An Introduction to the Science of Cosmology , Derek Raine and Ted Thomas IOP, Philadelphia, 2001. $50.00 paper (220 pp.). ISBN 0-7503-0405-7
Teaching cosmology has always been exciting and yet difficult: exciting because cosmology is one of a few subjects that even “poets” want to learn, difficult because the general public and many students often have distorted perceptions of it. Cosmology is not about “wonders of creation.” It is about physics: sometimes exotic, but always nontrivial, physics.
It is therefore commendable that Derek Raine and Ted Thomas undertook the task of writing a cosmology textbook for physics and astronomy majors, who constitute an often-overlooked category of students. Several acceptable textbooks are available for graduate students, and a sea of introductory astronomy textbooks treat cosmology with varying success. But the graduate texts are a small step above the level of most undergraduates, and introductory astronomy is useless for physics and astronomy majors. With An Introduction to the Science of Cosmology , Raine and Thomas have tried to cover that gap, and they deserve high praise for doing so, despite a few weaknesses in the book. Breaking new ground is always difficult.
I was especially pleased with the book’s modest size, and with the brilliant idea of using brief overviews to cover topics. Most students will surely prefer this book’s half-page chapters to five-page ones. Regrettably, my initial enthusiasm abated when I started reading the book. My first impression is that the book was written in a hurry. It looks as if the two authors wrote parts of it without talking much to each other, and the result is a disappointing lack of consistency.
Especially annoying is the inconsistency of units: one chapter may use SI units, and the next may switch to CGS. As a practicing scientist, I am used to unit conversion, but many a freshman will be totally confused and frustrated. Another worrisome feature of the book is its attempt at unifying cosmological notation. It is indeed true that cosmologists’ notation is far from perfect, but trying to redefine Ω0 will worsen the problem, not resolve it. Equally confusing is intermixing lower- and upper-case subscripts. Most graduate textbooks avoid the practice, so a student who continues in cosmology will have a hard time adapting between notations.
A few other things cry out for improvement. The quality of several figures is low even by journal standards. In a few places, frustrating physics mistakes creep in. For example, photoionized gas cannot emit x rays. I also found some of the problems uneven in difficulty. For example, calculating the number density of ionizing photons at recombination is a relatively simple exercise for an average undergraduate, but estimating the evaporation time for a galaxy requires a considerable knowledge of galactic dynamics.
The book is well organized and the format is well thought out. The few omissions and mistakes do not outweigh the strength of the book. Those mistakes can and should be corrected in the second edition, which I will gladly use in my upper-level undergraduate courses.
