Astrophysics On The Threshold Of The 21st Century

Reports on the current status of some of the major problems in astrophysics, such as solar and solar-system physics, the physics of different scales of astronomical objects, the evolution of the universe, and the search for extraterrestrial life. The 22 reviews also include reminiscences on the history of the discipline in the Soviet Union, and speculations on its course over the next century. Translated from the Russian. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

"Astronomy and Astrophysics Abstracts" appearing twice a year has become oneof the fundamental publications in the fields of astronomy, astrophysics andneighbouring sciences. It is the most important English-language abstracting journal in the mentioned branches. The abstracts are classified under more than a hundred subject categories, thus permitting a quick survey of the whole extended material. The AAA is a valuable and important publication for all students and scientists working in the fields of astronomy and related sciences. As such it represents a necessary ingredient of any astronomical library all over the world.

Our Galactic center's proximity allows astronomers to study physical pro cesses within galactic nuclei at a level of detail that will never be possible in the more distant, but usually also more spectacular, extragalactic systems. Recent advances in instrumentation from the radio, through the submillime ter and infrared wavebands, and out to the X- and "'(-ray bands now allow observations of the Galactic Center over thirteen orders of magnitude in wave length. Our knowledge about the central few hundred parsecs of our Galaxy has consequently increased vastly over the past decade. The same new instru ments provide high resolution, high quality measurements of nearby ''normal'' galactic nuclei; that is, nuclei whose modest energy output is comparable to that of our own (and most other) galaxies. Theorists, spurred in part by the new observations, have been able to refine models of the energetics, dynam ics, and evolution of the gas and stellar systems deep within galactic nuclei.

After three decades of intense research in X-ray and gamma-ray astronomy, the time was ripe to summarize basic knowledge on X-ray and gamma-ray spectroscopy for interested students and researchers ready to become involved in new high-energy missions. This volume exposes both the scientific basics and modern methods of high-energy spectroscopic astrophysics. The emphasis is on physical principles and observing methods rather than a discussion of particular classes of high-energy objects, but many examples and new results are included in the three chapters as well.

The 1990s are proving to be a very exciting p&iod for high angular resolution astronomy. At radio wavelengths a combination of new array instruments and pow erful imaging algorithms have generated images of unprecedented resolution and quality. In the optical and infrared, the great technical difficulties associated with constructing separated-aperture interferometers have been largely overcome, and many new instruments are now operating or are being developed. As these pro grams start to produce observational results they will be able to draw extensively on the experience gained by the radio-interferometry community. Thus it seemed that the time was ripe for a meeting which would bring together workers from all wavelength ranges to discuss the details of the science and art of "Very High Angular Resolution Imaging" . While the main emphasis of Symposium No. 158 was on high resolution tech niques from the radio, mm-wave, infrared and optical bands, it also provided an opportunity for presentation of astronomical results from these techniques. As well as giving our colleagues from the Northern Hemisphere a break from midwinter, the location of the Symposium in Australia recognised the continuing development of astronomical interferometry in this country, especially the recent completion of the Australia Telescope radio array, and the progress toward com missioning of the Sydney University Stellar Interferometer. A number of the par ticipants visited these instruments during the post-symposium tour.

Since this mathematical technique is not yet a familiar tool in the field of astrophysics, a summary of the fundamental ideas of differential geometry, ergodic theory and catastrophe theory is presented. Such a unified approach facilitates the study of a wide range of, at first sight, very different phenomena within the same physical framework, thus revealing their universal underlying properties.

Space science in China is one of the most active areas in modern science, and China has played a dynamic and steadily increasing role in this field since the 1960s. Until recently, however, activity in China was a mystery to the rest of the world. With the commercial importance of space, and the fact that space is now used as a "laboratory" to carry out various experiments, China has recently emerged as an important international competitor. Space Science in China provides a clear understanding of the latest research and progress in such wide-ranging areas as the development and research in solar-terrestrial science, space astronomy, geoscience, remote sensing, microgravity science, and life science.

There are reasons to believe the 21st century will be the best ever for astrophysics: the James Webb Space Telescope will extend nearly twenty times the present observational limit of visible light; neutrino massiveness opens a new window for exploration on dark energy and dark matter physics and is expected to provide insights into the fate of the Universe; the Higgs boson may allow for an understanding of the weakness of gravity; gravitational waves produced at the birth of the Universe and by compact stellar objects (supermassive black holes, black hole/neutron star mergers, gamma-ray bursts, white dwarf inspirals) have unveiled a new area of astronomy. Against this background, compact stars, the theme of this volume, present unique astrophysical laboratories for probing the fabric of space-time and the building blocks of matter and their interactions at physical regimes not attainable in terrestrial laboratories.