Lectures (Video)
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Planetary Orbits
- 3. Our Solar System and the Pluto Problem
- 4. Discovering Exoplanets: Hot Jupiters
- 5. Planetary Transits
- 6. Microlensing, Astrometry and Other Methods
- 7. Direct Imaging of Exoplanets
- 8. Introduction to Black Holes
- 9. Special and General Relativity
- 10. Tests of Relativity
- 11. Special and General Relativity (cont)
- 12. Stellar Mass Black Holes
- 13. Stellar Mass Black Holes (cont)
- 14. Pulsars
- 15. Supermassive Black Holes
- 16. Hubble's Law and the Big Bang
- 17. Hubble's Law and the Big Bang II
- 18. Hubble's Law and the Big Bang III
- 19. Omega and the End of the Universe
- 20. Dark Matter
- 21. Dark Energy and the Accelerating Universe and the Big Rip
- 22. Supernovae
- 23. Other Constraints: The Cosmic Microwave Background
- 24. The Multiverse and Theories of Everything
Frontiers and Controversies in Astrophysics - Lecture 5
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Lecture 5 - Planetary Transits
Professor Bailyn talks about student responses for a paper assignment on the controversy over Pluto. The central question is whether the popular debate is indeed a "scientific controversy." A number of scientific "fables" are discussed and a moral is associated with each: the demotion of Pluto (moral: science can be affected by culture); the discovery of 51 Peg b (morals: expect the unexpected, and look at your data); the disproof of pulsation as explanation for the Velocity Curves (moral: sometimes science works like science).
Prof. Charles Bailyn
ASTR 160 - Frontiers and Controversies in Astrophysics, Spring 2007 (Yale University: Open Yale) http://oyc.yale.edu Date accessed: 2009-05-12 License: Creative Commons BY-NC-SA |
Lecture Material
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