Catalog Search Results
Publisher
Kanopy Streaming
Pub. Date
2014.
Physical Desc
1 online resource (1 video file, approximately 13 min.) : digital, .flv file, sound
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
Visible light, which can be seen with our eyes, comprises a small sliver of the electromagnetic spectrum. The rest of the spectrum, from short wavelength gamma rays to long-wavelength radio waves, requires special instruments to detect. ALMA uses and array of radio telescopes to detect and study radio waves from space. Radio telescopes are typically large parabolic dish antennas used singly or in an array. Radio observatories are preferentially located...
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2017.
Physical Desc
1 online resource (streaming video file) (717 minutes): digital, .flv file, sound
Language
English
Description
Taught by Professor Bradley Schaefer of Louisiana State University, this course shows how ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Indians, Chinese, and other cultures saw the sky. You learn how the Sun, Moon, and stars were their clock, calendar, and compass; constellations encoded their mythologies; and the heavens inspired religious and philosophical ideas, laying the foundation for modern science.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2015.
Physical Desc
1 online resource (streaming video file) (31 minutes): digital, .flv file, sound
Language
English
Description
In billions of years, the Sun will expand into a red giant, possibly engulfing Earth. Learn how planet-finding techniques give astronomers insight into the processes inside giant stars. Then study the planets around these behemoths for clues about Earth’s ultimate fate..
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2017.
Physical Desc
1 online resource (streaming video file) (29 minutes): digital, .flv file, sound
Language
English
Description
The Green Bank Observatory is located within the 13,000-acre National Radio Quiet Zone straddling the border of Virginia and West Virginia. Come tour this fascinating facility where astronomers discovered radiation belts around Jupiter, the black hole at the center of our galaxy, and the first known interstellar organic molecule, and began the search for extra-terrestrial life.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2017.
Physical Desc
1 online resource (streaming video file) (30 minutes): digital, .flv file, sound
Language
English
Description
In the mid-1960s, astronomers discovered signals with predictable periodicity but no known source. In case these signals indicated extraterrestrial life, they were initially labeled LGM, Little Green Men. But research revealed the source of the pulsing radiation to be neutron stars.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2017.
Physical Desc
1 online resource (streaming video file) (31 minutes): digital, .flv file, sound
Language
English
Description
A pulsar's spin begins with its birth in a supernova and can be altered by transfer of mass from a companion star. Learn how pulsars, these precise interstellar clocks, are used to confirm Einstein's prediction of gravitational waves by observations of a double-neutron-star system, and how we pull the pulsar signal out of the noise.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2017.
Physical Desc
1 online resource (streaming video file) (32 minutes): digital, .flv file, sound
Language
English
Description
The human propensity for pattern recognition and storytelling has led every culture to invent constellations. Trace the birth of the star groups known in the West, many of which originated in ancient Mesopotamia. At least one constellation is almost certainly more than 14,000 years old and may be humanity's oldest surviving creative work.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2017.
Physical Desc
1 online resource (streaming video file) (29 minutes): digital, .flv file, sound
Language
English
Description
Take a tour of our neighboring planets via their radio emissions and learn how scientists infer their temperatures and energy sources. You'll be shocked by the difference between their images in reflected sunlight - the images we're familiar with - and their appearance when we "see" the radio energy they emit on their own.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2015.
Physical Desc
1 online resource (streaming video file) (31 minutes): digital, .flv file, sound
Language
English
Description
Dig deeper into the treasure trove of data from the Kepler mission, which discovered hundreds of compact multiplanet systems, with planets much more closely packed than in our solar system. Explore the dynamics of these groupings, which have planets interacting strongly through mutual gravitation..
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2017.
Physical Desc
1 online resource (streaming video file) (33 minutes): digital, .flv file, sound
Language
English
Description
Interstellar clouds favor formation of carbon-based molecules over any other kind - not at all what statistical models predicted. In fact, interstellar clouds contain a profusion of chemicals similar to those that occur naturally on Earth. If planets are formed in this rich soup of organic molecules, is it possible life does not have to start from scratch on each planet?
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2013.
Physical Desc
1 online resource (streaming video file) (30 minutes): digital, .flv file, sound
Language
English
Description
Is there life in our universe? As you get an overview of the course - including the five major questions it will endeavor to answer - consider the possibility that life exists in some form in the cosmos. Learn how exponential growth in technological developments is enabling breakthroughs that were recently impossible.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2017.
Physical Desc
1 online resource (streaming video file) (33 minutes): digital, .flv file, sound
Language
English
Description
With an array of 66 radio antennas located in the high Chilean desert above much of the earth's atmosphere, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) is a radio telescope tuned to the higher frequencies of radio waves. Designed to examine some of the most distant and ancient galaxies ever seen, ALMA has not only revealed new stars in the making, but planetary systems as well.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2013.
Physical Desc
1 online resource (streaming video file) (30 minutes): digital, .flv file, sound
Language
English
Description
The Kepler mission is changing everything we know about extrasolar planets. Learn how this supersensitive-imaging instrument works to monitor 157,000 stars continuously for years and what it has uncovered since launching in 2009. But first, review the transit effect created when a parent star crosses its orbiting planet.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2017.
Physical Desc
1 online resource (streaming video file) (32 minutes): digital, .flv file, sound
Language
English
Description
Using the laws of physics and electromagnetic radiation, astronomers can "weigh" a galaxy by studying the distribution of its rotating hydrogen. But when they do this, it soon becomes clear something is very wrong: A huge proportion of the galaxy's mass has simply gone missing. Welcome to the topsy-turvy world of dark matter - which we now believe accounts for 90 percent of our own Milky Way.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2013.
Physical Desc
1 online resource (streaming video file) (32 minutes): digital, .flv file, sound
Language
English
Description
Space is so vast that inventing a method of faster-than-light travel is the only way humans could conceivably travel the cosmos conveniently. How hard is space travel, really? In this mind-bending lecture, review the obstacles to space travel and consider their theoretical solutions - from combining matter and antimatter into energy, to taking "short cuts" via warp drive and wormholes.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2017.
Physical Desc
1 online resource (streaming video file) (30 minutes): digital, .flv file, sound
Language
English
Description
Witnessing a meteor fall must have been a strange and awe-inspiring experience for people long ago. Travel around the world to places where meteorites were worshiped and also used as a source of iron, which was rarer than gold before the smelting technology of the Iron Age.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2013.
Physical Desc
1 online resource (streaming video file) (31 minutes): digital, .flv file, sound
Language
English
Description
How has the Earth managed to stay within a moderate range of temperatures for billions of years, despite the atmosphere's wild fluctuations in oxygen? Study how convection, greenhouse gases, and the carbon rock cycle contribute to a powerful system of checks and balances that keep Earth's climate consistent with supporting life. Also, meet some of Earth's earliest life.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2015.
Physical Desc
1 online resource (streaming video file) (31 minutes): digital, .flv file, sound
Language
English
Description
Peer into the future at ambitious projects that may one day succeed in collecting light directly from an Earth-sized planet in the habitable zone of a nearby star. Examine three different engineering approaches: the coronagraph, interferometer, and starshade..
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2013.
Physical Desc
1 online resource (streaming video file) (36 minutes): digital, .flv file, sound
Language
English
Description
Now that you've seen why humanity will eventually have to leave Earth, consider astronomers' next steps, challenges, and planned missions. Examine why specialized optical systems called coronagraphs are necessary to detect habitable Earths, and how the use of direct imaging spectra is crucial to identifying whether the biomarkers of life are present on other worlds.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2015.
Physical Desc
1 online resource (streaming video file) (32 minutes): digital, .flv file, sound
Language
English
Description
Join the quest for life on exoplanets, focusing on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI)—a hunt for signals from alien civilizations inspired by a landmark paper in 1959. See how the famous Drake equation points to factors that determine how many such civilizations may exist..
In Interlibrary Loan Catalog
Didn't find what you need? Items not owned by MetroShare Consortium can be requested from other Interlibrary Loan Catalog libraries to be delivered to your local library for pickup.
Didn't find it?
Can't find what you are looking for? Try our Materials Request Service. Submit Request