Cesar Augusto Zen Vasconcellos - Böcker

This volume, which is a compilation of lecture notes, seminar talks and contributed material presented at the above conference, discusses the modern approaches to hadronic physics: chiral perturbation theory, effective Lagrangians, models for hadronic structure and nuclear matter properties, method of light front quantization, etc. The lecture notes provide comprehensive pedagogical descriptions of methods and achievements in the corresponding topics, while the seminar talks review recent selected frontier work. The various contributions cover a wide spectrum of research problems in hadronic physics.

Recent discoveries in astronomy and relativistic astrophysics as well as experiments on particle and nuclear physics have blurred the traditional boundaries of physics. It is believed that at the birth of the Universe, a whirlwind of matter and antimatter, of quarks and exotic leptons, briefly appeared and merged into a sea of energy. The new phenomena and new states of matter in the Universe revealed the deep connection between quarks and the Cosmos. Motivated by these themes, this book discusses different topics: gravitational waves, dark matter, dark energy, exotic contents of compact stars, high-energy and gamma-ray astrophysics, heavy ion collisions and the formation of the quark-gluon plasma in the early Universe. The book presents some of the latest researches on these fascinating themes and is useful for experts and students in the field.

There are reasons to believe the 21st century will be the best ever for astrophysics: the James Webb Space Telescope will extend nearly twenty times the present observational limit of visible light; neutrino massiveness opens a new window for exploration on dark energy and dark matter physics and is expected to provide insights into the fate of the Universe; the Higgs boson may allow for an understanding of the weakness of gravity; gravitational waves produced at the birth of the Universe and by compact stellar objects (supermassive black holes, black hole/neutron star mergers, gamma-ray bursts, white dwarf inspirals) have unveiled a new area of astronomy. Against this background, compact stars, the theme of this volume, present unique astrophysical laboratories for probing the fabric of space-time and the building blocks of matter and their interactions at physical regimes not attainable in terrestrial laboratories.

This book provides a unique view of Astronomy in Culture, Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy involving ancient civilizations in Latin America, emphasizing scientific and cultural knowledge combined with historical, cognitive, archaeological and anthropological aspects. Topics covered in the book include different associations of ancient civilizations with the stars and planets, whether in farming, architecture, social organization, beliefs, myths, religion, metric systems, calendar construction, shrines, and variations in astronomical research methods based on the types of material evidence available. Special attention is paid to the war cycles associated with observed celestial events, day-counting calendars, including movements in the sky and written evidences from codices, and in particular the Andean and Inca traditions of astronomically associated shrines, caves and celestial alignments of monuments and temples.

This book provides in a pedagogical way some up-to-date reviews of properties of strongly interacting matter produced at RHIC, analytical approaches to QCD, and nuclear and high-energy astrophysics. It also contains schematic outlines of topics on high-precision non-perturbative QCD, first results from RHIC, and heavy-ion collisions at LHC with the ATLAS detector.The proceedings have been selected for coverage in:• Index to Scientific & Technical Proceedings (ISTP CDROM version / ISI Proceedings)

"The book concentrates attention on extended alternative theories of gravity and on the best astrophysical laboratories to probe the strong gravity-field regime: black holes, pulsars and neutron stars … Readers will likely share the satisfaction the editor and contributors say they experienced as they organized the book."SirReadaLotFor more than a century, our understanding of gravitational physics was based on Albert Einstein's theory of General Relativity, which fundamentally changed our understanding of the Universe, its origin, and its evolutionary process. General Relativity accurately describes a large number of phenomena on very different scales. As such, it has been very well tested and its remarkable predictions are compatible with most experimental and observational data. However, the observational and experimental results compatible with General Relativity fall in its vast majority under the weak gravitational field regime. In recent years, discrepancies between the data and the corresponding predictions of General Relativity have been observed and have generated intense research activity. One of the most critical aspects of General Relativity is the presence of singularities in extreme physical situations. These discrepancies indicate that either the parameters of the theory must be modified in the regime of strong field gravity/high energy and large space-time curvature, or the theory itself should be modified. In this book, we focus our attention on extended alternative gravity theories and the best astrophysical laboratories to probe the strong field regime: black holes, pulsars, and neutron stars.

This book presents scientific research on the central theme of new states of matter and new phenomena in the universe. The topics covered range from the big bang, through topics including the formation of exotic stars, black holes and the plasma of quarks and gluons by heavy ion reactions, to the influence of dark matter and dark energy in the evolution of the universe.Scientific interest in these themes has been growing: together with the development of major projects such as AUGER, LHC, FERMI Telescope, FAIR/GSI and GEO/LIGO, the diversity and scope of research on such themes has been on the rise. The content is detailed enough to capture the interest of experts in the field and is useful for future explorations on these fascinating themes.

It has been over 100 years since the presentation of the Theory of General Relativity by Albert Einstein, in its final formulation, to the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences. To celebrate 100 years of general relativity, World Scientific publishes this volume with a dual goal: to assess the current status of the field of general relativity in broad terms, and discuss future directions. The volume thus consists of broad overviews summarizing major developments over the past decades and their perspective contributions.