Cosmology

Article from Christian Science Monitor about Paul Steinhardt and his work on the "Ekpyrotic Universe", a speculative model which uses concepts of string theory to arrive at a periodically repeating series of big bangs.

Contains both original data and descriptions for NASA's past missions to explore the cosmic background radiation, notably about the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite.

Homepage of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, a NASA satellite launched in 2001. The goal of WMAP are precision measurements of the cosmic microwave background, the "electromagnetic echo" of the big bang phase of the early universe.

Description of dark matter, its properties and consequences. Includes texts, plots, graphs and schematics. By Martin White (University of California, Berkeley).

Lecture notes by Shinji Tsujikawa (Univ. of Tokyo) about the basic concepts of inflation, the generation of density perturbations, and the mechanism for reheating after inflation. Based on lectures given at The Second Tah Poe School on Cosmology in 2003.