Preface Acknowledgements Author biography 1 The scientific method 1.1 Introduction to the scientific method 1.2 Some mathematics 2 Early astronomy 3 Nebulae 4 Cosmic distances 4.1 The cosmic distance ladder 4.1.1 The parallax view 4.1.2 The color of starlight 4.1.3 The Cepheid variables 4.1.4 The supernova scale 4.2 Spiral nebulae:are they extragalactic? 4.3 The chemical composition of stars 5 Space-time 5.1 The speed of light 5.2 The special theory of relativity 5.3 The general theory of relativity 5.4 Universal expansion 6 The Big Bang 6.1 The structure and history of the Universe 6.2 The geometry of space-time 6.3 The father of the Big Bang 6.4 The creation of the elements 7 Cosmic microwave background radiation 7.1 The 'smoking gun'of the Big Bang 7.2 Decoupling 7.3 How bright is the CMB? 7.4 'Matter dominated' versus 'radiation dominated' Universes 7.5 How uniform is the CMB? 8 Dark matter 8.1 Dark matter defined 8.2 Non-baryonic dark matter 9 The standard model of cosmology 9.1 Nucleosynthesis 9.1.1 The first frame (t = 10-2 s) 9.1.2 The second frame (t = 10-1 s) 9.1.3 The third frame (t = 1 s) 9.1.4 The fourth frame (t = 10 s) 9.1.5 The fifth frame (t = 100 s) 9.1.6 Later frames 9.2 The birth and death of stars 9.3 The size of the Universe 10 The very early Big Bang 10.1 The four forces of nature 10.2 The quantum nature of forces 10.3 The unification of forces 10.4 The quark model 10.5 The leptons 10.6 The gluons 10.7 The standard model of high-energy physics 10.8 The history of the Universe: the early frames 10.9 Why matter rather than antimatter? 11 Inflation 11.1 The horizon problem 11.2 The flatness problem 11.3 The smoothness problem 11.4 The magnetic monopole problem 11.5 Inflation 11.6 How inflation solves the Big Bang problems 12 Dark energy 12.1 The curvature of space-time 12.2 The accelerating universal expansion 12.3 Dark energy and the CMB 12.4 Is there a signature of inflation in the CMB? 13 Higher dimensions 13.1 Field theories 13.2 Kaluza-Klein theory 13.3 Compactification 13.4 QED 13.5 Quantization of the weak and strong forces 13.6 Early attempts at a quantum theory of gravity 14 String theory 14.1 Particles and 'string' 14.2 M-theory 14.3 The multiverse 15 Black holes and wormholes 15.1 The life of the Sun 15.2 The life of massive stars 15.3 Neutron stars 15.4 Black holes 15.5 Some properties of black holes 15.6 The thermodynamics of black holes 15.7 Hawking radiation 15.8 The singularity at the center of a black hole 16 Reading list 17 Links to astronomy websites ��݋��ӛ