This is the second, amended edition of the book. In addition to the material of the first edition it contains a derivation of the value of action for each of those Harrington–Shepard calorons/anticalorons that are relevant for the emergence of the thermal ground state, discussions of the caloron center vs. its periphery, of the role of the thermal ground state in U(1) wave propagation, of photonic particle–wave duality, and of calculational intricacies and book-keeping related to one-loop scattering of massless modes in the deconfining phase of an SU(2) Yang–Mills theory. Moreover, a derivation of the temperature–redshift relation of the CMB in deconfining SU(2) Yang–Mills thermodynamics and its application to explaining an apparent early re-ionization of the Universe are given. Finally, a mechanism of mass generation for cosmic neutrinos is proposed.