Modern Cosmology and the Dark Matter Problem

This book shows how modern cosmology and astronomy have led to the need to introduce dark matter in the universe. Some of this dark matter is in the familiar form of protons, electrons and neutrons, but most of it must have a more exotic form. The favoured, but not the only, possibility is neutrinos of non-zero rest mass, pair-created in the hot big bang and surviving to the present day. After a review of modern cosmology, this book gives a detailed account of the author's recent theory in which these neutrinos decay into photons which are the main ionising agents in hydrogen and nitrogen in the interstellar and intergalactic medium. This theory, though speculative, explains a number of rather different puzzling phenomena in astronomy and cosmology in a unified way and predicts values of various important quantities such as the mass of the decaying neutrino and the Hubble constant. Written by a cosmologist of the first rank, this topical book will be essential reading to all cosmologists and astrophysicists.

Preface; Part I. Dark Matter in Astronomy and Cosmology: 1. Dark matter in galaxies; 2. Dark matter in clusters of galaxies; 3. Dark matter in intergalactic space; 4. The identity of the dark matter; Part II. Ionisation Problems in Astronomy and Cosmology: 5. Diffuse ionisation in the Milky Way; 6. Diffuse ionisation in spiral galaxies; 7. The intergalactic flux of hydrogen-ionising photons; Part III. Neutrino Decay and Ionisation in the Universe: 8. The radiative decay of massive neutrinos; 9. Neutrino decay and the ionisation of the Milky Way; 10. Neutrino decay and the ionisation of spiral galaxies; 11. The intergalactic flux of ionising decay photons; 12. The reionisation of the Universe; Part IV. Observational Searches for the Neutrino Decay Line: 13. Observational searches for the neutrino decay line; References; Subject index.

Written by a cosmologist of the first rank, shows how modern cosmology and astronomy have led to the need to introduce dark matter in the universe, and explains the author's recent theory to explain some puzzling phenomena in a unified way.