Introduction to Cosmology

The Fourth Edition ofIntroduction to Cosmology provides a concise, authoritative study of cosmology at an introductory level. Starting from elementary principles and the early history of cosmology, the text carefully guides the student on to curved spacetimes, special and general relativity, gravitational lensing, the thermal history of the Universe, and cosmological models, including extended gravity models, black holes and Hawking's recent conjectures on the not-so-black holes. Introduction to Cosmology, Fourth Edition includes: New theoretical approaches and in-depth material on observational astrophysics and expanded sections on astrophysical phenomena Illustrations t…