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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 | |