Simulating the Cosmos

[An] exhilarating, candid report from cosmology's front lines . . . The awe I experienced while reading [this book] overwhelmed my jadedness and doubt. I was especially enthralled by Mr. Davé's speculation that individual galaxies, rather than existing in isolation, interact with one another via intergalactic winds driven by supernovas. -- John Horgan * Wall Street Journal *
Romeel Davé starts his concise and well-written book by explaining the fundamental limitations of observational astronomy: even with the best telescopes imaginable we will never be able to watch individual galaxies form and evolve because of the cosmic timescales involved . . . but what we can do is model these distant targets on computers, and in Simulating the Cosmos cosmologist Davé takes us through the A-Z of these simulations . . . After an introductory chapter that sets the scene with an explanation of the standard 'concordance' model of cosmology, the book delves into the nuts and bolts of how computer simulations actually work . . . This is an enthralling read that is highly recommended to readers, including prospective astrophysicists, keen to understand more about how modern cosmology is actually accomplished. -- Pippa Goldschmidt * BBC Sky at Night *
In Simulating the Cosmos, Davé reviews the underlying physics that comes together in modern, computational astrophysics simulations of the origin and evolution of the universe. He weaves together observations of stars, galaxies, and the universe, along with scholarly understandings of how these objects behave, to set the stage for explaining how computational scientists do their best, within the limitations of high-performance computers, to simulate these complex objects and phenomena. The book is a great review of the history of our understanding of cosmology alongside how simulating the universe has improved in the last few decades. Davé writes with a sense of humor that anyone who has taken a physics or astronomy class will find familiar, while taking care to explain difficult concepts in a clear manner similar to the best lecturers in the field. * Choice *
. . . this engrossing and entertaining book . . . manages to convey a great sense of how cosmological simulations work, what they’re used for, and why the results are so important - all with very little technical detail or jargon . . . I enjoyed [Davé’s] laid-back style . . . Personally I loved [Simulating the Cosmos] and I’ve happily given it a five-star rating on Goodreads. -- Andrew May * Popular Science *
Building imaginary universes in a supercomputer has been a great success of modern astronomy. Here we have one of the world’s masters of this numerical alchemy giving us both the science and the personal story behind our current understanding of how galaxies like the milky way came to exist. * John Peacock, Professor of Cosmology at the University of Edinburgh, Fellow of the Royal Society, and winner of the Shaw Prize *
Romeel Davé’s Simulating the Cosmos explains beautifully and authoritatively how astrophysicists simulate the formation and evolution of galaxies in the expanding universe, and how we test our theories by comparing simulations with observations. * Joel Primack, Distinguished Professor of Physics Emeritus, University of California, Santa Cruz, and recipient of the American Physical Society Lilienfeld Prize 2020 *