3  The Background Cosmology

We assume isotropy and homogeneity for the backgrond cosmology. Einstein's Equations are assumed to be true with a non-zero cosmological constant . The metric for the background cosmology is taken to be of the form (Standard Notation is used)

Ignore the post.. I am just trying built-in plugin for firefox.

Now that I have decided to stick with blogger, experimentation with the wordpress blog comes to a close! If anyone has a subscription this feed, edit your reader to fetch my blogger feed. Thanks!

So, after pondering over a switch to wordpress, I have decided(firmly) to stick with blogger.

• One of the major attractions of wordpress.com was the new Regulus template. To counter this, I decided to look for a nice theme for my blogger site. But, no single readily avalible theme satisfied me.
• But, that blogger “rounders” theme was real boring.. i simply had to get a new theme!

• So, here is a modified version of Andreas02 (taken from oswd) The original one was designed for a personal/company website. I had to redo the css to make it work for blogger. I have been careful not to goof while re-writing the css. But, one problem that persists is that all images included in my posts insist on being left-aligned. But, this problem must wait… I have no patience to correct it now!

Comments/Cribs on the new theme are welcome!!

Now, if any google person is reading this …

• I badly want categories. This is too old a concept to be missing in the market-leader’s scheme of things.

Who doesn’t love biographies of great scientists??
But, unfortunately, it is only a handful of scientists who capture the imagination of the public. And it is their biographies which sell like hot-cakes. Here, I list some non-so-well known biographies which I really liked..

“Chandra” by Kameshwar Wali is one of the most inspiring books that I have ever read. I have read the entire book twice and would love to read it again. It is not really a scientific biography. Non-physicists should have no problems with the book. Quite a lot of space would have been devoted to his days at Cambridge. And, the famous Eddington-Chandra episode is surely the highlight of this section!!
The book ends with a very long “interview” with Chandra. In this, you will find him talking about a huge number of things : Physics, India, Art, Personal life, why he never came back to India etc. The book is a fitting tribute to this great man.

ps: I have found that very few in India know about Chandra. I have his photo in my room and not a single visitor to  has been able to identify him. Hence added it to the not-so-well-known list!

Next up is Climbing the Mountain., a biography of Julian Schwinger by Jagdish Mehra. Schwinger won the Nobel with Feynman and Tomonoga and (unlike Feynman) remained outside the public glare to a large extent. This book is more of a scientific biography. But, it has enough juicy anecdotes to make it enjoyable for non-physicists. Much like Dirac, he isolated himself from the rest of the physics community in the later years. This book and QED and the men who made it are probably the only detailed accounts of his life. Btw, Mehra has a fabulous book on Feynman too.(The Beat of a different drummer) But, I said not-so-famous pple!

Yet another physicist: John Bardeen. The only person to have got two Nobels in physics. Despite the fact that we use his discoveries (semiconductor transistors!!!..) on a daily basis, not many of his know him. His other Noble was for the BCS theory of Superconductivity. He played a major part in developing a great condensed matter physics program at UIUC. This book must be easily accessible to non-experts.

Now, something outside physics.. There is a wonderful autobiography by Werner-Von-Braun, the man behind the V2 of Germany (WW II). He later moved over to the US and was behind the “Saturn” launch vehicle. I am having trouble tracking down the book’s title..( can some one help me???) I read it quite a while ago in IITM’s library. In this book, he narrates explains some of Hitler’s plans, the german rocket program etc. He explains his move to the US. It has a gentle mix of politics and science (and controversy!!)…it must be a fascinating read for any space-enthusiast.

Do you have your own choice of great-but-not-popular biographies??

• What does the TN govt think about the TNPCEE? – Unnecessary and must be done with.
• What do I think about the TNPCEE ?? – It is a stupid exam. You would do well to ignore it in the event of it being conducted.
• More importantly, what do i think about the TN state board exam ?? — Well.. let us not get into this. The debate would cease to be civil.

Sowmya has the latest edition of the Scian Melt . It is a nicely categorised collection of links to posts on science. And, The next melt is still up for grabs…mail Selva if u r interested.

was apparently sent from TIFR! (to CERN, where else ?) I got this info from here.

I have updated my side bar at blogger!