Abstract
Gravitation is remarkably well described by Einstein’s general relativity theory as demonstrated by a variety of observations: the advance of the perihelion of planets, the deviation of light rays due to stellar masses leading to gravitational lenses, radar or laser echoes from different planets, emission of gravitational waves by binary pulsars and, finally, various cosmological tests, in particular, the isotropic 3 K cosmic background radiation. Yet, some physicists think that the Einstein equation linking the geometric structure of space-time (described by a curvature tensor) to its physical matter or radiation content (described by an energy-momentum tensor) is simply an effective theory describing the macroscopic properties of matter. The general relativity theory has made it possible to develop a coherent cosmological model (standard model or the Big Bang theory), and the current state of knowledge in particle, nuclear, and atomic physics as well as in thermodynamics permits the description of the evolution of the Universe from soon after the first minutes of creation.
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© 1998 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Elbaz, E. (1998). Quantum Cosmology. In: Quantum. Texts and Monographs in Physics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-60266-5_20
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-60266-5_20
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-64327-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-60266-5
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