Cosmology/Course

Cosmology is a one-semester Wikiversity course that presents the late twentieth century/early twenty-first century cosmological model, mainly, but not fully, based on general relativity. The course may be used in a traditional university, within the conditions of the free licensing terms indicated at the bottom of this Wikiversity web page. It may be modified and redistributed according to the same conditions, for example, via the Wikiversity and Wikimedia Commons web sites. For similar Wikiversity courses and learning resources on special and general relativity, see Cosmology, Topic:Special relativity and Topic:General relativity.

Lectures

PDF presentations

• 

The images used in the PDFs are listed in the image gallery.

How to use these

Teacher

classroom mode

These lectures are designed to be used by a teacher in fullscreen mode (e.g. xpdf -fullscreen) using a computer projector (beamer) in a face-to-face, real-life classroom. Internal clickable links at the bottom of the presentations (except for the opening slide) can be used to navigate between key ideas.

Student

post-classroom desktop mode

After participating in lectures, you may use the pdf files to think through the ideas at your own pace. It is highly recommended that you click on links in the pdf files to read Wikipedia articles that go to more depth and lead in turn to introductory and research-level literature. Using a pdf viewer like xpdf, clicking on a Wikipedia link in the pdf file should open that page in a new panel in a web browser. You may need to view the pdf files in partial screen mode, not fullscreen mode.

no-classroom desktop mode

Viewing these pdf's without "classroom" help from someone who knows the subject is unlikely to be enough to learn the subject. But you may try! Possible ways to learn without a face-to-face teacher giving lectures include:

• find others (at least one teacher and preferably several other students) who are willing to wiki-coordinate together - you will need to choose an appropriate resource type, maybe a "workshop"

and wiki-coordinate with a teacher and other students

• ask at the w:Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science
• use the pdf's in parallel to reading the associated Wikipedia articles
• read through the external references listed in the associated Wikipedia articles, in parallel to looking through the pdf here

Exercises

Exercises using the WIMS system should be made available on WIMS servers in 2014 or 2015.

Reading list

In depth

• - George Ellis - Issues in the Philosophy of Cosmology - this is a proper scientific approach, i.e. serious philosophy explained in simple (scientific) words