Abstract
Here is where cosmology really meets astronomy—in setting out the initial conditions for galaxy formation. The microwave background radiation provides our clearest picture of the fluctuations in mass density, seen just when they became free to collapse under the gravitational influence of ordinary and dark matter alike. The entire geometrical model from cosmology specifies how the competition between gravitation and cosmic expansion played out during the era of galaxy formation. The nature and clumping of dark matter are the yet—invisible field whose form controlled everything that gravity could do in galaxy formation. And primordial nucleosynthesis had already set the chemistry available to the first stars, whose effects may well predate the formation of the galaxies we see today.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Bibliography
Books
Alpher, R.A. and Herman, R. (2001) Genesis of the Big Bang (Oxford University Press); Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 58, 2179. This memoir sets out the once—forgotten early history of predictions of a cosmic thermal background in a Big Bang cosmology. George Gamow’s initial prediction of T = 5 K appeared in such a terse (perhaps even obtuse) form that Russian astrophysicist Artur Chemin has devoted an article to unraveling it: “George Gamow and the Big Bang”, Space Science Reviews, 74, 447-3454 (1995).
Longair, Malcolm (1998) Galaxy Formation (Springer).
Mather, John C. and Boslough, J. (1996) The Very First Light: The True Inside Story of the Scientific Journey Back to the Dawn of the Universe (Basic Books); and Smoot, G. and Davidson, K. (1993) Wrinkles in Time (W. Morrow). Two of the principal investigators for the COBE mission, who went on to share the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics, have given their individual views on its conduct and results in these books.
Partridge, R.B. (1995) 3 K: the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (Cambridge University Press). A detailed description of studies of the microwave background is provided.
Peacock, John (1999) Cosmological Physics (Cambridge University Press); and Longair
Malcolm (1998) Galaxy Formation (Springer). Considerable detail on the epoch of recombination and how the density fluctuations might be traced to an inflationary stage are given in these works.
Weinberg, Steven (1984) The First Three Minutes. Summarizes the standard Big Bang picture up to the time of nucleosynthesis.
Journals
Adams, W.S. (1941) “Some Results with the Coudé Spectrograph at Mt. Wilson”, Astrophysical Journal, 93, 11–23. This paper includes the report of CN absorption from interstellar gas, observed following a suggestion by Andrew McKellar. Adams notes the detection of lines from both the ground state and a low-lying excited state, which proved in retrospect to be a first detection of the cosmic microwave background by its excitation of molecular gas. On this basis, McKellar noted that the rotational temperature of interstellar CN was about 2.2 K, probably the first unknowing step towards measuring the 2.7-K temperature of the Universe.
Alexander, D.M.; Brandt, W.N.; Hornschemeier, A.E.; Garmire, G.P.; Schneider, D.P.; Bauer, F.E.; and Griffiths, R.E. (2001) “The Chandra Deep Field North Survey. VI. The Nature of the Optically Faint X-3Ray Source Population”, Astronomical Journal, 122, 2156–2176. Counts of active nuclei identified in very deep X-3ray observations. Depending on the energy range, 14–21% of the background has now been identified from individually resolved active nuclei.
Chemin, Artur (1995) “George Gamow and the Big Bang”, Space Science Reviews, 74, 447–454.
Davidson, K. and Kinman, T.D. (1985) “Primordial helium, spectrophotometric technique, and I Zwicky 18”, Astrophysical Journal Supplement, 58, 321–340. This report of abundance measurements includes an extensive list of caveats to be observed in measuring the He/H ratio to high precision. Radiative transfer effects, and line absorption in both interstellar space and the terrestrial atmosphere, can become important, though more typical observing programs can often ignore them, because the accuracy needed to derive cosmologial implications for He/H is quite high.
Eisenstein, D. et al. (2005) “Detection of the Baryon Acoustic Peak in the Large-3Scale Correlation Function of SDSS Luminous Red Galaxies”, Astrophysical Journal, 633, 560. Reports the detection of baryon oscillations in the galaxy distribution.
Fixsen, D.J.; Dwek, E.; Mather, J.C.; Bennett, C.L.; and Shafer, R.A. (1998) “The Spectrum of the Extragalactic Far-Infrared Background from the COBE FIRAS Observations”, Astrophysical Journal, 508, 123–128. A measurement of the far-infared background from processing COBE data. This background comes mostly from the integrated dust emission of galaxies at redshifts z 1-33.
Hasinger, G. (1996) “The extragalactic X-ray and gamma-ray background”, Astronomy and Astrophysics Supplement, 120, 607–614. A brief introduction to the known contributors to high-energy backgrounds.
Molaro, P.; Levshakov, S.A.; Dessauges-Zavadsky, M.; and D’Odorico, S. (2002) “The cosmic microwave background radiation temperature at z(abs)-3.025 toward QSO 0347-33819”, Astronomy and Astrophysics, 381, L64–L67. Uses absorption from an excited state of Cii in QSO absorption-line systems to limit the temperature of the CMB at z= 3.02, showing consistency with the predicted proportionality between T and (1 + z). This is the latest in a series of observations by several groups, gradually increasing the redshift range over which we can test the thermal history of the CMB.
Peebles, P.J.E. (1968) “Recombination of the primeval plasma”, Astrophysical Journal, 153, 1–11.
Penzias, A. and Wilson, R. (1965) “A Measurement of Excess Antenna Temperature at 4080 Mc/s”, Astrophysical Journal, 142, 419–421. The marvellously pedestrian title conceals the discovery announcement of the cosmic microwave background. The paper by Dicke, Peebles, Roll, and Wilkinson, presenting the cosmological interpretation, appeared on the immediately preceding pages 414–419, and marked perhaps the first appearance in print of a diagram for the entire thermal history of the Universe.
Silk, J. (1967) “Fluctuations in the cosmic fireball”, Nature, 215, 115–116. A first introduction to cosmic microwave background fluctuations and galaxy formation.
Spergel, D.N.; Verde, L.; Peiris, H.V.; Komatsu, E.; Nolta, M.R.; Bennett, C.L.; Halpern, M.; Hinshaw, G.; Jarosik, N.; Kogut, A. et al. (2003) “First-3Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Determination of Cosmological Parameters”, Astrophysical Journal Supplements, 148, 175–194. Presents the first year’s WMAP data and their implications for cosmology. Year 3 data remain in press, with the paper on cosmological parameters accessible already in electronic form from http://www.arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0603449
Tytler, D.; O’Meara, J.M.; Suzuki, N.; and Lubin, D. (2000) “Review of Big Bang nucleosynthesis and primordial abundances”, Physica Scripta, T85, 12–31.
Zel’dovich, Ya.B.; Kurt, V.G.; and Sunyaev, R.A. (1968) “Recombination of hydrogen in the hot model of the universe”, Soviet Physics-3JETP, 28, 146 (in Russian, 55, 278–286).
Internet
on some current projects to measure the fluctuations in the microwave background can be found at the following WWW sites: Cosmic Background Imager http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~tjp/CBI/ Planck http://astro.estec.esa.nl/SA-general/Projects/Planck/
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2007 Praxis Publishing Ltd, Chichester, UK
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
(2007). The initial conditions before galaxy formation. In: The Road to Galaxy Formation. Springer Praxis Books. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-72535-0_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-72535-0_7
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-72534-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-72535-0
eBook Packages: Physics and AstronomyPhysics and Astronomy (R0)