What is the distance ladder? Why do distances become less accurate as they increase?
Why are Type I Supernova so important in distances? Why can we get distances with them?
What is the Hubble Law? What is it measuring? Why is knowing Ho so important?
How does the expansion rate change with distance? Are we at the center of the Universe?
How was Dark Matter uncovered? What fraction of a galaxies mass is in dark matter?
What is the Local Group? How many galaxies? What is the most common type of galaxy?
Why is it important to study Local Group dwarf galaxies? Can they be seen far away?
What is the future of the Milky Way and Andromeda? Once they merge, then where? (Virgo!)
Radio Galaxies: enormous `lobes' and/or `jets' of gas and radiation, emanating from center.
Characteristics of Active Galactic Nuclei: non-thermal emission, rapid luminosity variations.
Which AGNs are normal Spiral galaxies with intense, point-like nuclei, & emission lines?
What is the unified model for AGN? What are the components? Why is inclination important?
Why was the first Quasar so hard to identify? What does the high redshift indicate?
How are distances to Quasars estimated? How old are these objects? When did they 'live'?
Quasars are quite bright in our sky. What does this say about their intrinsic luminosity?
How are Quasars and AGN related? Why don't we see Quasars locally (nearby)? What changed?
What is the size of the luminous region of a Quasar? How do we measure this?
What is Olber's Paradox? How do we solve it today? What is the observable universe?
What is the Cosmological Principle? What is meant by Homogeneous? Isotropic? Universality?
What is the difference between Open, Flat and Closed Universes? What determines which we are?
What is the Cosmic Background Radiation? What created it? Why do we see it in all directions?
What is the current temperature of the Cosmic Background Radiation? Why did it `cool off'?
What is Inflation (with regards to cosmology!)? When did it happen? What happened??
The early universe was exceedingly hot and dense. Matter was created from high energy photons.
The first matter formed were high mass particles, quarks that create protons and neutrons.
For 5 seconds, photons created the positrons & electrons, then no more matter was ever created.
Where did the relative 'cosmic abundances' of Hydrogen (71%) and Helium (27%) come from?
What does it mean that photons and matter were 'coupled'? When did they 'uncouple'?
What is Recombination? What did it create? (the Cosmic Background Radiation!)
What is the `critical density'? How does it relate to the geometry (and future) of the universe?
What is the Big Crunch? The Big Chill? Why is it difficult to measure the universe's density?
What is gravitational lensing? Is there any evidence that we've seen such a thing?
What is the Horizon Problem? The Flatness Problem? How did inflationary theory fix these?
What have studies of distant Type I Supernova told us about the expansion of our universe?
Reading in Text: Chapter 16 (starting at page 367), and all of 17 and 18.