The Music of the Big Bang: Cosmic Microwave Background and the New Cosmology: The Cosmic Microwave Background and the New Cosmology [Rilegato]

New observations of the cosmic microwave background radiation show that early universe resounded with harmonious oscillations (acoustic sound).
How loud it was can only say the One who witnessed it. Not much I can add here to Product Description (Editorial Review). But let me tell you - this is very, very well constructed, short and easy to read popular science book. Of course it is mostly about CMB, how it was detected and has become arguably the most important source of information helping cosmologists understand the geometry and contents of the Universe (other complementary source of cosmological knowledge are observations, such as the distant type supernovae or the distribution of galaxies in space). We will learn what has been concluded and corroborated by studying the acoustic signals in the CMB provided by previous missions like COBE or BOOMERANG, as well as what is expected by Planck/Herschel space mission and what the obtained results can potentially reveal.
But this is not all. This text covers almost all other important topics of large scale cosmology/astrophysics, among them (although briefly)intriguing controversy of cosmic topology (see "The Wraparound Universe" by Jean-Pierre Luminet).It is possible that we live in finite Poincare dodecahedral space giving impression of living in a space 120 times larger. Many scientists (including Amedeo Balbi) are skeptical of it, but if you read Luminet's excellent book, WMAP measurements fall well below the plateau in the range of the lower wave numbers, named quadrupole and the octopole (far left part of the power spectrum of CMB). The infinite Euclidean cosmological model (giving the theoretical plot for curve: 'angular size or wave number' vs. 'temperature fluctuations') cannot explain this, while well proportioned finite model for the universe with multiply-connected topologies explains it very well ! Planck spacecraft, with its 10 times as many measurements with good signal-to-noise ratios as WMAP, will undoubtedly penetrate this part of the spectrum, therefore will solve topology question among many others.
Highly recommended cosmology gem !

This is certainly a delicious little book (about 150 pages) about the wealth of information that is extracted little by little from the different observational tools used to study the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation, specially from the graph of the so called acoustic oscillations (caused by the radiation pressure) in the primordial plasma according to the different angular sizes. For example, the difference between the two highest peaks of the graph is related to the amount of baryonic matter. Apparently the Wilkinson probe only extracted about 10% of the information to be thought contained in the CMB. The Planck surveyor, recently launched by ESA, will provide more information that will help us to understand better dark energy and the topology of the universe, among other things. The observable universe seems to be nearly flat, but then it can be either infinite like the standard Euclidean space we study in the college mathematics textbooks or it can be one of the 17 classes of flat compact spaces that mathematicians have classified. In an infinite universe every event happens an infinite number of times, a hard-to-swallow consequence of quantum mechanics. But if our universe is compact then we would live in a house of mirrors and the topology would be similar to that of those primitive PC games.

The incompatibility of the two major physics theories, general relativity and quantum field theory, which normally can be used separately, but not at the time of the Big Bang, makes it difficult to understand the first nanoseconds. But this is important as when we approach the initial moment more and more things happen on shorter and shorter timescale. String theory is an attempt to have a "theory of everything", but, so far, it has not been tested experimentally so that one of its main contributors obtained the Fields Medal, but not the Nobel prize. There are some approaches to test some consequences of string theory by studying the CMB radiation.

The book is written in a very didactic manner as when the author compares deaf Beethoven capable of composing great music without hearing with astronomers obtaining information of the sounds of the primordial plasma by looking at the CMB.

A highly recommended book for those interested in the recent advances of cosmology.

I really enjoyed this book. It is very well written and an extremely good introduction to Cosmic Microwave Background and Physics of Cosmology. I recommend it highly.