Greatest Unsolved Mysteries In The Universe

Despite spectacular recent progress, there is still a lot we don't know about our universe. We don't know why the Big Bang happened. We don't know what most of the universe is made of. We don't know whether there is life in space. We don't know how planets form, how black holes get so big, or where the first stars have gone. This course will take you through nine of the greatest unsolved problems of modern astrophysics. We can't promise you the answers, but we will explain what we do and don't know, and give you an up-to-date understanding of current research. This course is designed for people who would like to get a deeper understanding of these mysteries than that offered by popular science articles and shows.

This is the first of four ANUx courses which together make up the Australian National University's first year astrophysics program. It is followed by courses on exoplanets, on the violent universe, and on cosmology. These courses compromise the Astrophysics XSeries. Learn more about the XSeries program and register for all the courses in the series today!

Welcome to “Greatest Unsolved Mysteries of the Universe”. This course is for anyone who wants to learn about the mysteries of modern astrophysics at a deeper level than most popular books and TV programs.

This course assumes that you have a high-school level of maths and physics. We will expect you to be comfortable with algebra, and with Newton’s laws and energy. If you don’t have this background, you should still enjoy the course, but you will need to skip over a few videos and most of the homework.

This is a self-paced course. You can start it whenever you like.

If you have any questions about the course or about astrophysics, you can always ask by sending me a message or an email. .

This course was originally filmed in 2013, but has been revised and updated in 2015 and 2021, so it presents state-of-the-art knowledge of modern astrophysics.

Ready to get started?