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Next: Astronomy

GENERAL RELATIVITY & COSMOLOGY

As Elementary Particle Physicists direct their attention ``down'' toward the indescribably tiny, so Cosmologists turn their gaze ``upward'' toward the unfathomably huge. Of course, these days both are increasingly likely to be incarnate in the same individual - I'll get to that later. As one who has never looked through a telescope larger than I could carry, I am certain to give short shrift to the magnificent observational science of astronomy, which provides cosmology (a theoretical discipline) with all its data. But a summary of the former without good colour plates of star fields and nebulae would be a terrible waste anyway, so I hope I have motivated the curious to go out and read a good Astronomy book on their own. Moreover, I am so ignorant of General Relativity and most of the fine points of Cosmology that I really have no business writing about either. Therefore I must content myself with a justification in terms of my ``unique point of view,'' whereby I excuse the following distortions.