Astronomy 2142: Black Holes
Autumn 2025

Instructor: David Weinberg, Distinguished University Professor, Department of Astronomy
Textbook: Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy, by Kip Thorne.

For more information, download the syllabus.
The OpenStax textbook referenced in the syllabus is available here.

Downloadable Items (PDF format):

Course Syllabus.
Theme description of the Number, Nature, Mind theme of the GE.

Course Notes:

Notes are in PDF format. I can provide a double space version for anyone who wants more space to add their own notes.

Part 1: Introduction, posted 8/26/25.

Part 2: Newton's Laws of Motion, posted 9/7/25.

Part 3: Newtonian Gravity, posted 9/10/25.

Part 4: Transition: EM Radiation, Energy and Momentum Conservation, Reference Frames, updated on 9/26/25.

Part 5: Special Relativity, updated version with figures posted on 9/29/25.

Part 6: General Relativity, posted 10/5/25.

Slides from lectures:

Introduction slides in pdf or pptx.
A few slides on Newton in pdf or pptx.
Slides for the 9/17 in-class question in pdf or pptx.
Illustrations from Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland, by George Gamow.

Homework assignments:

Homework 1: Newton's Law of Gravity, due on Monday, September 22, 5 pm.
Solution set handed out on 9/26.
Homework 2: Solar Energy and Time Dilation, due on Friday, October 3, 7 pm.

Note that solution sets for the homework assignments are handed out in class, on paper.

Information sheets:

Manipulating equations. To help you remember some rules of algebra that you might have forgotten.
Scientific notation. Some reminders on scientific notation and test problems to check that you can use it correctly on your calculator.
Reader's guide for Black Holes and Time Warps, written by DW, last update 8/29/25.
Review guide for the midterm exam, posted 10/3/25. (Exam is on 10/13/25.)

Videos or images shown in class:

Earth orbiting a black hole, an animation by Andrew Hamilton
Stars orbiting the Milky Way black hole
Kepler's laws
Relativity of simultaneity: image and video.
Time dilation: image and video. #
Excerpt from Mr. Tompkins in Wonderland, by George Gamow.
Shoot-the-monkey illustration of the equivalence principle.
Einstein's elevator, a simple demonstration that objects travel on straight paths in a freely falling reference frame.
Weightlessness in the International Space Station

Other links, some to videos, some to informational web sites or images:

Death by black hole.
A conversation with the always-entertaining Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
A journey into a black hole. This 7-minute video has quite good (and carefully calculated) visualizations and narration explaining what is going on.
The Black Hole. Not what they are really like.`
Frames of Reference. I vividly remember this science film from high school physics class; even then it was comically retro. Someone has broken it into chunks and posted it to YouTube. We will watch the first few minutes of Part 1 in class. Part 3 is my favorite.
Part 1.
Part 2.
Part 3.
Part 4.
Excerpts from English translations of Einstein's 1905 papers On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies and Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?.

Links to black hole astronomy articles that I mentioned in class

Go to David Weinberg's Home Page

Updated: 2025 October 6[dhw]