Cosmology Pre-Reading – 2022

1. “Astronomy” by Andrew Fraknoi, David Morrison, and Sidney Wolff (OpenStax; 2018)

You only need to read Chapters 28 and 29, on “The Evolution and Distribution of Galaxies” and “The Big Bang”. However, the book should be a useful reference more generally.

This is available for free over the web at https://openstax.org/details/books/astronomy

2. “Cosmology: A Very Short Introduction” by Peter Coles (Oxford University Press; 2001)

You should read this whole book (about 130 pages of reading).

This economical, quality book can be purchased on Amazon for about $12. Note that we are not purchasing and mailing books to attendees any more, so you will need to purchase this book yourself (from Amazon or elsewhere). The book’s modest cost can be paid for as part of your stipend, if applicable.

3. “An Ancient Universe: How Astronomers Know the Vast Scale of Cosmic Time” by the Astronomy Education Board of the American Astronomical Society.

This is available for free at https://aasarchives.blob.core.windows.net/files/resources/An_Ancient_Universe.pdf and you can also find it using Google (if needed).

4. “Putting Time in Perspective” by Tim Urban.

This is available for free at https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/08/putting-time-in-perspective.html

5. The planned slides and lecture notes for the 2022 workshop.

These are available as a zip file at (see your email for the link).

Opening the zip file will create a folder called “PDF-2022” that contains all the slides and lecture notes as individual PDF files.

Clearly you don’t have to master these fully on your own, since we’ll be discussing them in detail at the workshop itself. Just look them over for now.

Note that we are not providing printed slides and lecture notes at the workshop any more. So, if you want printed materials at the workshop, then feel free to print in advance and bring to the workshop. At the least, you should bring the PDF files of the slides and lecture notes on your portable computer, iPad, etc.

These slides and lecture notes are only for use by workshop attendees. Please do not share them more widely.

 

Don’t Panic Notice!

This assigned reading is designed to give you the necessary basic understanding, so that you will get the most out of the workshop. The reading is challenging in a few places. Thus, please pace yourself so that you will have the needed time to think about the reading properly. Most importantly, don’t worry or get “hung up” if you don’t understand all the technical points precisely – some of these can be complex and involved. The goal is to get the main overall ideas as a “warm up” for the workshop, where this material will be discussed again. If you do this then you should be fine. So don’t panic!

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