An introduction to Cosmology

Jayant V.Narlikar

Cosmology is the study of the universe; and the universe by definition contains everything. Although, because of its profound implications, cosmology has traditionally excited the imaginations of poet, philosophers and religious thinkers.

But cosmology is mainly concerned with the extragalactic world. It is a study of the large scale structure of the universe extending to distances of billions of light years a study of the overall dynamical and physical behaviour of billions of galaxies spread across the vast distances and of the evolution f this enormous system over several billions of years.

Following units of length, mass, and time that are common in cosmology.

Length light year 9.4x1017 ~1018, while astronomers prefer

parsec, a unit that naturally arises when one is determining stellar distances using the method of parallax. one parsec is defined as the distance at which it is looks at symmetrically from normal direction. Larger units constructed from th parsec (pc) are , kiloparsec (1kpc=103) ,the megaparsec(1Mpc=106 ) and the gigaparsec (1 Gpc=109pc) Time the basic unit of is of course the second but on occasions cosmology demands much longer time scales. The typical unit of time is the gigayear(1 Gyr =109 years+=3x106 s)

Mass the physicist may use the kilogramme or gramme but masses of astronomical objects are best expressed in the mass unit of the Suns mass M=2x1033g.