The Cosmos: Big Bang to Black Holes

By the end

What you'll build

• Explain and use the cosmic distance ladder — parallax, Cepheids, and Type Ia supernovae — including the working formulas d = 1/p and the distance modulus
• Compute redshifts, recession velocities, and stretch factors, and fit Hubble's law to galaxy data in Python to estimate H0 and the age of the universe
• Describe black holes via general relativity and calculate Schwarzschild radii for the Sun, Earth, and Sagittarius A*
• Reproduce the galaxy rotation-curve argument for dark matter and explain the lensing and Bullet Cluster evidence, plus the supernova case for dark energy
• Trace cosmic history from Big Bang nucleosynthesis through the CMB to the universe's possible fates, and use astropy's cosmology tools to query the standard model

Curriculum

What's inside

5 modules · 26 lessons

1. 01

   Measuring the Universe: The Distance Ladder

   5 lessons
   • Start Here: Your Map of the Cosmos
   • Parallax: The First Rung of the Ladder
   • Standard Candles: Cepheids and Supernovae
   • Distance Ladder Numericalsfill blank
   • Quiz: Measuring the Universequiz
2. 02

   The Expanding Universe: Redshift and Hubble's Law

   6 lessons
   • Redshift: Light's Stretch
   • Hubble's Discovery and the Expanding Universe
   • Redshift Numericalsfill blank
   • Lab: Fit Hubble's Law Yourselfpython lab
   • Lab: Cosmology with astropypython lab
   • + 1 more lesson
3. 03

   Black Holes and Gravity

   5 lessons
   • Gravity as Geometry
   • Anatomy of a Black Hole
   • Lab: Compute Schwarzschild Radiipython lab
   • Seeing the Invisible: Shadows and Ripples
   • Quiz: Black Holes & Gravityquiz
4. 04

   Dark Matter and Dark Energy

   5 lessons
   • The Missing Mass: Vera Rubin's Rotation Curves
   • Lab: Galaxy Rotation Curves — Predict, Then Comparepython lab
   • The Accelerating Universe
   • Weighing the Invisible: Lensing and the Bullet Cluster
   • Quiz: Dark Matter & Dark Energyquiz
5. 05

   Origin and Fate

   5 lessons
   • The First 380,000 Years: Big Bang, Nuclei, and the CMB
   • Lab: The Temperature of the Universe Through Timepython lab
   • The Fate of the Universe
   • Flashcards: The Cosmos Deckflashcard sr
   • Final Quiz: Big Bang to Black Holesquiz

The shape of it

How this course works