Customer Reviews

An Introduction to Modern Cosmology

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This book is the most clearly written book I have ever read. Liddle has a knack for making difficult concepts easy to comprehend through his use of analogies and vividly accurate descriptions. The cosmological ideas are explained at an intuitive level and have been imprinted on my mind forever. This book is a great introduction for the less mathematically minded though also a great source of information for others. This book book covers a great amount of cosmology the big bang, nucloesynthesis, inflation, cosmological models etc and is set out in a very logical order. I would thoroughly recommend this as an introduction although for those interested in more mathematical rigour other text books may be necessary.

Well done Dr. Liddle ! A great achievement .............

I came across this book because it was required reading for my cosmology course. The book gives a Newtonian (it only briefly mentions the much more complicated General Relativity equations) overview of the current theories about the universe: its mass, its age, its shape and its ultimate destiny. The text is very readable, equations are explained properly and the diagrams are useful. The reader is left with a good impression of why the currently proposed cosmological models are sensible.

The book puts the case for the hot big bang model, which is by far the most popular cosmological model at this time. There is a chapter on the successes of this model: explanation of the cosmic background radiation, universal expansion, and the relative abundance of elements in the early universe. There follows a chapter on the major problems of this model: how come the background radiation looks the same (to within one part in a hundred thousand) everywhere, even when light hasn't had time to travel between all these regions? How did the universe become structured (into things such as stars) when physics predicts that matter should be homogeneously spread? And why does the universe (seemingly) possess the exact right density (to almost infinitessimal precision) to stay flat, as we see it today? Inflation theory offers some help, but at the same time asks a bigger question: which of the many inflation theories (if any) is right? Liddle doesn't go into much detail on this point, but you get a good introduction into what inflation is and why such an odd theory would be proposed.

I'm making it sound as if the big bang model has more problems than it solves, which I don't think it does (heck, it's the best theory we've got). But the problems are more interesting!

On which subject, there are problems (solvable ones!) at the end of each chapter, with brief solutions at the end of the book.

That is a very good introduction book to cosmology at an undergraduate level. Although there are not many complicated equations, the physics ideas are very clear. It covers a lot of materials with easy-to-understand languages. The big bang model is the main part, with concise introduction to dark matter/energy, neuclosynthesis, cosmic microwave background, inflation etc. After reading this book, you will have a general idea about most of the concepts in cosmology and about what is going on in modern cosmology. Each chapter is accompanied by some problems, which are good exercise to understand the context. But I think it is a little outdated now, so maybe you should buy the 2nd edition.

This is a highly readable introduction to Cosmology. The author states clearly that the approach is grounded in physics rather than mathematics and indeed, any reader with a basic grasp of single-variable calculus would cope with the derivations that are presented. Its ready accessibility would make it an enjoyable introduction for those working on their own wanting more than a 'popular 'account of Cosmology.I have adapted and used some of the material and problems for my year 13 physics class.

The main body of the book is self-contained and requires no further material for the interested reader to get to grips with the rudiments of the standard cosmological models. More complex results are stated without derivation and some are used as the basis for the exercises. The 'Advanced' topics require a little more of the reader and are presented as brief summaries rather than being rigorous. For example ,the chapter on General Relativistic Cosmology is 'for those readers who have experienced some general relativity'. As a teacher of physics,I found this book to be a very useful addition to my library.

As a textbook author in a totally unrelated field (Pharmacokinetics), I was awestruck at how well this book was able to teach me a brand new subject in which I had developed an interest. It is rare for an author to be simultaneously as knowledgeable and as transparent as Dr. Liddle. With great lucidity, this book starts from scratch and uses a step-by-step approach to construct, in the end, an imposing edifice of cosmological knowledge. The book is eminently suitable for self teaching. I would characterize this book as the ideal introductory text in the field. It is also a bargain!

An excellent book for the for the beginner in Cosmology and requires only first year calculus to understand the first section of the book which derives all the formulas using Newton's Laws. The last third of the book uses General Relativity to derive the equations and goes deeper into the math and physics. The problems are interesting and help with the understanding of the subject. All the answer to the problems are given which is helpful.

I sent this book back and got my mony back.
Not because it was not a good book, but it was way beyond my mathmatical ability to read it.
This is a very technical book, more geard towards a serious scientist.

Dr Liddle was my academic tutor at Imperial College, London.

I have every trust that his books is as clear as his tutorials.