Submitted by Fulvio Melia (inactive)
on Thursday, 1/27/2011, at 8:47 AM
Textbooks
- Cracking the Einstein Code (2009), Melia, F. (The University of Chicago Press; ISBN-13: 978-0226519517)
- The Black Hole at the Center of Our Galaxy (2003), Melia, F. (Princeton University Press; ISBN-13: 978-0691095059)
- The Edge of Infinity: Supermassive Black Holes in the Universe (2003), Melia, F. (Cambridge University Press; ISBN-13: 978-0521814058)
Topics covered during the semester
Introduction
- Ancient astronomy
- Powers of 10
- Our place in the Universe
- Basic astronomical terms and concepts
Birth of Modern Astronomy
(The Black Hole at the Center of Our Galaxy: Chapter 3)
- The Copernican revolution
- Galileo's experiments
- Kepler's laws
- Newton's description of nature
The Earth-Sun-Moon System
- Types of motion
- Newtonian mechanics
- Application to the solar system
Stars
(The Black Hole at the Center of Our Galaxy: Chapter 2)
- Protostars
- Spectral types
- The Hertzsprung-Russell diagram
- Binary stars
- Stellar explosions
Space and Time: the language of Astronomy
(Cracking the Einstein Code: Chapters 1-9)
- Special Relativity
- Time dilation
- Frames of reference and Simultaneity
- The Equivalence Principle
- General Relativity
- Black Holes
- Gravitational lensing
- Gravitational waves
Galaxies
(The Black Hole at the Center of Our Galaxy: Chapter 6; The Edge of Infinity: Chapters 1, 2, 4)
- Supermassive Black Holes
- Our Galactic center
- The extragalactic universe
- Distance scales
The Expanding Universe
- Doppler shifts
- The Hubble law
- The Cosmological Principle
- Cosmological models
The Big Bang
- The Cosmic Microwave Background
- The first three minutes
- The origin of elements
- The missing mass and Dark Matter
Large-scale Structure Formation
(The Edge of Infinity: Chapters 5, 6)
- The formation of structure and galaxies
- Galactic evolution
- Galaxy types
- Quasars and supermassive black holes
Our Place in the Universe
- Measuring the Hubble constant
- The age of the Universe
- The Anthropic Principle
- Where are they? (Are we alone?)
- The ultimate fate of the Universe