Ay 21 - Web research papers

The schedule:

1. Please pick a topic (and a 2nd, 3rd? choice) by Wed., Feb. 27 (sooner
if possible).

2. Research it in the web.  Follow the many provided links, and dig around
on your own.

2. Provide an outline / rough draft by Monday, March 3.  Feel free to send
me intermediate drafts as many times as you wish.

3. Turn it in as a hardcopy, a file, or a webpage by 5 pm on Wed., March 12.

The "paper" should be equivalent of 6 - 12 pages of single-spaced text,
and it may include figures, links, etc.  A bibliography of publications
and websites used to prepare it should be provided.  A sample structure
may be something like:

- Why is this topic interesting?
- What is/are the outstanding issue(s)/problem(s)?
- What has been done so far?
- What are the interesting current developments?
- Conclusions; what are the prospects for the future work?
- Bibliography

This is intended to be a real academic research exercise, not a quick cut &
paste job.  You should find some information, find more links and references,
follow them through, etc., until you think you have a really good idea about
the subject.  Then write it up *in your own words*.  You should spend about
10-15, but not more than about 20, actual work hours on this project, from
your initial Googling though the finished paper.

Here are some sample topics; feel free to suggest your own:

 Mach's principle
 Cosmological uses of the SZ effect
 Ages of globular clusters
 Supernovae as standard candles - what can go wrong?
 Gamma-ray bursts as standard candles
 Cosmology with CMBR fluctuations
 Laboratory searches for dark matter
 Cosmological parameters from gravitational lens statistics
 Models of the dark energy
 Early universe as the ultimate particle physics laboratory
 Numerical simulations of structure formation: methods
 Numerical simulations of structure formation: current issues
 Numerical simulations of galaxy merging
 Principal results from the major redshift surveys
 Problems with peculiar velocities
 Cosmological uses of galaxy clusters
 Galaxy scaling laws and their origins
 Galaxy luminosity and mass functions at the faint end
 Modeling of stellar populations evolution
 Starbursts and their origins
 Star formation history of the universe
 Formation of the first galaxies
 The cosmic reionization era
 Unification of AGN
 Cosmological uses of powerful radio galaxies
 Co-evolution of galaxies and supermassive black holes
 Chemical evolution of the universe
 Cosmology with Gamma-ray Bursts 
 Cosmological results from the Spitzer Space Telescope
 Do physical constants vary?
 Philosophical problems of cosmology as a science