Preface
Cosmology is a new science, but cosmological questions are as old as mankind.
Turning philosophical and metaphysical problems into problems that physics can
treat and hopefully solve has been an achievement of the 20th century. The main
contributions have come from the discovery of galaxies and the invention of a
relativistic theory of gravitation. At the edge of the new millennium, in the spring
of 2000, SIGRAV—Societa Italiana di Relativita e Gravitazione (Italian Society
of Relativity and Gravitation) and the University of Insubria sponsored a doctoral
school on ‘Relativistic Cosmology: Theory and Observation’, which took place
at the Centre for Scientific Culture ‘Alessandro Volta’, located in the beautiful
environment of Villa Olmo in Como, Italy. This book brings together the reports
of the courses held by a number of outstanding scientists currently working in
various research fields in cosmology. Topics covered range over several different
aspects of modern cosmology from observational matters to advanced theoretical
speculations.
The main financial support for the school came from the University of
Insubria at Como–Varese. Other contributors were the Department of Chemical,
Physical and Mathematical Sciences of the same University, the National Institute
of Nuclear Physics and the Physics Departments of the Universities of Milan,
Turin, Rome La Sapienza and Rome Tor Vergata.
We are grateful to all the members of the scientific organizing committee and
to the scientific coordinator of the Centro Volta, Professor Giulio Casati, for their
invaluable help in the organization. We also acknowledge the essential support
of the secretarial conference staff of the Centro Volta, in particular of Chiara
Stefanetti.
S Bonometto, V Gorini and U Moschella
23 January 2001xiii