'Cosmic Paradoxes' was an outcome of a Conference-Summer Course on 'Astrophysical Cosmology: Frontier Questions' held at El Escorial, Madrid, on August 16–19, 1993. The Scientific Directors were John C Mather, Director of NASA's COBE (Cosmic Background Radiation Explorer), and Jose M Torroja, Secretary of the Spanish Academy of Sciences. Julio A Gonzalo, UAM, was in charge of coordinating the event. The first speaker was Ralph A Alpher, one of the pioneers who predicted very early the CBR (Cosmic Background Radiation). The CBR was observed by A Penzias and R Wilson, Bell Telephone Labs, in 1965. Thereafter it was measured with unprecedented precision by the COBE in 1989, characterizing the Planck spectral distribution of the CBR (J C Mather) and detecting its minute anisotropies (G Smoot). In 2003 the WMAP, NASA's satellite successor of the COBE, confirmed COBE's results, and gave an excellent quantitative estimate of the 'age' of the universe as 13.7 ± 0.2 Gyrs, in support of the Big Bang theory of cosmic origins.

In the Third Edition of this book, almost coincident with the launch reports of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), includes recent work discussing evidence in favor of an open finite universe. A further discussion of the Heisenberg–Lemaitre time (Appendix D) takes into consideration that the cosmic expansion velocity at very early times is Ṙ(yHL)≫c and reviews in more detail the thermal history of the universe.

Contents:

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  Facts and Principles:

  
  
  
  
  • Energy Conservation
  
  
  • Energy Non-Conservation Means Too Much Freedom
  
  
  • The Four Interactions
  
  
  • Matter, Radiation, Particles
  
  
  • The Dark Night Sky and Olbers' Paradox
  
  
  
  


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  Relativistic Cosmology:

  
  
  
  
  • General Relativity and Cosmology
  
  
  • The Friedmann–Lemaitre Solutions
  
  
  • The Role of Radiation Pressure
  
  
  • The Einstein–Lemaitre Correspondence
  
  
  • The Universal Constants
  
  
  • Rigorous Solutions of Einstein's Cosmological Equation
  
  
  
  


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  More Paradoxes:

  
  
  
  
  • The Missing Mass and Dark Energy Paradoxes
  
  
  • The Accelerating Universe Paradox
  
  
  • The Photon-to-Baryon Ratio Paradox
  
  
  • Cosmic Zero-Point Energy
  
  
  
  


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  A Contingent Universe:

  
  
  
  
  • The Universe is Finite, Open and Contingent
  
  
  • The Very Early Universe: Indeterminacy or Uncertainty
  
  
  • Why an Open (k < 0) Cosmic Model is Better
  
  
  • Singular Moments in Cosmic History
  
  
  • A Brief Outline: World Events and Cosmological Discoveries from –4500 to 2010
  
  
  
  


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  Appendices:

  
  
  
  
  • Constraints on the General Solutions of Einstein's Cosmological Equations by Hubble Parameter Times Cosmic Age: A Historical Perspective
  
  
  • Physics and the Universe: From the Sumerians to the Late-Twentieth Century
  
  
  • 'Cosmos & Chaos' (Rome 2019)
  
  
  • On the Heisenberg–Lemaitre Time vs Planck's Time
  
  
  • The Medieval Roots of Contemporary Science
  
  
  
  

Readership: Students in physics and general public interested in science.