Physics 107 Navigation Bar    Click here for FirstClass
 



goals and outline
questions before lecture
questions after lecture
parts of homework
supplementary material
timely reminders
  

LECTURE 28
     goals and outline

lecture title

    Black Holes and Dark Matter in the Universe: "Seeing" the Very Large

text pages

    Ch 12, pp 148-150.

lecture goals

  • Review how we "see" very distant objects and what we can learn about them.
  • Learn how to define an open or closed universe in a variety of ways, including in terms of a symbol called Omega.
  • Examine the arguments from theory and observation on whether the universe is open or closed.
  • Learn about another solution to Einstein's tensor equation, black holes.
  • Learn why we know 90 percent of the matter in the universe is "dark matter."

outline of lecture

    1. How We See So Far

    2. Open or Closed?

    3. Black Holes

    4. Dark Matter

quotes

I have often heard it said that there is no such thing as a free lunch. It now appears possible that the universe itself is a free lunch.

-- Alan Guth (physicist, 1982)

The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.

-- Steven Weinberg (physicist, Nobel Prize)

Still there are moments when one feels free from one's own identification with human limitations and inadequacies. At such moments, one imagines that one stands on some spot of a small planet, gazing in amazement at the cold yet profoundly moving beauty of the eternal, the unfathomable: life and death flow into one, and there is neither evolution nor destiny; only being.

-- Albert Einstein

[home]  [course]  [lecs unit 2]  [homework]  [exams]  [FirstClass]  [what's new] 
Please email any questions, comments, or suggestions to Professor Bernice Durand, bdurand@theory3.physics.wisc.edu.

Revised October 22, 1997.


Content © 1997, Bernice Durand
Images and layout © 1997, Shane Hamilton