Bahram Mobasher - Böcker

About 13.8 billion years ago the universe was born, with space and time coming into being in the same instant. By the time the universe was 1 second old, the four forces in nature had acquired their present characteristics, elementary particles had obtained their mass, and particles constituting the nuclei of atoms were created. The nuclei of light elements, hydrogen and helium, were formed within the first 10 minutes of the birth of the universe with the first stable atoms coming to existence when the universe was 380,000 years old. Over the next billions of years, the first generation of stars and galaxies formed, planetary systems came into existence, and life on Earth appeared and evolved, resulting today’s plants and animals.Origins: The Story of the Beginning of Everything is a fascinating tale of the beginning of the universe, the origin of life, the start of civilization, and everything in between. The text explores the nature of space and time, the origin of particles, mass and chemical elements, and the first stars and galaxies. Readers learn about the origin of the planetary systems and Earth, the genesis of life on Earth and the dawning of agriculture, the first cities, civilization, and language.The book takes readers on a journey to the depth of space and beginning of time, to where stars and galaxies formed and life started, a place and a time no one has ever been. This journey does not exhaust us physically but enriches us intellectually. Through the text, readers can better understand themselves and their position in the world. The book provides a well-organized and comprehensive response to the question of where everything comes from in the most basic and scientific senses. The book is well-suited to courses in astronomy and physics.

New observations of the period between the cosmic recombination and the end of reionization are posing intriguing questions about where the first generations of stars were formed, how the first galaxies were assembled, whether these galaxies have low redshift counterparts, and what role the early galaxies played in the reionization process. Combining the new observational data with theoretical models can shed new light on open issues regarding the star formation process, its role in the reionization of the Universe, and the metal enrichment in galaxies at those early epochs. This volume brings together leading experts in the field to discuss our current level of understanding and what may come in the near future as our observational as well as theoretical tools improve. The book confronts the theory of how the first stars, black holes, and galaxies formed with current and planned observations. This synthesis is very timely, just ahead of the establishment of major new facilities, such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), a next-generation, millimeter/sub-millimeter observatory in the Atacama desert (ALMA), and ground-based Extremely Large Telescopes (ELT). Together, they will revolutionize the study of the most distant objects in the Universe.This volume is aimed at beginning graduate students but can also serve as a reference work for active researchers in the field. Apart from presenting the fundamental concepts involved, it also provides an introduction to the methods and techniques used. The book will also be useful to anyone with an astrophysical background who needs an effective starting point for learning about the first stars and galaxies.