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We have now graded the exams. For every student, the full results also include a breakdown of the points achieved per sub-problem (based on the detailed grading instructions).

In this way, the point distribution and final grade should be highly transparent -- but please let us know if you have any questions or doubts! This applies in particular if you consider to appeal against the grade, keeping in mind that this always implies significant resources for the institute (for hiring an external censor, who anyway will be provided with exactly the same grading instructions). Of course, if you after consultation still do not think that the grading instructions were applied correctly in your case, you should by all means not ...

I hope the final exam today went more or less ok, and I just put out suggested solutions for you to check / compare. Detailed grading instructions and results will follow towards the end of next week.

As already announced earlier, soon after the final exam there should also be a course evaluation (or discussion) meeting, where it would be great to have at least 2 or 3 of you joining to get some feedback on the whole course. This will happen on Tuesday, 21 June, at 1:30 pm on zoom. 

While this is always a nice course to teach, I particularly enjoyed your active contributing to discussions...

Hi everyone 

I am feeling sick today so I won't be physically present, but I will be available on Zoom via the usual link from 4:15pm if you have questions about problem set 14. 

Jake

Hi everyone 

Apologies for the slight backlog in solutions -- they're all there now. I have also corrected a rather clumsy answer to P31, part (b) (in PS 9). 

I hope the solutions have in general been useful in helping you learn and understand a bit of GR. 

Also, exam season is now upon us, so here are some unsolicited pieces of advice for dealing with the weeks ahead, in particular when studying for GR:  

-- Get plenty of sleep; both in general and before the exam. It's a seriously underrated commodity, especially among physics students. It helps with literally everything. 

-- In a similar vein, don't forget to eat regularly and take walks (the weather in Norway isn't quite on your side with this one but at least it's not freezing).

-- If you aren't focusing or understanding something, take it easy on yourself. Exams really up the pressure you feel and focusing can sometimes...

As also in previous years, you can bring up to 3 A4 pages (two-sided) of personal notes to the exam. I strongly recommend to use hand-written notes, as this preparing such notes is at the same time a great preparation for the exam.

Also, don't forget the Q&A session on the Friday before the exam...

Just a short summary of the `final events' in the GR course, as indicated today during the lecture:

• Mon 30/05: final group exercise session (see the problem set)
• Fr 27/05 and Tue 31/05: final two lectures (on cosmology)
• Fr 10/06: Q&A session

 The Q&A session is during the week before the exam, and I will (try to) answer, and discuss, any GR-related question that you may have. So the more you prepare for the exam already until that day, the more you will get out of this session...

I just put the slides about gravitational waves online that I briefly showed during the lecture. Slide 3 provides a lot to explore, in particular the movies on the MPI page (now with corrected link). And don't miss the LISA trailer on the last slide. :)

Next week I will be travelling again, resulting in another swap of lecture and exercise times. Concretely:

• Tuesday, 26/04, 10.15 am: lecture (as usual)
• Friday, 29/04, 12.15 pm: exercises
• Monday, 02/05, 4.15 pm: lecture
• Tuesday, 03/05, 10.15 am: lecture (as usual)

On the Tuesday right after the Easter break, April 19, the lecture will be online. We will discuss Schwarzschild black holes and the style will be a flipped-classroom setup, like the first two weeks this term, i.e. you watch and prepare the lecture slides in advance and then we use the usual lecture slot to discuss them in detail. For convenience, I also added little movies (m1, m2, m3, m4) to complement these slides.

(Note th...

Next week we'll swap the group exercises with the lecture on Friday. So the schedule is as follows:

Monday 4/4, 4:15 pm: lecture (Kristian Birkeland)

Tuesday 5/4, 10:15 am: lecture (Lille Fy)

Friday 8/4, 12:15 pm: group exercises (Kristian Birkeland)

Hi all

I'm feeling a bit ill post my vaccine shot; I won't be able to come in, but will still be available as per usual on Zoom - the link is https://uio.zoom.us/j/5809720597?pwd=bi9IU0dHYjcxMUtJR0NEYVA4Mm0xdz09. 

Jake

Hi everyone 

A couple of you have pointed that in P21, part (b) the answer for the first component of the Riemann tensor is zero - that is true, but there is a typo on my part! It should read R^1_{212}, not R^1_{211}. Sorry about that. 

I have updated the solutions to reflect that change. Hopefully I have also written up the other nonzero components correctly :) 

In general, please do let me know if answers in the solutions don't agree with what you've done. The feedback is appreciated and useful. It's always possible (probable, even) that I've made an error somewhere. 

Have a good weekend. 

Jake

We have now reached the end of our crash course in differential geometry, and thus also an important milestone in the course. This means that it is good to reflect a bit about the course so far, and what lies ahead...

I have prepared a few questions about your experience of this course. Please fill this out and bring it to the lecture on Friday. (Don't put a name on it, unless you want personal/individual feedback. For the few of you that attend this course only remotely: you can also send the form by email; I'll then just download the attachment and delete the email. Or you give it to a friend to hand in for you on Friday...).

Thanks -- also for the very active engagement in class, it has really been fun so far!

This ist just to note that at the end of the term there will be a discussion session for general feedback on this course. For that it would be great if you could -- the sooner the better -- choose (at least) two students to represent you, and to collect opinions and thoughts from all of you. You can let me know in class, on astro-discourse, or by email... Thanks !

Hi everyone 

As usual, the exercise session will be today at 4:15pm (in person, like last week). 

Just in case there's confusion, we meet in Lille Fy (V232) - it's on the second floor in the west wing of the building. We won't meet in ?434 - even though that's what the schedule webpage says.

The solutions for problem set 3 have also been uploaded - there was a slight delay there, sorry about that. 

Jake

The next exercise set (#3) is finally out (apologies for the delay!), with discussion scheduled for Monday -- the first in-person discussion this term, in fact, so don't miss out on this one!

(The last question, problem 12, is something that you may want to wait with until after the lecture tomorrow. Though, in principle, you can already handle this by a smart use of the equivalence principle...)

Next Tuesday I cannot be on campus, unfortunately, so I just uploaded slides for the material covering that lecture. For convenience, I also uploaded a recorded version of these slides in case you prefer listening to a more lecture style-setup. Next Friday (29/02), we will continue with the usual physical lecture, starting from the end of the uploaded material (at the beginning of next Friday's session, there will also be sufficient room to answer any question you may have about next Tuesday's material -- so the better you come prepared, the more time we'll spend on this). 

Update: starting from this week (week 7), lectures resume as usual.

Hi all

Following the discussion in the exercise session today, two other introductory textbooks for GR that you may find helpful to use in conjunction with Carroll are A First Course in General Relativity (2nd ed.) by Bernard Schutz as well as Einstein Gravity in a Nutshell by Anthony Zee. 

Schutz is, in my view, the best at easing the reader into the transition between SR and GR - not just in terms of the technical details, but conceptually as well. However, it is occasionally too introductory (the book grew out of undergrad notes, so the level is pitched accordingly). It's also nice in that it roughly covers the same content as Carroll, and in the same order. 

Zee is easily the best textbook writer I've read; but, the pleasantness of his style aside, his GR book is unorthodox in what material it covers and how it does so. Some rather import...

As already announced last week, lectures will take place physically from now on. There will not be any recordings, but the lectures will --- at least initially -- be streamed live (you can use the same link as before). Per default, I will most likely not put out any lecture notes -- but do get in touch if you cannot attend attend the lectures (more than just occasionally).

Hi everyone

This week the first (or zeroth?) Exercise session will be today from 12-2pm. 

Following that, they'll be, as has been announced already, on Mondays from 4 pm-6pm. 

Until I'm back in Norway, we'll meet via Zoom. The link is here...

So the results of the first and second poll indicate that resistance against trying a compact 'teaching Tuesday' is too big atm. Taking into account the polls, as well as constraints from booked rooms, the new time for the exercises (from 31/01) will be Monday 4-6 pm. As Jake will only get back to Norway in February, this will continue to be digital until further notice (Jake will post a link separately).  I have now anyway reserved Lille Fy (V232) for this time slot, since meeting physically might still be a better option for those of you who can make it. 

Let's try this setup for a couple of weeks, then we can have another poll.

I just uploaded slides covering the material that we will discuss on Tuesday. As explained, you should thus work through these slides before Tuesday, such that we can use the time on Tuesday for a more in-depth discussion. For convenience, I also uploaded a recorded version of these slides in case you prefer listening to a more lecture style-setup. 

The 'first' set of exercises is out, to be discussed on Tuesday, Jan 25. Every week there will be a new set, posted on the semester page just as this one. 

As the results of the first poll are as inconclusive as they could possibly be, it's even more important to fill in the second one as well! In particular, in order to move the exercises to a different time (and keep the lectures at the original times), we must at least identify a slot where more than 20 of you could make it.