"Astronomia conține multă matematică."

Translation: Astronomy contains a lot of mathematics.

[Pietstanda]

'much' should be allowed as well as 'a lot of'

[nahuatl1939]

i thought that the rule was : ending in "a " needs THE, ending with a + circonflexe is without THE. so why is it ASTRONOMY and not THE ASTRONOMY ?

[twovectors]

You are right about the article. Ending in 'a' means definite article.
The problem is that English allows zero article to refer to plurals and mass nouns and abstract terms without making them indefinite. In any other language with indefinite articles the absence of an article would automatically make it indefinite:

Men go to work

Would be

Barbatii merg la munca (The men go to work)

Because
Barbati merg la munca would not be allowed.

In fact is unlikely to find a zero article noun as a subject in a romanian sentece.

Looking forward to he proven wrong.

[acetonum]

Why would "bărbați merg la munca" not be allowed?
If I do not mean any specific men, i. e. the men, but men in general and as a general statement. For example: "Men go to work, but I stay at home and I am happy"

[BenYoung84]

Because general statements is exactly one of the situations where Romanian requires a definite article, it's what Elena calls an "abstract term".

[acetonum]

I wish that all articles disappeared suddenly or, even better, had never emerged

[BenYoung84]

You should try Russian, it has no articles at all! That's not to say that the rest of the language isn't feverishly difficult...

[Hatch-Slack]

It really depends.

[Hatch-Slack]

Depends on the context.
The sentence ”Bărbați merg pe stradă.” it is actually a perfect correct sentence and it means ”There are men walking on the street.”
The more natural way to say it is ”Pe stradă merg bărbați.”, but it has exactly the same meaning.
The word order in Romanian is quite liberal.

This course (like many others on DL) really needs ”syntax lessons”.

[Pop60]

"Astronomy contains much mathematics" still marked wrong.
So is the Romanian "matematica (+accent) genative?
No...
Then much mathematics is surely not just ok but better than of mathematics?

Note neither is natural English. Astronomy uses / makes use of / relies on would be natural, contains - sounds foreign and sounds wrong as an English phrase.

Duolingo, I'm losing confidence.