Introduction to Cosmology



Why teach about cosmology??


Cosmology is perhaps the most romantic subject imaginable, as it involves mystery, adventure, and intrigue; it deals with the "long ago" and the "far away", and piques our imagination and our curiosity. Studying cosmology affords us an opportunity to contemplate some of the oldest questions that humans have been asking since recorded history (at least), and forces those who question to open their minds to some of the strangest and most bizarre aspects of our physical world.

We live at the turn of the twenty first century. One hundred years ago, Einstein was first publishing his theories of relativity, and the science of quantum mechanics was yet to be discovered. In 2004 we were faced with new observations that test the limits of our theoretical understanding. We read in the papers and see on the television about a Universe dominated with a mysterious "dark energy". 100 years ago people did not even know that the Universe was expanding, yet today we have very good reasons to believe that, not only is it expanding, but the expansion rate is accelerating . Our question is not whether the Universe will re-collapse again, or whether it will asymptotically approach zero expansion velocity. Our question today is whether our galaxy will eventually end up isolated, an island in a dark universe in which our galactic neighbors are outside our horizon.


What we offer in this "lab manual"

This on-line set of interactive on-line materials, Labs for a Lambda-Dominated Universe , is a collection of data from a variety of professional papers, the archives of the Hubble Space Telescope, our own image processing software, and public-domain modeling software. It is our attempt to take you through the steps that, over the past decade, have led to our present understanding of the art and science of Cosmology.


Our goal for you is

...that you understand where all the seemingly-bizarre claims of dark energy and an accelerating universe come from, and also what questions and paradoxes remain in our current model. We hope you will have fun; we hope you will be intrigued; and we hope you will share this knowledge with others!




Some Good Background Readings on Cosmology:





Cosmology Resources on the Web:




High Z Supernovae, Type Ia:
Evidence for Cosmic Acceleration

Globular Clusters and the
Age of the Universe

Modeling the Power Spectrum
of the CMB