Customer Reviews

Physical Cosmology (Princeton series in physics)

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My copy of this book was published in 1971 and used for an undergraduate physics course that I took in the Fall of 1973. For an undergraduate physics major, Peeble's Cosmology seemed like a satisfying introduction to that topic in those days. Interesting topics included the age of the elements, Hubble's constant and the expansion of the universe, the mass density of the universe and the luminosity density of the night sky, as well as the microwave background due to the primeval fireball (i.e. the big bang). I was especially happy to have read about this last topic since I once attended a lecture given by Nobel Laureate and Big Bang Microwave Background guru Arno Penzias for the benefit of the incoming class of post-docs at Bell Labs. In those days Penzias was the Director of Research at Bell Labs and known affectionately by his nick-name "The Big Banger".

Peebles book does not assume a knowledge of general and special relativity or quantum phyics--as such it is accessible to almost anyone with a B.S. degree in physical science or engineering.