There are a small number of topics and themes that are the most important in this class.
In addition, be sure the review the first test, the quizzes, and of course those questions (on the reading) that were about cosmology (as opposed to Smoot's personal trials).

• What types of questions does it seek to answer?
• How have these questions been approached throughout history?
• What type of answers were found?

• When was it acknowledged that the universe followed the same rules as the earth?
• Who were the people responsible for that shift?
• What were they able to discover about the universe?
• What is the age of the universe?  (in seconds and years)
• Be able to put this size and age into perspective by knowing the scale of the Universe.
• What implications did their discoveries have for humanity's self perception?

• According to the big bang theory how has the universe evolved?
• What were some major developments on the path to the current theory?

(these are summarized in the timeline in the center of the text, or in the timeline web page).
• What is the evidence that supports the big bang?  (Know what is observed as well as how those observations are interpreted.)
• What questions can the big bang theory not answer?
• What are some other theories that have been proposed other than the big bang theory?

• What question did the inflation theory try to answer initially?
• What answers did it later provide to the big bang theory?

• What produced the Cosmic Background Radiation?
• What does the shape of the CBR curve tell us?
• What does the dipole part of the CBR look like?
• What does it tell us? 
• What does the quadripole part of the CBR look like? (it's not shown in picture)
• What does it tell us? (see pg 198 in the text)
• What do the wrinkles look like?  What caused them?
• What do they tell us?

• How soon after the BB can we model the early universe?
• What is a GUT?
• What is inflation
• What is matter anti-matter annihilation?
• What does it have to do with E = mc^2?
• What explanation does it give for the origin of CBR?
• Why is there more matter than anti-matter?
• In what way do the annihilations resemble a phase transition?
• What does the formation of atoms have to do with the release of CBR?

• Where did the BB happen?  (And how would you demonstrate this)
• How old is the universe?  (How is that determined?)
• What is the importance of particle accelerators for cosmology?
• How are astronomers able to literally look back in time?
• What evidence is there for the existance of Dark Matter?
• What are the major theories regarding Dark Matter?  (WIMP's, MACHO's, neutrinos)
• How can variable stars be used to determine distances in space?
• What does the theory of general relativity imply happened just before the big bang?