You may have to register before you can download all our books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Provides the most complete and up-to-date account of our understanding of the Magellanic Clouds and the astrophysical processes within them.
There is a certain fascination associated with words. The manipulation of strings of symbols according to mutually accepted rules allows a language to express history as well as to formulate challenges for the future. But language changes as old words are used in a new context and new words are created to describe changing situations. How many words has the computer revolution alone added to languages? "Inorganometallic" is a word you probably have never encountered before. It is one created from old words to express a new presence. A strange sounding word, it is also a term fraught with internal contradiction caused by the accepted meanings of its constituent parts. "In organic" is the name...
This book presents new philosophical work on delusions and their impact on everyday human behavior. It explores a cluster of related topics at the intersection of philosophy of mind and psychiatry, while also charting the historical development of work on delusions. Within psychiatry, there are several disputes about the nature and origin of delusions. Whereas some authors see only an abnormal phenomenon that needs to be treated by psychological or pharmacological means, others hold that delusions can be psychologically adaptive and even have epistemic benefits. This book brings together an interdisciplinary group of contributors to build consensus around what delusions are and how they impa...
Planetary nebulae present a fascinating range of shapes and morphologies. They are ideal laboratories for the study of different astrophysical processes: atomic physics, radiative transfer, stellar winds, shocks, wind-wind interaction, and the interaction between stellar winds and the interstellar medium. In addition, planetary nebulae provide information about the late stages of stellar evolution. In the last five years studies of planetary nebulae have progressed very rapidly and new phenomena and insights have been gained. This is partly due to new observations (e.g. from the Hubble Space Telescope, the ISO satellite and new infrared and millimeter spectrographs) and partly to the advance...
A masterly survey of the last 13 years of Very Long Baseline Interferometry, reviewed in light of the most advanced astronomical observations. Topics covered include: Nonthermal emission from extragalactic radio sources; Principles of synchrotron emission in relation to astrophysics; Theory of relativistic jets; Young, powerful radio sources and their evolution; Scintillation in extragalactic radio sources; Radio and optical interferometry; Radio polarimetry; Unified schemes; Deep fields; Tropospheric and ionospheric phase calibration; Supernovae; VLBI for geodesy and geodynamics.
This review of the most up-to-date observational and theoretical information concerning the chemical evolution of the Milky Way compares the abundances derived from field stars and clusters, giving information on the abundances and dynamics of gas.
Impact cratering is an important geological process on all solid planetary bodies, and, in the case of Earth, may have had major climatic and biological effects. Most terrestrial impact craters have been erased or modified beyond recognition. However, major impacts throw ejecta over large areas of the Earth's surface. Recognition of these impact ejecta layers can help fill in the gaps in the terrestrial cratering record and at the same time provide direct correlation between major impacts and other geological events, such as climatic changes and mass extinctions. This book provides the first summary of known distal impact ejecta layers
This book reviews the interconnection of cosmology and particle physics over the last decade. It provides introductory courses in supersymmetry, superstring and M-theory, responding to an increasing interest to evaluate the cosmological consequences of these theories. Based on a series of extended courses providing an introduction to the physics of the very early universe, in the light of the most recent advances in our understanding of the fundamental interactions, it reviews all the classical issues (inflation, primordial fluctuations, dark matter, baryogenesis), but also introduces the most recent ideas about what happened at the Big Bang, and before.
This book consists of invited reviews written by world-renowned experts on the subject of the outskirts of galaxies, an upcoming field which has been understudied so far. These regions are faint and hard to observe, yet hide a tremendous amount of information on the origin and early evolution of galaxies. They thus allow astronomers to address some of the most topical problems, such as gaseous and satellite accretion, radial migration, and merging. The book is published in conjunction with the celebration of the end of the four-year DAGAL project, an EU-funded initial training network, and with a major international conference on the topic held in March 2016 in Toledo. It thus reflects not o...