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last updated 4/29
NOTE: Some of the applets linked here require java to run on your computer. There are well-known security issues with java and many operating systems block java applets, which you may or may not be able to override.
TOPICS:
Math & Angles Review; Parallax & Distances
Galactic Rotation, Dark Matter
The Cosmic Microwave Background
The Early Universe and Big Bang Nucleosynthesis
Dark Matter and Distribution of Galaxies
HISTORY
New interactive history of cosmology website from the American Institute of Physics
The Story Behind the Science — bringing science and scientists to life! Click below for some wonderful biographies.
Ptolemy Hipparchus Copernicus Kepler Brahe Galileo Newton Halley
The Shapley-Curtis Debate (for later in the semester)
GOOD GENERAL WEBSITES WITH RELEVANT MATERIAL
Marscher’s free downloadable cosmology textbook
George Rieke’s online class notes – excellent!
General astronomy animations and figures
EXPLAINING THE SKY: COPERNICUS VS. ARISTOTLE & PTOLEMY
Schematic of what retrograde motion looks like. Double-click the image to start.
What it really looks like, shown here when Jupiter and Saturn happened to be located in the same part of the sky.
Retrograde Motion – Ptolemy’s explanation
Retrograde Motion – Copernicus’ explanation (Flash)
SCALE
Refresher on Scientific Notation
Here’s an actual SCALE MODEL of the solar system that was constructed along Route 1 in Maine. The scale is 1 mile=1 AU. (1 AU = the distance from the Earth to the Sun = 93 million miles = 150 million km.) At this scale, the nearest star would be beyond the real orbit of the moon!
MATH & ANGLES REVIEW; PARALLAX & DISTANCES
Review of Angles and Angular Measure
Explanation of distances in astronomy, and parallax
A parallax applet (requires java)
LIGHT, ATOMS & SPECTRA
Transverse and Longitudinal Waves
Wien’s Law calculator to check your own calculations!
Electromagnetic Spectrum (from Kirkwood Schools)
Wavelengths and Colors (from Wikipedia)
The Rutherford Experiment:
if positive charge were evenly spread throughout an atom
if the positive charge were concentrated in a tiny nucleus
Rieke page on Doppler Effect and spectra
Doppler effect in 30 mph Volvo (from Exploratorium)
THERMODYNAMICS & BLACKBODIES
Blackbodies at different temperatures
Blackbody applet (requires java)
Equipartition of energy explanation – scroll down to “Temperature” heading
CEPHEID VARIABLE STARS
All about Delta Cephei and Cepheid variables
The Period-Luminosity relation
Animation of the Cepheid Period-Luminosity relation
Hunting for Cepheid Variables in M100
DISTANCE SCALES
Scale of the Universe zoomable map from National Geographic
Michael Richmond’s page on the extragalactic distance scale
One version of the extragalactic distance ladder
GRAVITY
A Flash downloadable Interactive applet for Kepler’s Laws
THE MILKY WAY GALAXY
Beautiful view of the Milky Way
Jim Schombert’s Galaxy course page (an excellent resource)
Structure of the Milky Way Galaxy
Shapley’s globular cluster distribution
Animation of density waves in a galaxy
GALACTIC ROTATION AND DARK MATTER
The Story Behind the Science: Dark Matter
THE HUBBLE LAW AND THE EXPANSION OF THE UNIVERSE
The Shapley-Curtis Debate and the Scale of the Universe main page
three-paragraph summary
Hubble’s original graph from 1929
Modern Hubble Diagram with Type Ia SN
Adam Riess’s PowerPoint on Type Ia (download)
Michael Richmond’s page on the extragalactic distance scale
Galaxy redshift simulator (Flash download)
Discovery of galaxies and their distances (Rieke)
Hubble’s Law “raisin bread” animation
Everyone thinks they’re at the center (Flash required)
Animation of the Cosmological Redshift
THE COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND
See links under “BLACKBODIES” above to remind yourselves about blackbody (Planck) radiation.
Observing the Microwave Background
Planck website with latest news
Build a Universe! (Flash required)
Rieke’s page on the CMB anisotropies
The Story Behind the Science: The Cosmic Microwave Background
GENERAL RELATIVITY and BLACK HOLES
Imaging the event horizon of M87’s central black hole: Animations and explanatory information from the Event Horizon Telescope
Explanation of LIGO BH merger observations
Detection of gravitational waves from a merging black hole pair!
Animations of all LIGO Mergers detected
Equivalence Principle: Acceleration in space vs. stationary on Earth
Equivalence Principle: Stationary in space vs. free-fall on Earth
Mercury precession animation: Newton vs. Einstein (Flash required)
Gravitational Bending of Starlight diagram
Gravitational Lensing Applet download (it’s fun!) Requires Flash player
Gravitational Bending of Starlight animation
Real-World Relativity: the GPS System
Gravitational redshift animation
animation of Binary Pulsar Gravitational Radiation John Rowe Animation/Australia Telescope National Facility, CSIRO
Black Holes in Colliding Galaxies Will Eventually Merge
The Story Behind the Science: Black Holes
Another good site for Active Galaxies and Quasars
FORCES AND PARTICLES
blowup of the chart of particles and interactions in the stairwell.
Standard Model Particle diagram
Nuclear Binding Energy (including graph)
DARK ENERGY AND ACCELERATION OF THE UNIVERSE
Explanation of Dark Energy and its ramifications
The Dark Energy Survey, explained
Type Ia Supernovae and why we still don’t understand everything about them
The Runaway Universe NOVA website
Brian Schmidt explaining the accelerating universe
STARS AND STELLAR EVOLUTION
Rieke Star formation page with animations
The Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram
Helium fusion (Flash required)
Sun/White Dwarf size comparison
High-mass core — Type II SN precursor
Why an iron core means good-bye
Type II Supernova explosion cartoon
White Dwarf/Neutron Star size comparison
Merging neutron star “kilonovas” create most of the heavy elements, including gold and platinum
Periodic Table indicating different creation sites for the elements
THE EARLY UNIVERSE; BIG BANG NUCLEOSYNTHESIS; THE EFFECTS OF REDSHIFT
Part I of Bruce Partridge’s Precision Cosmology
Part II of Bruce Partridge’s Precision Cosmology
Part III of Bruce Partridge’s Precision Cosmology
R. Pogge’s page on “Fundamental Tests of the Big Bang”
A Fourth Pillar: Cosmic Neutrino Background Detected
R. Pogge’s page on “The First Three Minutes”
Flash download of animation of 1st 3 minutes
Big Bang Nucleosynthesis graph
My notes on thermal equilibrium
My notes on the relationship between observed properties and redshift
Movie showing redshift with expansion
The Very Early Universe
An Interactive Tour Through the Big Bang
My notes on the timetable of the universe
Comparison of matter and radiation densities
Rieke page on Eras in the The Early Universe and Nucleosynthesis
Unification of Forces schematic
Another force unification schematic
Limits on our ability to observe force unification (the LHC will move it toward the “Electroweak theory” line)
BACK TO THE PAST: THE ORIGIN OF STRUCTURE
HST discovers thousands of globular clusters in Coma galaxy cluster
Light bending (from http://atropos.as.arizona.edu/aiz/teaching/xiaohui.html)
Gravitational lens simulation (from http://atropos.as.arizona.edu/aiz/teaching/xiaohui.html)
Gravitational instability – seeds
top view
Gravitational perturbations as ripples
EXCELLENT intro to the CMB oscillations
Thermal history leads to acoustic oscillations
Spatial inhomogeneity becomes angular anisotropy
Fluctuation size and geometry movie
How baryon density, ΩB, affects the power spectrum
How total matter density, Ω0h2, affects the power spectrum
WMAP fingerprint matching movie
EVEN FURTHER BACK: INFLATION; MULTIVERSE?
Good cartoon explanation of inflation
The resulting observable universe
Inflation increases R(t) exponentially!
A very readable explanation of inflation by Guth himself (from 13 years ago, and anticipating the results from COBE and WMAP, but still relevant)
Max Tegmark’s self-professed “crazy” website page
Tegmark’s 2003 Scientific American article on multiverses
Do We Live in a Multiverse? A concise, understandable 9-minute video featuring Guth, Tegmark and other prominent theorists.
What Is and Isn’t Scientific About the Multiverse (July 2018)
DARK MATTER AND DISTRIBUTION OF GALAXIES
Page with various Millennium Simulation movies of dark matter evolution
Structure Simulations and Observations
Structure formation animation from initial fluctuations (from Martin White’s page – the universe’s expansion has been “scaled out” for ease of viewing)
Gas density evolution animation with cosmological constant (from Martin White’s page – the universe’s expansion has been “scaled out” for ease of viewing)
CDM simulation pie slice of SDSS survey
Pie slice from real SDSS survey
Dark Matter serves as scaffold for structure
Structure evolution movie from WMAP
REIONIZATION
Reionization from http://rst.gsfc.nasa.gov/Sect20/480px-Reion_diagram.jpg
Reionization explanation from http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~george/reion/discovicon.jpg
Reionization simulation (from http://www.strw.leidenuniv.nl/~ritzervj/Research/Reionization.html)
Large-scale ionization structure 100 Mpc co-moving cube with 4.2 billion particles
Ned Wright’s Lyman Alpha Forest explanation
THE FUTURE; SPECULATION
SN Ia evidence for acceleration
Future of the universe depends on the source of dark energy
The all-important w can induce the “Big Rip”
How the M31-Milky Way collision will look to our descendants
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