Cosmology for the curious (SCE 06)

  • Day and time: Wednesday 13:15 - 14:15
    Weekly
  • Length of course: 2 terms. Autumn (10 Weeks), Spring (10 Weeks)
  • Number of places: 20
  • Start date: 08 October 2025
  • Description:

    I will tell the story of our universe from its beginning, how our knowledge of it has advanced over the centuries, and what we still don't understand. I'll cover the Big Bang, cosmic inflation, galaxies, dark matter, dark energy, and black holes, with forays into relativity and particle physics, as well as mysteries such as whether there are multiple universes, why the universe seems to be tuned exactly right for us to be here to observe it, and why it exists in the first place. The course will be based largely on the book of the same name by Perlov and Vilenkin, but that's not required reading. All you need to bring is your curiosity; I will aim to make the course accessible to those without any background in maths or science.

  • Format: Lecture

  • Tutor: David Carter
  • I'm a Cambridge maths graduate and former Google and NASA software engineer with a long-standing interest in cosmology. I am not a cosmologist.


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