Reddit reviews Modern Cosmology

Even though you want the full tensor treatment, I would first go through Ryden and make sure you understand the basics well. This is a great undergraduate standard written at the level for those who know "calculus, linear algebra and classical mechanics" and teaches the undergraduate level basics as well as anything.


After this, the standard modern graduate texts are Modern Cosmology by Dodelson and Physical Foundations of Cosmology by Mukhanov. Both use tensors and the full GR treatment with the former, in my opinion, being an easier text (which I think have some great initial chapters describing GR) but Mukonov going through some very advanced concepts like renormalization in quantum field theory, etc...

In addition to textbooks, Baumann's lecture notes on inflation are very good.

Good luck.

Astrophysics is an extremely open ended field, so it's tough to point at one book that covers (even briefly) all topics. However, Melia's High Energy Astrophysics is pretty good for that, although it is really geared for juniors/seniors and beginning grads.

For cosmology, I really liked Dodelson's Modern Cosmology. Despite there being some hairy sections I think it is pretty accessible, and it has problems in it if that is your thing.

> But there must be senses we haven't come across yet.

There must be? I admit there probably are, but to say must about something we haven't come across yet is to directly assert something there can be no evidence for. So I'm throwing that sentence out.

> We are aware of only 5 and our measuring of things is very limited.

Actually we have more than five senses. In addition to vision, audition, olfaction, gustation, and tactition, we also have equilibrioception, thermoception, proprioception, nociception, and chronoception. Other animals possess some other senses we know about, such as echolocation, electroreception, magnetoception, or polariception.

> For example we can see what makes up a cell using a microscope but can't see yet what makes up what makes up the cell (nucleus, etc..)

I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of you being wrong. And it doesn't stop there. Or even there.

> Just because we don't see it now doesn't mean it can't exist....?

Correct. There might be. Unless it contradicts itself or physics, that won't mean it doesn't exist. But just like how nobody believed in the extra planet before the wobble, there's no reason to believe any other thing until its wobble shows up. So until we do see it, we're not going to just believe it because it might be. It has to actually show up first.

> Thermodynamics is built on the study of energy that transfers (heat and work) which still lacks the true answer.

No, these are very well understood concepts. They are in fact the single most well-understood of all concepts in physics. Energy is conserved. It is never created from nothing, and it is never destroyed. It can change from useful energy into a form with higher entropy, which makes it less useful to us, but the energy is still all there.

> If nothing was ever created or destroyed then how can you answer the ever expanding universe?

Let's assume that I don't in fact know the answer to this. I mean, I do understand this phenomenon, and could perhaps in time explain it to you. But let's skip that. Today, I don't know. Not a clue. It still doesn't mean anything's being created, or that the amount of energy in the universe is changing. And even if it were, it still wouldn't prove a creator-god. Just that the universe-as-we-had-previously-understood-it wasn't a closed system and things could funnel in from elsewhere in the greater universe-as-we-would-then-understand-it.

> The big bang started with all of it already there? Where did all of it come from?

It didn't come from anywhere. It was never not here. The big bang is the beginning, and it was here then.

> Evidence please.

Start here.

Many theories deal with inflation. They all fall under the umbrella of "inflationary cosmology." I am not a theorist but as far as I understand "big bang inflationary cosmologies" currently receive the most attention. String theory type theories and loop quantum type theories can both incorporate inflationary effects so its certainly not limited to the "classical big bang" model I detailed.

Beyond pages such as this I would say you could get a hold of this book, Modern Cosmology By Scott Dodelson. It is a good overview of modern cosmological models at the high undergraduate level. The math it presents is targeted at physic students in their senior year of undergraduate (my words, not the author) but that doesn't mean a non-physicist can't get anything out of it.

>Science, which ought to never claim absolute truth or have unchallengeable dogma, is doing precisely this and metaphysical naturalism has become its own religion.

I've never claimed that science is 100% true or is unchallengeable. It is perfectly possible for some one to flip everything on its head, or change it slightly.

>Do we at least have the ability to go to the earliest possible time and see what was there?

We don't have the ability to go and see if George Washington existed either. Are you going to claim he didn't exist? We analyze his possible existence by looking at evidence we have to day.

We do the same in cosmology.

>Testable, repeatable evidence?

Yes.

It is possible you don't have an understanding of the current state of cosmology.

If you have a background this is a very good introduction to cosmology:
>http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Cosmology-Scott-Dodelson/dp/0122191412