8.962  General Relativity

Dear class ---

I have completed my guide to the set of lecture notes.  Many thanks to Kaylee de Soto for the comment during a Zoom lecture that a more physically focused, narrative description of the lectures would be useful.  Whether you find these notes useful or not, I found it useful to write them, and am likely to continue to use them in future years when I teach this course.

I have also written and posted a set of notes describing what happens when we observe distant clocks in a Robertson-Walker universe.  You'll find these new notes posted under "Materials / Readings".  Many thanks to Haochen Wang for the question which led to this analysis, which I think also proved useful beyond simply answering this question.

To those of you still in the Boston area, I hope you get a chance to enjoy the nice weather which has FINALLY made an appearance.

scott

Dear class ---

The lecture guide has been updated once more.  It now covers all the lectures that were recorded and which connect to upcoming assignments.  I intend to add some material describing the two bonus "advanced" lectures for which material is posted but lectures were not recorded, but I may pause a bit before doing this (pandemic life is a tiring one).  I will certainly wrap this in the next week and a half or so.

scott

Dear all --

This semester has been a whirlwind as we learn how to handle online education.  For me, it's multiply pronged, since I'm attempting to continue to teach a graduate-level physics course while also effectively serving as a home-school mentor for my 2nd grade daughter.  From Ray Ashoori via Peter Fisher, the following does a pretty good job at conveying how it feels doing this from my perspective; perhaps you can relate:

https://twitter.com/mommaunfiltered/status/1251855748876898306?s=21

cheers,

scott

Dear class ---

Further updates now in the lecture guide document.

scott

Dear class ---

I have updated the guide to the lecture notes with comments on the cosmology lectures.  These are pretty detailed lecture notes, so even a short synopsis got pretty dense.  I will add commentary on additional lectures over the coming days and weeks.

scott