The Cosmic Revolutionary's Handbook (or: How to Beat the Big Bang)

The Cosmic Revolutionary’s Handbook (Or: How to Beat the Big Bang)
Contents
Preface
1 Understanding Science
	Just What Is Science?
	Just What Is a Model?
	What Makes a Good Scientific Model?
	The Real Process of Science Part 1: Publishing
	The Real Process of Science Part 2: Peer Review
	The Real Process of Science Part 3: Presentation
	Does Science Want a Revolution?
	How to Read This Book
2 How Dark Is the Night?
	The World before the Revolution
	Aristotle’s Physics
	Aristotle Looks to the Heavens
	Copernicus, Revolutionary
	Newton’s Universe
	Spreading out the Heavens
	Seeing the Stars
	How the Big Bang Theory Solves Olbers’s Paradox
	A Rival Falls: A Static, Eternal, Infinite Universe
3 Run for the Hills!
	Red Light, Blue Light
	The Music of Atoms
	Great Galloping Galaxies!
	How Far to the Stars?
	Blinking in the Dark
	Far Away Fireworks
	Redder and Further
	How to Shift Light
	How the Big Bang Theory Explains Hubble’s Law
	A Rival Falls: A Static Universe
	Anomalous Redshifts: A Problem for Hubble?
4 Going Gently into That Good Night
	The Slowing of the Clock
	Tick-Tock, Supernova Clock
	Observing the Dilation of Time
	The Fading of the Light
	Cosmological Complexity
	To the Very Hearts of Galaxies
	The Problem with Galaxies
	Manipulations and Corrections
	A Rival Falls: Putting Tired Light to Bed
5 An Ever-Changing Universe
	Is the Night Sky Really Dark?
	A Canadian, Some Stars, and a Cold Photon Bath
	The Unavoidable Hiss from Space
	On the Temperature of Light
	Matter and Light, Together
	On the Temperature of Space
	The Hot Big Bang
	A Rival Falls: Steady-State Cosmology
	Evolution of the Temperature of the CMB
6 The Wood for the Trees
	Seeing Radio Waves
	Star-Like, Star Bright
	What Is a Quasar?
		Clue 1: They’re All Redshifted
		Clue 2: They’re Like No Star We’ve Ever Seen
		Clue 3: Something in the Quasar Is Orbiting at Colossal Speeds
		Clue 4: Quasars Flicker
		The Chief Suspect
	What Did the Quasar See?
	Making Hydrogen Sing
	Mapping the Universe in Silhouette
	Galaxies and the Forest
	A Contender Falls: Anomalous Quasar Redshifts
7 We Are (Mostly) Made of Stars
	A Universe of Atoms
	Measuring the Elements … in Space!
	Heavy Hydrogen in the Heavens
	Alchemist to the Stars!
	How Do We Know How Stars Work?
	Can Stars Make the Elements?
	The Magic Furnace
	Computing the Big Bang
	The Great Cosmic Bake-Off
	A Contender Falls: The Electric Universe
8 Ripples in the Night Sky
	The Missing Magnetic Monopole Mystery
	The Inflationary Universe
	Seeing to the Horizon
	Enter Inflation
	Molehills out of Mountains
	How Curved Is My Universe?
	Stretching Your Space
	Is Inflation a Contender?
	The “Exploding Universe” Party
	The “We Don’t Need No Inflation” Party
	If Not Inflation, What?
9 Balls from Left-Field
	Challenging the Standard: The Linear Universe
	Dirac Large Number Hypothesis
	Redshift Quantization
		Claim 1: Pairs, Groups and Clusters of Galaxies Show Preferred Redshifts, Relative to Each Other
		Claim 2: Galaxies from Across the Universe Show a Preference for Certain Redshifts, on Large Scales (>100 Mpc)
	White Hole Cosmology
	Cosmic Microwave Background Scepticism
	A Never-Ending Stream of Ideas
10 How to Do Better than the Big Bang
	The Dark Universe
	Galaxy Formation and Galactic Satellites
	Redshift Drift
	Looking for Lithium
	Primordial Neutrinos
	Unmaking Antimatter
	Primordial Gravitational Waves
	The Birth of the Universe
	Where to from Here
Acknowledgements
Endnotes
	Chapter 1
	Chapter 2
	Chapter 3
	Chapter 4
	Chapter 5
	Chapter 6
	Chapter 7
	Chapter 8
	Chapter 9
	Chapter 10
Further Reading
	Popular Level Introductions to Cosmology
	Cosmology Textbooks
Index