RandomGuy
I am that guy

Well fuck me

Well fuck me

Dude, this week didn't work out. Chaos rules my world right now. When are you working in town again?

I wont pretend to know the details here, but its quite fascinating if scalable.

http://mobile.extremetech.com/latest...actually-works

If you want to take it for a certificate along with lots of other people and with the professor (who is very active on the boards) I think it will be offered again in November. The trig is pretty minimal except for things like parallax. Of course there is a bit of a downside to the lower math level. For instance, all the quantum stuff has to basically be taken on faith since a proper treatment of the subject requires techniques from linear algebra, functional analysis, and PDEs, and the cosmology stuff like the Robertson-Walker metric, Friedman's equation, etc require some ODE. But the results from quantum are critical, since astronomy is basically spectroscopy. A more proper treatment of cosmology is also available:
https://www.coursera.org/course/cosmo

But you need pretty significant background for it: namely, ODE, mechanics, E&M, waves & vibrations, special relativity, and quantum mechanics, plus a rigorous intro to astro.

I thought this might interest you, as it does special relativity in some detail and even some general relativity:
https://www.coursera.org/course/introastro

It's a great intro to astronomy that only assumes you can do HS algebra and HS physics. It's actually pretty hard though despite the weak prereqs, but if you're looking for Cosmos raised to the 20th power, it delivers. But expect to devote some significant time to it.

Moving sucks. I don't recommend it. Good to see you back in some capacity. My posting has been limited to drive-by sarcasm. I feel kind of ashamed actually. I feel I'm not contributing in a meaningful way.

Replaced by CGI

Gonna pick up a copy of Zubrin in the next few days. Been quite busy.

I know we disagree on a lot of things but, seriously, mouse is killing me in that thread.