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Cosmology is the science about the structure and evolution of the Universe on the large scale, its past, present and future This is a very broad and rapidly developing science It is based on modern fundamental Physics, Astronomy and employs a variety of mathematical methods
in cosmology The annotated bibliography at the end of the text provides a selection of recommended cosmology books, at the popular, intermediate, and advanced levels Many people (too many to name individually) helped in the making of this book; I thank them all I owe particular thanks to the students who
years there has been increasing demand for cosmology to be taught at university in an accessible manner Traditionally, cosmology was taught, as it was to me, as the tail end of a general relativity course, with a derivation ofthe metric for an expanding Universe and a few solutions Such a course fails to capture the flavour of modem cosmology
However, we can draw some conclusions based on these simple examples: History of the universe: Early universe Radiation dominated Many, many photons, high energy density This density drops the fastest (due to redshift) Eventually too little radiation energy density Middle universe Matter dominated 47 kyr – 10 Gyr
Cosmology is the attempt to understand in scientific terms the structure and evolution of the universe as a whole This ambition has been with us since the ancient Greeks, even if the developments in modern cosmology have provided a picture of the universe dramatically different from that of Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle