Course Outline
MAE 87 Freshman Seminar
New Cosmology
Winter Quarter 2009: January 14, 28, February 11, 25 March 4

Time and place:  Wednesdays at 8:00-9:50 am, EBU2 479.  Seminar will meet January 14, 28, February 11, 25. March 4
Course Code:  Section ID 646844
Instructor:  Carl H. Gibson, Professor of Engineering Physics and Oceanography, Center for Astrophysics and Space Sciences, 575 EBU2, 534-3184, cgibson@ucsd.edu, http://sdcc3.ucsd.edu/~ir118.  Office hours after class.
Teaching Assistant:  none
Textbook:  Book and reading lists.  Exploration of internet resources.
Course description:   Discussions with senior (and other) UCSD students about conventional cosmology and New Cosmology. Observations from a variety of new space and earth telescopes are discussed along with some introductory astronomy, astrophysics and cosmology. Substantial revisions to standard models are required to explain the observations. Conflicts occur particularly when modern fluid mechanics and turbulence theory are applied to the primordial fluids produced by the big bang. New cosmology explains how the universe appeared in the first place, and how gravitational structures like galaxies, stars and planets formed.  It predicts that most ordinary matter exists in earth-mass frozen hydrogen and helium planets in million-sun mass clumps condensed when the universe was 0.0025% of its present age. Only a small number of these dark matter planets have been detected even though there are 30 million per star. This is the dark matter of galaxies. All larger planets and all stars were formed by merging primordial planets. Each planet has collected and processed the chemicals of stardust for more than thirteen billion years and is therefore a candidate for possible biological activity.
Grading:  One unit. Pass not pass.