Of all the classes I took this semester, Astronomy 142 had to be my favorite. I not only learned about the universe, but also applied the laws of physics to each and every concept we have learned about, making the learning experience much more valuable.
My favorite topics to talk about in class were black holes, relativity and how galaxies are created. Black holes have always been a mystery to me, and learning about them makes them not seem as scary ... assuming you're nowhere near the event horizon to become spaghettified. I have always thought they were a vacuum that sucks all matter into it, but it's really the opposite--Professor Bell surprised me when he said that if our sun was a black hole, we'd just keep orbiting as if nothing was different (crazy, right?).
As for relativity, it's been fun to learn more about the Einstein's theories, and how he believed that gravity is really an illusion caused by the curvature of space-time (which is another dimension, apparently). The thought experiments were really entertaining, especially when we got into gravitational time dilation. It's weird to think that someone could be inside a spaceship feeling no effect on their clocks, but from the observer's point of view, the astronaut would be going extremely slow due to a stronger force of gravity.
Finally, learning about galaxy formation was probably my favorite part of this course. I never really wondered how they were formed before the course and especially wouldn't have guessed they were created by quantum fluctuations in our non-uniform universe that expanded greatly during inflation. On a side note, it's mind-blowing that our universe is made up of just 4% of normal matter. How!?
This class has really given me a unique perspective on the universe and will never be able to look at it the same. Hopefully I can take another astronomy class before my time at Michigan is up, because I want to know even more.
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