Astronomy 7 Review:Topics Covered

• Meteor Impacts and Mass Extinctions

• The search for Life in the Universe

• NASA Missions

• Black Holes

• Hubble's Law and Cosmology

• The Cold Fusion Fiasco

• The Future of Astronomy Research

• The Greenhouse effect on Venus and Earth

Day by Day Review

April 4^th

• distance scales

• the scientific method

• scientific notation

April 6^th

• geological eras

• types of impacting bodies

• evidence of terrestrial cratering

• evidence for extinction of dinasours

• energy involved in impact cratering

April 11^th

• how to estimate chances of impacts

• reasons for exaggerating chances of impact

• motivations for parties involved in impact stories

April 13^th

• definition of life

• necessity for life as we know it

• conditions for life as we know it

• possible places for life in our SS

• drake equation and its parameters

April 18^th

• basic data for the terrestrial planets and moons

• how to search for planets outside the solar system

• obstacles to traveling to another star

• how can we be detected by other civilizations

April 20^th : NASA Missions - missing notes

April 25^th

• the failure rate of NASA missions

• why do we focus on Mars missions

• what is the driving force for NASA missions

• What is the driving force to build HST

• why is HST so prominent in the news

• what is spectroscopy and what can it tell us

• what other telescopes are in orbit around us

• the international space station and its (non) function

April 27^th Midterm

May 2^nd

• assumptions of special relativity

• predictions of special relativity

• what is the twin paradox

• assumptions of general relativity

• results of general relativity

• canonical tests of general relativity

• the characteristics of black holes

• tidal force near a black hole

• accretion disks around a black hole

May 4^th

• ABC article about the creation of a black hole in the laboratory

• formation of a black hole

• emission from a black hole (x-ray)

• types of black holes

• characteristics of active galactic nuclei

May 9^th

• what is cosmology

• early attempts at measuring the number of stars

• early models of the universe

• the distance ladder

• the Hubble expansion and the Hubble diagram

• doppler shifts

• the Hubble constant and what it tells you about the universe

May 11^th

• derivation of the critical density of the universe

• possible geometries of the universe

• evidences for dark matter

• the CMB

• canonical evidences for the Big Bang

• other theories of the universe

• gravitational redshift, and cosmological redshift

May 16^th

• candidates for dark matter

• the four forces and the unification of the four forces

• experiements that try to measure Ho

• the Boomerang results and what it means

• the CERN quark-gluon plasma result and what it means

May 18^th

• forces at work inside the atom

• different types of energy production

• fission and fusion

• energy from fission and fusion

• two major types of fusion

• the cold fusion story

• the characters involved in cold fusion and their biases

May 23^rd

• different types of telescopes

• the largest telescopes in the world

• radio telescopes

• active optics

• future telescope projects

May 25^th

• limitations to ground based observations

• adaptive optics

• guide stars and their impact on society

• other important telescope facilities

May 30^th Midterm

June 1^st

• review of media stuff

June 6^th

• the greenhouse effect

• composition and history of our atmosphere

• effects of global warming and how its calculated

• alternative energy sources to coal

June 8^th Review

This page was last modified on June 8^th , 2000