Exploring Black Holes: General Relativity & Astrophysics
MIT OpenCourseWare offers this physics course on general relativity and astrophysics built around the behavior of matter and light near black holes. Topics include energy and momentum in flat spacetime, the metric, curvature of spacetime around rotating and nonrotating masses, particle and light trajectories and orbits, and elementary cosmological models. The course structure follows weekly seminar and recitation meetings, with the final third of the semester devoted to collaborative research projects on subjects such as the Global Positioning System, solar system tests of relativity, gravitational lensing, gravitational waves, and Gravity Probe B. Materials include lecture notes, problem sets, and project guidelines drawn from an actual MIT undergraduate course. The approach moves from foundational spacetime physics toward current observational and theoretical work, giving students a structured path from special relativity basics to research-level topics in cosmology and astrophysics.