Lecture 1: The origins of the Universe

Further reading

• For astronomical images, you can't do better than the "Astronomy Picture of the Day" website, http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html. Not only does this have a fabulous archive of the most amazing pictures (and a new one every day), each image also has links to many other interesting sites where you can follow up the topic. I've used APOD as the source for many of the images here, mostly because it's so convenient. If you prefer to have your pictures in a form you can hold (and show off to friends), a selection has been published as a book, in "Universe: 365 Days" by R. J. Nemiroff and J. T. Bonnell (Harry N. Abrams, 2003), with a follow-up volume called "Astronomy: 365 Days" (2006)
• The relationship between redshift, distance, and age of the universe is not simple. Ned Wright's Cosmology Calculator http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~wright/CosmoCalc.html allows you to work out the age and distance at a given redshift. The default values (H0 = 71 km/s/Mpc, ΩM = 0.27, Ωvac = 0.73) are the generally accepted values from WMAP.
• You can read about the Planck scale at http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/einsteinlight/jw/module6_Planck.htm
• The Millennium Simulation animations are available at http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/galform/millennium/
• Via Lactea movies of the formation of the Galaxy: http://www.ucolick.org/~diemand/vl/movies.html
• Scientific American had a cover story devoted to dark matter in November 2010: "Dark Worlds" by Jonathan Feng and Mark Trodden. It does a very good job of explaining the various candidates for dark matter and how experimenters are looking for them. There's a copy available at Jonathan Feng's website at http://www.ps.uci.edu/~jlf/research/press/dm_1011sciam.pdf
• For a bit of silliness, take a look at the "Universe Simulator" video by Andrew Pontzen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E4Owc5gdRc

Sources for images used:

• Timeline of the Universe: painting by Don Dixon http://www.cosmographica.com/gallery/portfolio2007/content/389_UniverseTimeline_large.html
• Spiral galaxy rotation curve: from IceCUBE, "Searching for neutralino dark matter" http://w3.iihe.ac.be/icecube/3_Activities/1_WIMPs%20Analysis/
• Dark matter in Abell 1689: from Hubble news release 2010-26 http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2010/26/
• LHC event: from ATLAS experiment, ""Black Hole" event superimposed over a classic image of the ATLAS detector", http://www.atlas.ch/photos/full-detector-photos.html
• Baryon fraction: from Martin White. "Big Bang nucleosynthesis", http://astro.berkeley.edu/~mwhite/darkmatter/bbn.html
• Penzias and Wilson: from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Woodrow_Wilson
• WMAP image of the CMB: from WMAP 5 year release http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/news/5yr_release.html
• Inflation: from Physics World http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/21330
• Millennium smulation: from http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/galform/millennium/
• Universe Simulator: from the video by Andrew Pontzen http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~app26/?page=experience
• 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey: from http://www2.aao.gov.au/2dFGRS/2dFzcone_big.gif
• First stars: from WMAP Concept Animations: Universe evolution http://wmap.gsfc.nasa.gov/media/030651/index.html
• Effect of reionisation on quasar spectrum: from Abraham Loeb, "First Light", http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Sept06/Loeb/Loeb6.html
• Reionisation: from George Djorgovski, "Discovery of the cosmic reionization era" http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~george/reion/
• Quasar: painting by Don Dixon http://cosmographica.com/gallery/portfolio/portfolio301/pages/326-QuasarB.htm. Artwork copyright 2003 by Don Dixon/cosmographica.com, used with permission.
• Black hole at the centre of the Milky Way: from Andrea Ghez http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~ghezgroup/gc/pictures/orbitsMovie.shtml
• Radio galaxy Centaurus A; from APOD 2008 Jan 10 http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080110.html
• Quasar: artist's impression from Universe Today http://www.universetoday.com/30275/quasars/. The quote about overfeeding black holes is from Peebles 2011, "How galaxies got their black holes" Nature 469 305
• Highest redshift quasar spectrum: from Willott et al. 2007, "Four Quasars above Redshift 6 Discovered by the Canada-France High-z Quasar Survey", AJ, 134, 2435 http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007AJ....134.2435W
• Black hole-galaxy mass correlation: from "Correlation of Black Hole Mass and Bulge Mass/Brightness", http://www.spacetelescope.org/images/opo0022b/
• Colliding galaxies: from Hubble press release, 24 April 2008: Galaxies gone wild! http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic0810/
• Spiderweb galaxy: from HubbleSite news release STScI-2006-45, "Hubble captures galaxy in the making"http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2006/45/
• Quasar episode: from Li et al. 2007, "Formation of z~6 Quasars from Hierarchical Galaxy Mergers", ApJ, 665, 187 http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2007ApJ...665..187L
• Bullet cluster: from APOD 2008 August 23 http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080823.html
• Fermi bubble: from NASA, "NASA's Fermi Telescope Finds Giant Structure in our Galaxy" http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/GLAST/news/new-structure.html
• Andromeda: from APOD 2002 October 21 http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap021021.html. Artist's impression of the Milky Way: from http://www.news.wisc.edu/newsphotos/milkyway.html

Last updated 12 March 2011