Dark Matter and Cosmic Web Story

The concepts of dark matter and the cosmic web are some of the most significant developments in cosmology in the past century. They have decisively changed the classical cosmological paradigm, which was first elaborated upon during the first half of the 20th century but ran into serious problems in the second half. Today, they are integral parts of modern cosmology, which explains everything from the Big Bang to inflation to the large-scale structure of the Universe.

Dark Matter and Cosmic Web Story describes the contributions that led to a paradigm shift from the Eastern point of view. It describes the problems with the classical view, the attempts to solve them, the difficulties encountered by those solutions, and the conferences where the merits of the new concepts were debated. Amidst the science, the story of scientific work in a small country occupied by the Soviet Union and the tumultuous events that led to its breakup are detailed as well.

The development of cosmology has often treated as a West-East conflict between the American school led by Jim Peebles in Princeton and the Soviet team led by Yakov Zeldovich in Moscow. Actually, the development of ideas was broader, and a certain role played the Tartu team. The Tartu cosmology school was founded by Ernst Öpik and has its own traditions and attitude to science. In the new edition of the book the interplay between three cosmology schools is written in more detail. The recent development of dark matter and cosmic web studies is described, as well as the evolution of global properties of the cosmic web.

This book is accompanied by a website which contains additional material: copies of the originals of some crucial papers, astronomical movies, and movies which showcase the private life of the author.

In this second edition, two chapters on the statistical description of the cosmic web and its development were added, as well as chapter on the sociology of science. To keep the length of this book reasonable, a lot of reorganisation of the text has been done as well.

Contents:

• Preface
• Preface to Second Edition
• Prologue
• History of Estonia, My Family Roots, and Tartu Observatory
• Classical Cosmological Paradigm
• Structure of Galaxies
• Structure of Galaxies and Global Dark Matter
• The Nature of Dark Matter
• The Real Universe I: The Cosmic Web
• The Real Universe II: Structure of the Cosmic Web
• The Model Universe
• Statistical Description of the Cosmic Web
• Evolution of the Cosmic Web
• Sociology of Science
• Bibliography
• Index

Readership: Advanced undergraduate and graduate students, researchers and practitioners in the fields of cosmology, astronomy and astrophysics. Level: Students and professionals, hobby astronomers and general readers with minimal mathematical background.
Key Features:

• The development of the concepts of dark matter and cosmic web as a change in the world view (paradigm) in cosmology
• A personal view of the development of dark matter and cosmic web concepts as seen by a non-Western scientist
• Description of scientific work and social activity in a small country occupied by Soviet Union: the participation of scientists in processes which led to the collapse of the Soviet Empire, and to the end of the Cold War

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