IMPORTANT CAUTIONARY NOTE: This study guide is a general outline of the material that will be covered on the exam. It may be useful in helping you to spend your time studying the most relevant material. However, it is only an outline, and is NOT a replacement for studying your notes, the appropriate sections of the book, and the homework.

Expansion of the Universe:
How do we know the universe is expanding? How fast is it expanding? How do we measure this (redshifts and distances)? What is Hubble's Law?
How do we estimate the age of the universe from the expansion rate?
Was it always expanding this fast? How can we tell? Will it expand forever? What are the ways we try to determine this?
The connection between the mass and fate of the universe and its shape.
e.g. how more or less mass changes the fate of the universe and its geometrical shape.

Fate of the Universe: More on determining the history and predicting the future of the universe. The observable consequences of the different possibilities for our universe. How adding up the matter in the universe can help us determine this. What that result is. How looking at galaxies and other objects (like supernovae) far in the past can help us determine this, and what those data suggest for the history of the universe. Understand how redshift is a time machine when used to look at very distant objects in the early universe.

The Early Universe: Physical properties of the universe at early times. General idea of how the universe was different physically in the past. How the "cosmic microwave background photons'' originate from the early universe (about 300,000 years) - when the universe changed from being opaque because photons kept bouncing off free electrons to being transparent because electrons joined up with the protons. How the current temperature of these photons tells us about the conditions in the early universe.
Stepping backward in time to when the universe was even hotter and denser, how protons and neutrons came together at even earlier times (about 3 minutes since start of Big Bang) to make Helium, but not enough time to make heavier elements. What the horizon and flatness problems are, and how a very early, super-inflationary period in the universe solves them.

How the darkness of the night sky is related to finite age of the universe (Olber's paradox). What the anthropic principle is.