Frontiers and Controversies in Astrophysics with Professor Charles Bailyn

This course focuses on three particularly interesting areas of astronomy that are advancing very rapidly: Extra-Solar Planets, Black Holes, and Dark Energy. Particular attention is paid to current projects that promise to improve our understanding significantly over the next few years. The course explores not just what is known, but what is currently not known, and how astronomers are going about trying to find out.

Click session titles below to access audio, video, and course materials.

1. Introduction

2. Planetary Orbits

3. Our Solar System and the Pluto Problem

4. Discovering Exoplanets: Hot Jupiters

5. Planetary Transits

6. Microlensing, Astrometry and Other Methods

7. Direct Imaging of Exoplanets

Midterm Exam 1

8. Introduction to Black Holes

9. Special and General Relativity

10. Tests of Relativity

11. Special and General Relativity (cont.)

12. Stellar Mass Black Holes

13. Stellar Mass Black Holes (cont.)

14. Pulsars

15. Supermassive Black Holes

Midterm Exam 2

16. Hubble's Law and the Big Bang

17. Hubble's Law and the Big Bang (cont.)

18. Hubble's Law and the Big Bang (cont.)

19. Omega and the End of the Universe

20. Dark Matter

21. Dark Energy and the Accelerating Universe and the Big Rip

22. Supernovae

23. Other Constraints: The Cosmic Microwave Background

24. The Multiverse and Theories of Everything