This book reviews the phenomenology displayed by relativistic jets as well as the most recent theoretical efforts to understand the physical mechanisms at their origin. Relativistic jets have been observed and studied in Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN) for about half a century and are believed to be fueled by accretion onto a supermassive black hole at the center of the host galaxy. Since the firs…
As with the author’s recent books Extreme Explosions and Under a Crimson Sun, the complex topic of star clusters is broken down and made accessible with clear links to other areas of astronomy in a language which the non-specialist can easily read and enjoy. The full range of topics are addressed regarding how star clusters are formed. Why is it some are dense conglomerates of stars while oth…
This is the first textbook to cover the essential aspects of the topic at a level accessible to students. While focusing on applications in solid earth geophysics, the book also includes excursions into helioseismology, thereby highlighting the strong affinity between the two fields. The book provides a comprehensive introduction to seismic tomography, including the basic theory of wave propaga…
The book is based on research presentations at the international conference, “Emerging Trends in Applied Mathematics: In the Memory of Sir Asutosh Mookerjee, S.N. Bose, M.N. Saha and N.R. Sen”, held at the Department of Applied Mathematics, University of Calcutta, during 12–14 February 2014. It focuses on various emerging and challenging topics in the field of applied mathematics and theo…
What processes fixed the designs etched on the cosmic background radiation (CBR)? And what can they tell us about the early Universe, and the origin and evolution of cosmic structure? This review covers all aspects of three decades of study of this ghostly remnant of the hot Big Bang origin of the Universe, and examines the consequences for astrophysics, cosmology and theories of the evolution …
Humans have long thought that planetary systems similar to our own should exist around stars other than the Sun, yet the search for planets outside our Solar System has had a dismal history of discoveries that could not be confirmed. However, this all changed in 1995, after which astonishing progress can be seen in this field; we now know of more than 200 extrasolar planets. These findings mark…
This book provides a general introduction to the rapidly developing astrophysical frontier of stellar tidal disruption, but also details original thesis research on the subject. This work has shown that recoiling black holes can disrupt stars far outside a galactic nucleus, errors in the traditional literature have strongly overestimated the maximum luminosity of “deeply plunging” tidal di…
A collection of papers edited by four experts in the field, this book sets out to describe the way solar activity is manifested in observations of the solar interior, the photosphere, the chromosphere, the corona and the heliosphere. The 11-year solar activity cycle, more generally known as the sunspot cycle, is a fundamental property of the Sun. This phenomenon is the generation and evolution …
The work developed in this thesis addresses very important and relevant issues of accretion processes around black holes. Beginning by studying the time variation of the evolution of inviscid accretion discs around black holes and their properties, the author investigates the change of the pattern of the flows when the strength of the shear viscosity is varied and cooling is introduced. He succ…