I love curling up and listening to a good story. An unmet yearning from childhood I suppose. I love being around people who are smarter than me, more talented than me. I love to just soak up every molecule of wisdom. Today, the web is filled with wonderful talks by great scientists, geared to the intelligent young student. These below are some of my favorites, that relate to the material of Astro 3 and 4. UC Television often has great talks both online and on cable (channel 26). You'll see some below. (For the UCTV talks, you may have to skip over the boring intro by the administrator)
Here's a whole series of YouTube videos: Debates and Lectures, which include a wide variety of topics delivered by accomplished scientists.
Paper Abstracts, Powerpoints
-- Galaxy Clusters
and the Equivalence Principle of General Relativity
-- Gamma Ray Bursters
--HR Diagram
and Stellar Evolution - An On-line Tutorial with lots of Visuals
Videos on Stellar Astronomy, Cosmology, Quantum Physics
--Solar Flares, CME's, Solar Sectors (1m 41s)
--Aurorae, from Satellites (4 min)
-- Star Formation (3min 45s)
--The Life Cycle of a Sun-Like Star: (6 min) (with catchy soundtrack)
--Stellar Life Cycle: Solar type, High Mass, and Binaries (4 min)
-- The Structure and Motion of the Galaxies of the Local Universe (17 min)
--UC Berkeley: 2008 Sackler Lecture "The First 2 Billion Years" by Professor Steve Beckwith (1hr 13min)
--Kim Griest: Particle Physics of the Big Bang and Early Universe (43min)
--Kim Griest: Dark Matter and the Fate of the Universe (58min)
--"A Universe from Nothing" by Lawrence Krauss 2009 (65min)
--" Do We Live in a MultiVerse?" by Anthony Aguirre (76m) (he's excellent at getting across tough cosmology in understandable terms)
--"The Multi-verse: A Conversation with Brian Greene (52min)
-- Lawrence Krauss interview on the Higgs Field (and climate change too) (25min)
--The Planck Mission final finding from the Cosmic Microwave Background and the Early Universe
--The Philosophy of Quantum Physics 1, 2, 3, 4
--Steven Weinberg:the Origin of the Universe
--Richard Feynman: BBC's "Atom" Series on Quantum Electrodynamics for the layman: 1, 2, 3
--The History of Quantum Mechanics: part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
--Silicon Valley Astronomy Society Invited Talks - YouTube Channel. videos of about 60-90 minutes by high profile astronomers, to the general public
--NPR Science Friday Mar 9, '12 - Dark Matter just got even more mysterious? (mp3 podcast)
-- Alan Guth's MIT Lectures on Inflationary Cosmology
Miscellaneous
--The sound of a solar storm
Astronomical Society of the Pacific's resources for teaching Cosmology
Free Online Courses
* Dr. Chris Impey's "State of the Art in Astronomy"