UNIT 1: STARS BIZARRE
- Overview of stellar evolution
- Life cycles of low mass and high mass stars
- The Death of the Sun
- The helium flash, thermal pulses, and planetary nebulae
- The fate of our Solar System
- White Dwarfs: formation, pulsation, and crystallization
- Supernovae: Massive stars (Type II) stellar nucleosynthesis
- Supernovae: Exploding white dwarfs (Type I) as standard candles
- Pulsars
- Neutron Star Formation and Structure
- Pulsars: timing and uses!
- Black widow pulsars
- Gamma Ray Bursts:The observational mysteries, and the 'hypernova' model
UNIT 2: RELATIVITY, BLACK HOLES, and TIME TRAVEL
- Relativity (towards Black Holes)
- Relativity in Astronomy - examples
- Fundamental assumption: absoluteness of speed of light
- Consequences: Special Relativity (no accelerations)
- Time slows down for moving observer rel. to rest
- Lengths shrink in direction of motion
- No such thing as absolute simultaneity
- E=m*c*c
- Space-Time diagrams
- Consequences: General Relativity (accelerations)
- Principle of Equivalence (gravity = acceleration)
- Acceleration (gravity) bends light
- light= straight, so gravity bends space
- Time slows down near a gravitating body (Shapiro delay)
- Gravitational redshift
- Gravity waves (confirmed by Hulse-Taylor binary pulsar)
- Black Holes
- When space is really curved, light cannot escape
- Schwarzschild Radius of gravitating body
- The Event Horizon
- The photon sphere
- Light near a black hole, as viewed from outside
- Singularities and loss of information
- rotating black holes
- Tidal effects near a black hole
- Black Hole evaporation
- Worm holes, time travel, and time machines