Course Materials 

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Exams and Presentations

• First Day Presentation PPT
• In the Beginning PPT 
• Relativity in the Movies PPT
• Gravitational Waves PDF
• Astronomy PPT 
• Review for Midterm - Updated 10/6, Related HON 210 Exam
• Compact Objects PDF
• Paper and Presentation Rubric
• Final Exam Topics
• Old related exams:
• Interstellar, Answer Key
• First Three Minutes, Answer Key

Videos as Make-Up for Missed Class

• Our Place in the Universe: Cosmology from Ancient Greece to Today: Video (58:30)
• Dark Matter – Euclid Telescope: Video (10:24)
• NASA's James Webb Space Telescope: Stunning new images captured of the universe : Video (12:47)

Miscellaneous

• Julian/Gregorian Calendars
• All You Zombies – Robert Heinlein, Audio
• Predestination- Official Trailer 2015, Movie (1:25:59)

Origin Stories

• Some early origin stories, Greek and Babylonian
• It's turtles all the way down
• Enuma Elish - The Babylonian Epic of Creation, Summary
• Yggdrasil: The Tree of Life in Norse Mythology, Creation Myth
• Why 24 hrs?  How many finger joints do you have on one hand?
• Egyptian, The pyramids
• Greek Mythology, Genealogy of Titans, Mt. Olympus
• Creation Stories from Around the World
• A New Look at Medieval Cosmology, 1200-1687

History of Telescopes

• The Glass Universe Video
• Sir William Herschel and the Discovery of Uranus, The Discovery of Uranus (8:06)
• Caroline Herschel: Discoverer of Comets (58:23), The Comet Hunter (6:55)
• Sir John Herschel, History of Photography (59:00)
• The Glass Universe (1:06:44), Book, WBUR Interview (08:27)
• A History of Women in Higher Education
• Hard-earned gains for women at Harvard
• Seven Sisters Colleges
• Women at Oxford 1878-1920
• 400 Years of Telescopic Discovery.History to Present (11:29)
• William Parsons and his Very Large Telescopes, The Leviathan (6:30)
• The Demon’s Head The History of Observation of Algol (52:07)
• Mosaic Memoirs Richard Goodricke (2:56)
• The Constellations - Cepheus (7:54)
• The Man Who Built Mt Wilson: George Ellery Hale's Astronomical Legacy (4:50)
• The History of Mount Wilson (25:31)
• The Great Debate (7:32)
• How radio telescopes show us unseen galaxies TED Talk (15:25)
  by Natasha Hurley-Walker
• The Story of the Very Large Array (24:23)
• The VLA Site
• Square Kilometer Array

Hubble and Webb Telescopes

• NASA Website
• Hubble Space Telescope Pictures
• James Webb Space Telescope - First Images
• Hubble Telescope - What is it looking at now?
• The 1995 Hubble photo that changed astronomy (5:26)
• Hubble at 30 (54:46)
• James Webb Space Telescope site
• James Webb Space Telescope (11:26)

Introduction to Physics

• History of Planetary Motion
• Newton's Laws of Motion
• History of Electricity and Magnetism and here
• Maxwell's Contributions, James Clerk Maxwell
• List of escape velocities
• Albert Einstein: His life, theories and impact on science

Stars

• Stellar Classification
• Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram
• HR-Diagram, Luminosity vs Temperature
• Stellar Structure and Evolution at Harvard
• Stellar Nucleosynthesis
• Periodic Table
• Sources of Sunshine
• Proton-Proton Fusion and at Wikipedia
• Stellar Nucleosynthesis Explained in 4 Minutes (4:26)
• Nucleosynthesis: The Formation of Elements in the Universe (5:09)
• Star Gives Birth to Possible Black Hole (3:07) and How JWST Solved the Puzzle (8:24)
• A Short History of Binary Stars
• Types of Binary Star Systems (6:32)
• Binary Stars: Visual and Spectroscopic (21:56)
• Inside the black hole image that made history (11:29)
• The Art and Science of Special Effects (15:41)
• First Images of The Biggest Supernova in 420 Years (8:41)
• Spectroscopy Transformed Astronomy, Chemistry & Physics (11:44)
• History of Spectral lines and Balmer (6:58)
• The Universe is Expanding - Annie Hall (0:45)
• The Alpha Beta Gamma Paper – A Physics Ethics Case Study (14:04)
• One Percent of TV Static Comes from Light of the Big Bang (2:35)
• The Afterglow of the Big Bang: The Cosmic Microwave Background (27:38)
• Steady State Theory (12:52)
• Sir Fred Hoyle: The Man Ahead Of Time (21:00)

The Universe

• Age of the Universe
• Steady State Model
• Remembering Big Bang Basher Fred Hoyle
• Fred Hoyle Biography
• Sir Fred Hoyle: The Man Ahead Of Time (21:00)
• Insomnia movie: Dead of Night (1945) Has trailer (2:43)
• Lenticular Clouds (1:48)
• The science film YOU are NOT ALLOWED to see (17:45)
• Thomas Kuhn: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (14:30)

CMB - Cosmic Microwave Background

• How Wilson and Penzias Accidentally Discovered The Birth of Our Universe (4:21)
• Exploring the Dark Universe: Cosmic Microwave Background (4:52)
• COBE
• WMAP
• James Peebles, Nobel Prize in Physics 2019: Official interview (19:09)
• Physics Nobel Prize 2019 (6:20)
• Cosmic Microwave Background Challenge
• Secrets of the Cosmic Microwave Background (17:10)
• Discovering the Cosmic Microwave Background with Robert Wilson (21:55)
• What was Bell Labs?
• Karl Jansky, Radio Telescope
• The Wow! Signal - from Sagittarius, SETI - Are We Alone? (1:10:13)
• Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), Images
• Peebles Nobel Speech and Video about 30 min.

Relativity

• Gravitational Lensing
  • Twin Quasar
  • Einstein Ring
  • Supernova Einstein Cross
  • The Strange Universe of Gravitational Lensing (13:31)
  • Wikipedia
• https://www.physicsoftheuniverse.com/topics_blackholes_event.html
• Spinning Black Holes (10:13)
• The Art and Science of Special Effects - TED Talk
• NASA Visualization
• Color Animation of a Black Hole with Accretion Disk (0.33)

Gravitational Waves

• Listening for Einstein's Ripples in the Fabric of the Universe - (Herman PDF)
• Also in When Black Holes Collide - (Herman PDF)
• Hulse-Taylor Pulsar PSR B1913+16 (2:54) *
• What the Binary Pulsar Can Tell Us (5:53) Panel Discussion
• The Hulse-Taylor binary neutron stars explained by Joseph Taylor (2:48)
• Exploring Binary Pulsars - Hulse/Taylor (11:18)
• LIGO, Virgo, LSC Media (Sites)
• The Absurdity of Detecting Gravitational Waves (9:06)
• LIGO Gravitational Wave Observatory (7:31) Interferometer
• EPISODE 1 - LIGO: A DISCOVERY THAT SHOOK THE WORLD (11:44) *
• Weber Gravitational Wave Observatory relic (1:05)
• John Wheeler - Thoughts on gravitational radiation. Joseph Weber (4:11) [Part of a collection]

First Image of a Black Hole

• Inside the black hole image that made history TED Talk (11:29)
• First Image of a Black Hole (5:28)
• Press Conference (52:36)
• Q&A with 2020 Nobel laureate Roger Penrose (27:38)

Dark Matter and Dark Energy

• Precession of Mercury
• Galaxy Rotation Curve
• Coma Cluster
• Bullet Cluster from Chandra X-Ray Observatory
• The Search for Dark Matter - TED (15:43) - 2020
• Shedding Light on Dark Matter TED (16:09) - 2008
• Cosmic microwave background (CMB)
• Modern Anomalies

Weird Ideas

• Making sense of string theory | Brian Greene

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