Topics covered in the first half of the semester

  1) Evidence for the Big Bang

  2) The Expansion of the Universe

  3) Dark Matter

  4) The Role of Light in the Young Universe

  5) Helium in the Universe, and its Synthesis

  6) Light and Matter from an Electon's Perspective

  7) The Physics of Hot Ionized Gas

  8) Thermal (Black Body) Radiation

  9) The Discovery and Measurement of the Microwave Background

10) The Creation of the Microwave Background

11) The Nature and Measurement of Sound

12) Psycho-acoustics: why we hear what we hear

13) The Sound Spectra of Musical Instruments

14) The Cosmic Sound Spectrum

15) The Generation of Primordial Sound

Topics covered in the second half of the semester

16) Problems with the Cosmic Concert Hall: from C(l) to P(k)

17) CMBFAST: Computational Simulation of the Big Bang

18) Measuring the Parameters of the Universe

19) The Geometry of the Universe

20) Dark Energy and the Future of the Universe

21) The Concordance Model

22) Cosmic Harmonics: Primordial Music

23) The Dark Age and the First Stars

24) The Growth of Structure: From Stars to Tapestry

25) The First Second

26) Cosmological Problems and their Solution: Inflation

27) Inflation: A Universe from Nothing

28) Should Modern Cosmology Replace Genesis?