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| Preface | |
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| Setting the stage: star formation and hydrogen burning in single stars | |
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| Introduction | |
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| Background | |
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| Evolution | |
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| Stellar death: the inexorable grip of gravity | |
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| Red giants | |
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| Stellar winds | |
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| Quantum deregulation | |
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| Core collapse | |
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| Transfiguration | |
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| Dancing with stars: binary stellar evolution | |
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| Multiple stars | |
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| Stellar orbits | |
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| Roche lobes: the cult symbol | |
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| The first stage of binary evolution: the Algol paradox | |
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| Mass transfer | |
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| Large separation | |
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| Small separation | |
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| Evolution of the second star | |
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| Common-envelope phase | |
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| Gravitational radiation | |
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| Accretion disks: flat stars | |
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| The third object | |
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| How a disk forms | |
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| Let there be light - and X-rays | |
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| A source of friction | |
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| A life of its own | |
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| Fat centers? the DAF zoo | |
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| White dwarfs: quantum dots | |
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| Single white dwarfs | |
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| Cataclysmic variables | |
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| The origin of cataclysmic variables | |
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| The final evolution of cataclysmic variables | |
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| Supernovae: stellar catastrophes | |
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| Observations | |
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| The fate of massive stars | |
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| Element factories | |
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| Collapse and explosion | |
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| Polarization and jets: new observations and new concepts | |
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| Type Ia supernovae: the peculiar breed | |
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| Light curves: radioactive nickel | |
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| Supernova 1987A: lessons and enigmas | |
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| The large magellanic cloud awakes | |
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| The onset | |
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| Lessons from the progenitor | |
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| Neutrinos! | |
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| Neutron star? | |
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| The light curve | |
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| This cow's not spherical | |
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| Rings and jets | |
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| Other firsts | |
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| Neutron stars: atoms with attitude | |
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| History - theory leads, for once | |
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| The nature of pulsars - not little green men | |
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| Pulsars and supernovae - a game of hide and seek | |
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| Neutron star structure - iron skin and superfluid guts | |
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| Binary pulsars - "tango por dos" | |
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| X-rays from neutron stars - hints of a violent Universe | |
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| X-ray flares - a story retold | |
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| The Rapid Burster - none of the above | |
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| Millisecond pulsars | |
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| Soft gamma-ray repeaters - reach out and touch someone | |
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| Geminga | |
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| Black holes in theory: into the abyss | |
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| Why black holes? | |
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| The event horizon | |
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| Singularity | |
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| Being a treatise on the general nature of death within a black hole | |
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| Black holes in space and time | |
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| Black-hole evaporation: Hawking radiation | |
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| Fundamental properties of black holes | |
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| Inside black holes | |
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| Black holes in fact: exploring the reality | |
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| The search for black holes | |
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| Cygnus X-1 | |
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| Other suspects | |
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| Black-hole X-ray novae | |
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| The nature of the outburst | |
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| Lessons from the X-rays | |
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| SS 433 | |
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| Miniquasars | |
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| Giants among us | |
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| The middle ground | |
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| Gamma-ray bursts, black holes and the Universe: long, long ago and far, far away | |
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| Gamma-ray bursts: yet another cosmic mystery | |
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| The revolution | |
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| The shape of things | |
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| The supernova and gamma-ray-burst connection | |
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| The possibilities: birth pangs of black holes? | |
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| The short hard bursts | |
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| The future | |
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| The past in our future: the Dark Ages | |
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| Supernovae and the Universe | |
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| Our expanding Universe | |
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| The shape of the Universe | |
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| The age of the Universe | |
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| The fate of the Universe | |
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| Dark matter | |
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| Vacuum energy - Einstein's blunder that wasn't | |
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| Type Ia supernovae as calibrated candles and understood candles | |
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| Supernovae and cosmology | |
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| Acceleration! | |
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| The shape of the Universe revisited | |
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| Dark energy | |
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| The fate of the Universe revisited | |
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| Wormholes and time machines: tunnels in space and time | |
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| The mystery of time | |
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| Wormholes | |
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| Time machines | |
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| Beyond: the frontiers | |
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| Quantum gravity | |
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| When the singularity is not a singularity | |
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| Hyperspace perspectives | |
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| String theory | |
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| Brane worlds | |
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| A holographic Universe | |
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| Coda | |
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| Index | |