syllabus & course expectations
Astronomy
Picture of the Day
the
latest astrophysics discoveries
what's up in the sky
this week
Skywatcher's
Diary for this month
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February 19 |
February 20 |
February 21 |
February 22 |
February 22 |
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the end and the beginning |
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(always done before class) |
29(2-4) (a well-understood era) |
29(1,5) |
29(1, 7) |
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things you should know the answer to before coming to class |
why did Big Bang nucleosynthesis take so long (a few minutes) to start? (it was pretty hot and dense after all)? why did Big Bang nucleosynthesis stop after only few hours? (it was still hotter than inside the sun)? |
see yesterday's questions if the Big Bang formed helium, why didnt it form anything heavier? |
questions we STILL havent answered include all the questions listed to the LEFT! what is inflation? why did it happen? |
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| homework (written assignments to be turned in) |
find the minimum temperature required for pair creation (aka pair production) of a particle/antiparticle pair of mass m (in terms of m and constants of nature) find the numerical values of this minimum temperature for an electron/positron pair... for a proton/antiproton pair |
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Distant
quasars live in massive dark matter halos
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| Monday, February 12 |
February 13 |
February 14 |
February 15 |
February 16 |
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work on
projects |
work on
projects |
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(always done before class) |
28(7) how does dark energy change the 3 types of universes we learned about friday? |
28(7) |
28(8) plus questions below |
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things you should know the answer to before coming to class |
I would suggest that you re-work the equations that we did friday until you can do all the algebra on your own, so that you know how one step follows from another |
do you know the boundary lines (in figure 28-19 ) -- any how they arise -- that we have already discussed in class? what about the ones that we haven't discussed yet in class? and finally, what about the 3 different sets of observations that help locate our present universe on this diagram? what are the observations, and why do their axes lie in the directions shown on the diagram? |
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| homework (written assignments to be turned in) |
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have
you decided and begun working on your final project? |
need
an email from you AND your partner (that means if you are part of team, you and partner are in the from or cc part of the mail) about your last project to be presented on "finals day" |
fix
recent project deficiencies by tomorrow morning 9 am and hand in, so i can take to s.f. |
variable star projects (but they don't look too fleshed out) |
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of the week |
| Monday, February 5 |
February 6 |
February 7 |
February 8 |
February 9 |
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(always done before class) |
27(7) again |
27(7) on gamma-ray bursters this time for sure! |
read
1 (or 2) of "Monsters Stars in the Early Universe" S/T May 2006 (why only O/B star formed in the early universe) "How Galaxies Make Monster Black Holes" S/T July 2006 "Magnetars" SciAm Feb 2003 "Outrageously Magnetic X-ray Pulsars" S/T Jan 2005 on reserve in the library |
28(1-4) |
28(6
ONLY)" cosmology before 1999 |
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you should know the answer to before coming to class |
what are gamma-ray bursters? |
what are homogeneity, isotropy? what is Olber's paradox and how is it resolved? |
what are the possible futures of the universe? what other properties are associated with the different universe futures? |
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homework (written assignments to be turned in) |
calculation
of the Eddington limit (with numbers) |
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the
truth about magnetars |
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projects
due |
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of the week |
| Monday, January 29 |
January 30 |
January 31 |
February 1 |
February 2 |
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(always done before class) |
27(1-4) |
27(6) |
27(7) |
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| things
you should know the answer to before coming to class |
know
what quasars, Seyfert galaxies, blazars, and radio galaxies do what types of radiation/spectrum do they emit? what does that tell us about the state of matter? what special properties do they have? where are the big mistakes the book made? |
how does the model for the AGN phenomenon explain all the various objects in the box to the left |
what are gamma-ray bursters? how are they related to the AGN objects which occupy the previous parts of the chapter? |
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homework (written assignments to be turned in) |
dimensional
analysis: find the correct expression for othe "radius" of the electron. Assume that it depends on the constants c and k (speed of light and Coulomb's electrical constant) and electron properties (m and q) evaluate the electron radius numerically... assuming that the radius of the proton obeys the same formula, what does that say about the size of the proton? |
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of the week |