| These are the notes that were written by John Reid for half of our level 2 course Cosmology, Astronomy and Modern Physics. They deal with cosmology (5 sections) and the evolution of stars (1 section).
For each section there are PowerPoint slides and separate notes. In addition there are links to some supplementary pieces and a modest number of relevant web pages from elsewhere.
This part of our course is now given by Charles Wang and students enrolled in PX2512 will be able to access the full and updated course notes on the dedicated virtual learning environment page for this course. By demand of both students and visitors, these pages are released on open access. |
The cosmology lectures are preceded by a preamble with some advice.
1: Introduction - slides; 6-to-a-page
summary; notes (all pdf)
2: Expanding
horizons - slides; 6-to-a-page
summary; notes (all pdf)
3: General
Relativity, geometry and the density of the Universe
- slides;
6-to-a-page
summary; notes
(all pdf). For some additional insight, see also the supplementary
note 'on gravity'.
4: The
Big Bang, the genesis of the Universe, the origin of the microwave background
- slides;
6-to-a-page
summary; notes
(all pdf)
5: Dark
matter and dark energy; the Universe revealed
- slides;
6-to-a-page summary;
notes
(all pdf)
6: The
evolution of stars
- slides;
6-to-a-page summary;
notes
(all pdf)
Remember the additional
reading list that
supplements the books mentioned in the general course notes.
In case you missed my writings
on a number of supplementary topics in the astronomy course last year,
here are links to some of them:
Additional notes by the author for this course only:
See also Albert Einstein: Relatively Speaking A short bibliography suggests some further library reading. Observational programs aiming to map dark matter, galaxy distributions, type 1A supernova and other features of the universe at large are an important feature of modern astronomy. See for example:The Dark Energy Survey (DES) running until 2018 at Cerro Tololo in Chile; The Kilo Degree Survey (KiDS) at the European Southern Observatory in Paranal, Chile The Physics of the Accelerating Universe (Pau) survey on the Herschel Telescope in La Palma with the Javalambre-Pau Astrophysical Survey (J-PAS) development The Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) on Mount Haleakala in Hawaii The Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam Survey (HSC) on Mauna Kea in Hawaii Also WiggleZ Dark Energy Survey; the Extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS); the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI); the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX); 4MOST; Euclid and the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). |
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Some useful/interesting sites: apologies for broken links
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Page constructed by John S. Reid j.s.reid@abdn.ac.uk |
