This video segment adapted from NOVA explains the origin of the elements and how scientists use unique element profiles to identify supernova types.

This course covers the basics of general relativity, standard big bang cosmology, thermodynamics of the early universe, cosmic background radiation, primordial nucleosynthesis, basics of the standard model of particle physics, electroweak and QCD phase transition, basics of group theory, grand unified theories, baryon asymmetry, monopoles, cosmic strings, domain walls, axions, inflationary universe, and structure formation.

I have organized this textbook around the way I teach my introductory course in the philosophy of religion. Since I got to design this textbook and it’s for use in my own courses, it directly follows the order in which I teach the topics and each chapter makes up the reading assignment for about 1.5 hours of class time. In other words, I meet with students for thirty 1.5-hour sessions in a semester (hence there are 30 chapters in this work), and for the first meeting, we read and discuss chapter 1, for our second we cover chapter 2, then chapter 3, and so on. It leaves the guess work out of what we cover and when we cover it and keeps things very organized and streamlined. I tell you this now to give you some insight into the way I approach my classroom and time with my students. Since this is intended for an intro-level course, keeping things on track, moving, and organized in this way has proved to be very beneficial for my students.

Walking up and down the hallways of Davey Lab at Penn State, you can find astronomers searching for and characterizing exoplanets, monitoring supernovae and other exploding stars, and measuring the details of the accelerating expansion of the Universe to determine the nature of dark energy. In Astro 801, we learn that with only the ability to measure the light from these distant, unreachable objects, we can still determine how the Solar System, stars, galaxies, and the Universe formed and evolved since the Big Bang. We are all citizens of the Universe, and in fact, you are made of starstuff. Come learn where the atoms in your body came from, and what will happen to them long after we are gone.

This subject introduces the history of science from antiquity to the present. Students consider the impact of philosophy, art, magic, social structure, and folk knowledge on the development of what has come to be called “science” in the Western tradition, including those fields today designated as physics, biology, chemistry, medicine, astronomy and the mind sciences. Topics include concepts of matter, nature, motion, body, heavens, and mind as these have been shaped over the course of history. Students read original works by Aristotle, Vesalius, Newton, Lavoisier, Darwin, Freud, and Einstein, among others.

This interactive activity from the NOVA Web site challenges you to think like Einstein and understand how time travel might be possible.

This illustrated essay from the NOVA Web site answers questions about irregularities in the tides.

This subject traces the evolution of ideas about nature, and how best to study and explain natural phenomena, beginning in ancient times and continuing through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. A central theme of the subject is the intertwining of conceptual and institutional relations within diverse areas of inquiry: cosmology, natural history, physics, mathematics, and medicine.

The history of the Universe decorates the night sky. Learn how to watch this history by studying cosmic light emissions. Created by Big History Project.