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Cosmology differs in some respects significantly from other sciences, primarily because of its intimate association with issues of a conceptual and philosophical nature. Because cosmology in the broader sense relates to the world views held…
Both the basic educational contents for students and study programs for science teachers include several topics in physics and astronomy, from the simplest ones to others as advanced as nuclear fusion to explain stellar evolution and…
Cosmology is becoming an important tool to test particle physics models. We provide an overview of the standard model of cosmology with an emphasis on the observations relevant for testing fundamental physics.
The model of the Big Bang is an integral part of the national curriculum for England. Previous work (e.g. Baxter 1989) has shown that pupils often come into education with many and varied prior misconceptions emanating from both internal…
These notes on modern cosmology were made with high school teachers and students in mind. Taking into account the lack of availability of time and classes that many teachers have nowadays in Brazil, often caused by having to comply with…
While purely philosophical in the early times, and still very speculative at the beginning of the twentieth century, Cosmology has gradually entered into the realm of experimental science over the past eighty years. It has raised some…
This is a written version of a series of lectures aimed at undergraduate students in astrophysics/particle theory/particle experiment. We summarize the important progress made in recent years towards understanding high energy astrophysical…
Cosmology as an exact physical science is of new date, but it has long roots in the past. This essay is concerned with four important themes in the history of cosmological thought which, if taken together, offer a fairly comprehensive…
These notes are intended as an introductory course for experimental particle physicists interested in the recent developments in astrophysics and cosmology. I will describe the standard Big Bang theory of the evolution of the universe, with…
In order to account for the observable Universe, any comprehensive theory or model of cosmology must draw from many disciplines of physics, including gauge theories of strong and weak interactions, the hydrodynamics and microphysics of…
This essay is a nontechnical primer for a broader audience, in which I paint a broad-brush picture of modern cosmology. I begin by reviewing the evidence for the big bang, including the expansion of our Universe, the cosmic microwave…
For most of its history, cosmology was a qualitatively constrained discourse on the universe, shaped by limited observational access and the absence of global dynamical laws. This situation has changed decisively in recent decades. Modern…
The comparison of the Standard Cosmological Model (SCM) with astronomical observations, i.e. theory versus experiment, and with the Minimal Standard Model (MSM) in particle physics, i.e. theory versus theory, is discussed. The main issue of…
A basic modern picture of the universe is given here. The lectures start from the historical ideas of a static universe. Then I move on to Newtonian cosmology and derive the main cosmological equations in the framework of Newtonian…
Recent advances in our understanding of the Universe have revolutionized our view of its structure, composition and evolution. However, these new ideas have not necessarily been used to improve the teaching of introductory astronomy…
In these notes we present a selection of topics, each section approximately amounting to one lecture. We begin with a brief recapitulation of General Relativity, and the Standard Model of Cosmology. This is followed by lectures on important…
A comparison of the standard models in particle physics and in cosmology demonstrates that they are not compatible, though both are well established. Basics of modern cosmology are briefly reviewed. It is argued that the measurements of the…
This lecture course covers cosmology from the particle physicist perspective. Therefore, the emphasis will be on the evidence for the new physics in cosmological and astrophysical data together with minimal theoretical frameworks needed to…
This is the summary of two lectures that aim to give an overview of cosmology. I will not try to be too rigorous in derivations, nor to give a full historical overview. The idea is to provide a "taste" of cosmology and some of the…
We note that in general there exist two basic aspects in any branch of physics, including cosmology - one dealing with the attributes of basic constituents and forces of nature, the other dealing with how structures arise from them and how…