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Cosmological Physics (Cambridge Astrophysics S.)

Cosmological Physics (Cambridge Astrophysics S.)

List Price: $55.00
Your Price: $41.26
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Cosmology resources
Review: Great book. Unlike many other cosmology books it is very up to date. Should be used with another book, such as Rowan-Robinson or Kolb and Turner for class atmosphere. It is a little lacking in examples, while the presentation is very good. This book is for the undergraduate senior or the graduate student.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Wearysome notation
Review: I bought this text because it seemed to cover all the topics in which I was interested. Alas, the coverage is far from uniform and the notation is constantly changing. No point in requesting clarification directly from Peacock. In reply to, "some symbols are used before they are defined," you'll be told that "the meanings of the symbols are well known to any physics undergraduate." Complain that one of those well-known symbols seems to have an entirely different meaning in some other section of the text, and you'll be told to look at such and such an equation for the new definition. Mathematicians who have their own set of standard symbols, such as ^ for the outer product will find themselves completely baffled.
Text lacks all mention of loop quantum gravity.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Borrow it first .
Review: I got this book on short term inter-library loan hoping to further my knowledge of inflationary cosmology. I don't think that this is a suitable volume from which to begin study of this topic unless you have a supervisor on hand for occasional help.The chapter on inflation for example summarises standard results. I found derivations of these not to be explained fully enough for a first encounter. The derivation of the basic equations of motion for the scalar field cosmologies from the Lagrangian is an example.The slow -roll parameters and their relationship to the Friedmann equations are summarised - (a much fuller discussion of these is given in Scott Watson's e -book - see below).This sometimes terse approach can make the book heavy going for people like me working on their own for 'fun'.I did enjoy the chapter though as I had already studied a lot of the material using John Norbury's e-book 'General Relativity'(pdf and html available -contains quite a few errors but inflation is very clearly explained),Scott Watson's (pdf/html)'Exposition on inflationary cosmology'and numerous preprints from the e-archives. With mastery of this material under my belt I therefore found Peacock's material on this topic readable and enjoyable although I did not learn anything new from it. The problems (and solution hints) were good.I enjoyed the chapters on the rudiments of GR (being already very familiar with this albeit from long ago)but again the treatment is brief and constitutes a review rather than a place to start learning GR from.
Dipping into the chapters of material new to me, I could see little hope of personal progress here using this book as a starting point.I realise however that the book covers a huge amount of varied material much of which has been developed in the last twenty years and the book needs to be kept to a sensible size.My perspective is that of someone dabbling independently in their sparetime twenty years after leaving university. I daresay a beginning PhD student might view it in a different light.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Possibly the worst book that I own
Review: This book is possibly the worst book that I own. I found it totally incomprehensible. The other reviewer must have only flipped through the book and not attempted to read it. I admit that the book looks good when flipping through it, but don't be decieved.

This book was used in a cosmology class that I took, but was abandoned after 1 week because it was so bad.

Try to find another book!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Excellent book.
Review: Very lucid and up-to-date description of cosmology and relativity, with the right balance of qualitative discussion, presentation of the important observations, and mathematical formalism.


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