edited by S Bonometto, V Gorino and U Moschella, IOP Publishing Ltd 2002, ISBN 0750308109, £75 (`€118).
Cosmology has become a phenomenological science where large amounts of data from a host of precise experiments are being contrasted every day with concrete theoretical ideas about the early universe, based on general relativity and high-energy particle physics. Until recently, this happy situation was only envisioned as a dream in the minds of a few.
This book is a heterogeneous compilation of articles based on lectures, mostly from theorists, describing both the foundations and the present status of cosmology. The lectures were given in the spring of 2000, at a doctoral school in Como, Italy. Unfortunately, as with any science in rapid progress, the book has become quickly outdated. Some of the authors, like Piero Rosati, still write the standard formulae of luminosity and angular diameter distances as a function of redshift assuming zero cosmological constant, two years after the discovery of the acceleration of the universe by the Supernova teams. Others, like Rita Bernabei (for dark-matter searches with the DAMA experiment) or GianLuigi Fogli (for neutrino masses and mixings) describe experimental results that are obsolete or outdated, given the great advances that these fields have made in the past two years (thanks to Edelweiss and the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, respectively). The same applies to the chapter on galaxy clusters and large-scale structure (LSS), or the one on the anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), where the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and the Two Degree Field Galaxy Redshift Survey for LSS, and BOOMERANG, MAXIMA, CBI and VSA for CMB, have revolutionized their respective fields since the spring of 2000.
However, the reviews by John Peacock on the physics of cosmology, Arthur Kosowsky on the microwave background, Antonio Masiero on dark matter and particle physics, Philippe Jetzer on gravitational lensing and Andrei Linde on inflation, are very up to date and enlightening. They are a pleasure to read and may be extremely useful to PhD students and even researchers in other fields. The reviews of George Ellis on cosmological models, and Renata Kallosh on supergravity are somewhat technical and are probably beyond the level of doctorate students. On the other hand, I miss some discussion on gravitational waves, the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect and perhaps even ultra-high-energy cosmic rays.
In summary, I think the book is a nice compilation of the status of cosmology in the year 2000. It gives the right perspective of what is to come in the next few years, or even decades, with inflationary cosmology as the early universe paradigm at the heart of a standard cosmological model, connecting astrophysics with high-energy particle physics.
