On the Edge of the Cosmos

In a world where intergalactic wars are a common topic for movies, it is hard
to imagine that the discovery of galaxies was made less than a century ago. In
fact, it was one of the key astrophysical milestones of the first half of the
20th century, along with the revelation of the expansion of the Universe and
the understanding of the source of the stars’ energy. The second half of last
century saw the unexpected discovery of fantastic objects and extreme events
in the Universe including neutron stars, black holes, radio galaxies, quasars,
exoplanets, or stellar explosions. Modern cosmology was simultaneously
established with the Big Bang model, leading to an astonishingly precise
determination of the parameters of the Universe. The author here retraces the
adventure of twentieth-century astronomy and describes how it has changed our
vision of the cosmos. By assessing the major successes of this undertaking and
highlighting the fundamental questions that still remain, he puts into
perspective the recent progress at the dawn of the new millennium including
the acceleration of the expansion of the Universe and dark energy, dark
matter, exoplanets, black hole mergers and gravitational waves, to name only
the most spectacular discoveries. This book thus offers, in a concise and
accessible form, a synthesis of our current knowledge of astrophysics,
including many beautiful images from leading observatories.