Origins From the Big Bang to Life Helen Johnston and Tom Hubble Autumn 2011

An astronomer and a geologist team up to explore the origins of galaxies, planets and life. Beginning with the Big Bang, we explore the origins of matter and energy, and how matter assembled itself into galaxies. We follow the formation of stars and their planets, illustrated with the extraordinary images flowing from the Hubble Space Telescope and the planetary missions. We discuss the formation of the Earth and the origins of life itself. An evening of star viewing in the Blue Mountains is included.

Sources for images and animations are given at the end of each lecture and on the "Links" page. The PDF is a link to the lecture notes, while the podcast is a recording of the lecture.

Course outline

Date	Lecture	Links	PDF version	Animations	Podcast
9 March	1. The Universe Helen Johnston	Lecture 1 links	PDF (12 Mb)	• Millennium simulation: lcdm_color2_highres_divx.avi (11.9 Mb) Original from http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/galform/millennium/ • First stars: 030651_1280.mov (40 Mb) Original from http://wmap.gsfc.nasa.gov/media/030651/index.html • Milky Way black hole: 2008orbits_anim_medRes.gif (1.7 Mb) Original from http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~ghezgroup/gc/pictures/orbitsMovie.shtml • Milky Way formation: vl_form_z12to0.mpg (91 Mb) Original from http://www.ucolick.org/~diemand/vl/movies.html	podcast (190 Mb)
16 March	2. Stars Helen Johnston	Lecture 2 links	PDF (7 Mb)	• Milky Way-Andromeda collision: localgroup.mov (3.2 Mb) Original from https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~loeb/Photos/localgroup.html • Supernova animation: casa_sne_lg_web.mpg (5.3 Mb) Original from http://chandra.harvard.edu/resources/animations/snr.html?page=2	podcast (160 Mb)
23 March	3. Planets Helen Johnston	Lecture 3 links	PDF (6.7 Mb)	• Cluster collapse: cluster4.avi (5.3 Mb) Original from Matthew Bate's animations • Disk around a young star: eso1106a.mpg (15 Mb) Original from http://www.eso.org/public/news/eso1106/	podcast (184 Mb)
30 March	4. The Earth Tom Hubble
6 April	5. Life Tom Hubble

Last updated 27 March 2011