics, chemistry, mathematics, and computational sciences. Presently, several thousands of publications by scientists around the world have been dedicated to its nonextensive generalization. A variety of applications have emerged in complex systems and its mathematical grounding is by now well advanced.Since the first edition release thirteen years ago, there has been a vast amount of new results in the field, all of which have been incorporated in this comprehensive second edition. Heavily revised and updated with new sections and figures, the second edition remains the go-to text on the subject.A pedagogical introduction to the BG theory concepts and their generalizations ¿ nonlinear dynamics, extensivity of the nonadditive entropy, global correlations, generalization of the standard CLT¿s, complex networks, among others ¿ is presented in this book, as well as a selection of paradigmatic applications in various sciences together with diversified experimental verifications of some of its predictions. Introduction to Nonextensive Statistical Mechanics is suitable for students and researchers with an interest in complex systems and statistical physics.

Life as we know it has always been confined to our single blue planet called earth. But will it always be that way? Discover just how close we are to changing life as we know it forever, and what it will take to push humanity into a new era of exploration and discovery. Find out how the next steps for our future will be unlike anything civilization as we know it has experienced.The article explores the feasibility of colonizing mars in the near future, discussing the benefits, current state of exploration, technological breakthroughs needed, and social and political challenges associated with establishing a martian colony. It also highlights the economic opportunities in space exploration and colonization, particularly in the emerging industry of space tourism. The importance of life support systems for long-term space travel is also discussed. The article concludes by emphasizing the potential humanitarian benefits of living on mars, particularly for refugees fleeing an unstable earth.The book also highlights the importance of mars for humanity's future. It discusses the potential for mars to serve as a backup plan for the survival of humanity in case of a catastrophic event on earth and as a stepping stone for further exploration of the solar system and beyond. The book also covers the knowledge and technology developed through mars missions and how they can be applied to other extreme environments on earth.The book also presents the ongoing research and development required to overcome the obstacles presented by the transport of humans to mars. It details the available technology and techniques for getting to mars, along with the ongoing research and development to overcome the challenges of the journey, including launch vehicles, chemical propulsion systems, surface retrieval and landing of humans and spacecrafts, and critical life support systems.

The current theory for the early universe centers around the Standard Model's vision of fields, forces, and particles inexplicably popping into existence within the first second of the Big Bang. That conjecture has worked for many years and has inspired an edifice of theoretical support, but it stretches credulity and leaves too many unanswered questions.What if the initial nugget of energy did not instantaneously turn into particles but was left to expand and lose density? As it thinned, isolated density fluctuations would swirl and grow by accretion, eventually creating thick-density supermassive blackholes, light-density particles, and a thin-density medium of dark energy. The support for this seemingly wild hypothesis is in the observational evidence demonstrating that everything we know of in the universe, including fields, forces, matter, and time, naturally evolves from relationships between those three energy densities. This is the story of those relationships.That profound realization comes through in the Second Edition of A New Vision of the Early Universe. It's the culmina­tion of forty years of research and study by the author, Robert J. Conover. The depth of his research, attention to detail, clear prose, and philosophical approach to analyzing difficult issues conspire to make this a well-respected treatise. The work is supported by numerous citations, quotes, and observations from many leading physicists, cosmologists, and mathemati­cians.

The main theme of the book is the presentation of techniques used to identify chaotic behavior in the evolution of conservative mechanical systems and their application to astronomical systems. It results from graduate courses given by the author over the years both at university and at several international summer schools.Along the book surfaces of section, Lyapunov characteristic exponents, frequency maps, MEGNO, dense grid maps, etc., are presented and discussed in connection with the applications. The initial chapter is devoted to the presentation of the main ideas of the chaotic dynamics of conservative systems in plain language so that they can be accessible to a wide range of professionals and students of physical sciences. The applications are mainly related to the motions in the solar system and extrasolar planetary systems.Another chapter is devoted to the applications to asteroids showing how the asteroidal belt is sculpted by chaos and resonances. The contrasting existence of gaps in the distribution of the asteroids and groups of asteroids in resonances is thoroughly discussed. The interest in applications to planetary systems is growing since the discovery of systems of resonant planets around some stars of the solar neighborhood. Exoplanets added a lot of cases to a problem that was before restricted to the planets of our solar system. The book includes an account of results already existing about compact systems.

These Transactions provide a record of the organisational and administrative activities of the IAU XXX General Assembly, which took place in Vienna, Austria, in August 2018. They report and record all of the essential decisions taken by the governing body of the IAU. These include the approval of the financial accounts and of the proposed budget for the next three years, the admission of new national and individual members, the Divisions, Commissions, and Working Groups, the new Officers and Executive Committee, and the approval of Resolutions, as well as opening and closing ceremonies and other events. Focus Meetings are published in the 'Astronomy in Focus' series, and each of the six Symposia that took place has its own Proceedings. The world was forever changed by the COVID-19 pandemic shortly after this General Assembly, contributing to the delay in this volume's publication.

This volume gives a comprehensive, up-to-date review of cosmic masers as presented at IAU Symposium 380, the sixth international maser symposium. It describes time-domain and multiwavelength studies of maser sources via large observing facilities and networks, and discusses ongoing and future projects relevant to maser science.

Cosmology's journey to the present day has been a long one. This book outlines the latest research on modern cosmology and related topics from world-class experts. Through it, readers will learn how multi-disciplinary approaches and technologies are used to search the unknown and how we arrived at the knowledge used and assumptions made by cosmologists today. The book is organized into four parts, each exploring a theme that has troubled humankind for centuries. Since the dawn of time, looking at the sky, humans have tried to understand their origin, the laws governing it, and what influence it all has on human life. In most ancient civilizations, astronomers embodied the power of knowledge. This knowledge was not compartmentalized, and scientists often found philosophical implications within their quests, many of which destroyed the borders between the natural sciences. Even now, as observers and scientists continue to use conjecture to generate theoretical assumptions and laws that then have to be confirmed experimentally, said theoretical and experimental searches are being linked to philosophical thinking and artistic representation, as they were up until the 18th century. This multi-disciplinary book will appeal to anyone with an interest in the fields of Astronomy, Cosmology or Physics.

This symposium honors the contributions of Charlotte Moore Sitterly as a pioneer of spectroscopy, and astronomical spectroscopy in particular. The need for precise and accurate laboratory data in astrophysics has not diminished. Every time better spectrographs are built or new wavelength domains explored, we find critical information missing that is needed for analyses to derive abundances or to compare models of stars and planets to observations, in order to more fully understand the universe that we observe. IAU Symposium 371 encompassed nearly all the science themes that the IAU covers, from near to far in the universe, and at all wavelengths. But it concerned more than lab work in and of itself and brought together laboratory astrophysicists with the people who use that information, to learn about current advances and limitations, and future needs. A broad spectrum of the IAU's membership can benefit from these proceedings.

This book presents novel observational evidence toward detecting and characterizing the products of massive, interacting binary stars. As a majority of massive stars are born in close binary systems, a large number of so-called massive binary interaction products are predicted to exist; however, few have been identified so far. Based on observations with the largest telescopes around the world, equipped with state-of-the-art instrumentation, this book helps to remedy this situation. In her outstanding PhD-thesis Julia Bodensteiner identifies a new class of post-interaction binaries in a short-lived phase just briefly after the initially more massive star has been stripped of part of its envelope. She further provides new evidence for the Be phenomenon to largely result from binary interactions. These results represented a new and testable prediction for the evolution of these stars and opened up a new way forward for identifying hundreds of post-interaction products.Finally, using the MUSE integral field spectrograph at the Very Large Telescope in Chile, the author presents a novel spectroscopic campaign focusing on the 40 Myr-old star cluster NGC 330 in the Small Magellanic Clouds. Combined with photometric observations from the Hubble Space Telescope, the MUSE data allow to characterize the entire massive star population of NGC 330, revealing their multiplicity properties and rotational velocities and providing unique observational constraints on their (binary) evolution history. This is made possible by the developments of novel numerical methods allowing to extract star spectra from the MUSE integral field spectroscopic data and to characterize their properties by the simultaneous comparison of MUSE spectroscopy and Hubble photometry with atmospheric models.This book is a partly re-written version of the author's thesis offering a highly readable coherent text presenting not only new insights into the properties of binary interaction products but also giving students an excellent introduction into the field.

"This book introduces readers to the rich history and physics of galaxies, describing what we know about these systems as well as the mysteries we are still trying to solve"--

Early discoveries of JWST have revealed high-redshift galaxies that defy our expectations. These puzzles must be resolved through multi-wavelength observations, simulations and theoretical models. Offering an updated view of recent advances and current problems, IAU S377 is suitable for both graduate students and active researchers in the field.

Introductory Astrochemistry: From Inorganic to Life-Related Materials provides a detailed examination of the origins of planets, their satellites, and the conditions that led to life itself. Drawing on theories, experiments, observations, calculations, and analytical data from five distinct astrosciences, including astronomy, astrobiology, astrogeology, astrophysics, and astrochemistry, the book provides a comprehensive understanding of the formation and evolution of our Solar System and applies it to other solar systems. The book begins with fundamental knowledge in the astrosciences, building upon understanding systematically up to the formation of the early Solar System. This book is an interdisciplinary reference for researchers and advanced students in astrogeology, astrophysics, astrochemistry, astrobiology, astronomy, and other space sciences, helping to foster a deeper understanding of the interconnections between these disciplines.