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Ashoka University’s undergraduate course curriculum is taught across three semesters: Spring, Summer and Monsoon (Fall). Courses are broadly divided into three categories – Foundation Courses (core curriculum), Major & Minor Courses and Co-Curricular Courses.
You may search courses offered at Ashoka here. Please use the drop down menu to choose the specific semester and subject to see the full list of courses under each department. Foundation courses are offered in all semesters and do not have prerequisites. Offerings in other categories differ in each semester. Some higher level major/minor courses may have prerequisites.
To view Summer Semester Courses-2024: Click here
The principles of science manifest themselves in different ways in different domains of science. In this course we will learn how they do so in astronomy and cosmology, which are different from physics in one fundamental respect: in physics we can do experiments to test our hypotheses, but in astronomy and cosmology we cannot. Fortunately, the fundamental laws of physics, tested through Earth-based experiments, have been applicable to the entire universe since the beginning (so far as we can tell). This point is important because we can see the universe only as it was in the past, since all information-bearing signals — in particular light, the most important of signals — must travel at finite speed. Thus the signals received from an object record not the present but the moment in the past when they were emitted. When combined with the vast distances that separate objects in the universe, this leads to the astonishing conclusion that a deep snapshot of the universe from any point taken “at any moment” is actually a snapshot of the history of the universe. We might ask why information cannot be transmitted instantaneously. The answer is embedded in the fabric of space and time, which is described by Einstein’s special theory of relativity. And the fabric of space and time, we will discover, is modified by the presence of the matter that occupies it. The modification of space and time by matter is the understanding due to Einstein of what we normally call the force of gravity. But of course gravity, as we all know, was first understood by Newton; so we start there.
Newton’s version of gravity correctly describes familiar phenomena like the motion of planets around the Sun. What is less obvious is that gravity can be used to discover planets. This method was first used to discover Neptune, and has been used extensively to discover exoplanets, i.e. planets outside the solar system. In the first part of this course we will figure out how exoplanets can be revealed by Newton’s theory of gravity, and in the process learn how it and physics work. In the second part of the course, we will understand how the nature of space and time results in a maximum speed for all signals. In the third part we will talk briefly about the way in which massive objects, for example black holes, modify the space-time around them. And in the final part we will try to understand how the universe — i.e. space-time with all that it contains — has evolved since the beginning and how it may end.
