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Learner Reviews & Feedback for From the Big Bang to Dark Energy by The University of Tokyo

4.8
stars
3,564 ratings

About the Course

We have learned a lot recently about how the Universe evolved in 13.8 billion years since the Big Bang. More than 80% of matter in the Universe is mysterious Dark Matter, which made stars and galaxies to form. The newly discovered Higgs-boson became frozen into the Universe a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang and brought order to the Universe. Yet we still do not know how ordinary matter (atoms) survived against total annihilation by Anti-Matter. The expansion of the Universe started acceleration about 7 billion years ago and the Universe is being ripped apart. The culprit is Dark Energy, a mysterious energy multiplying in vacuum. I will present evidence behind these startling discoveries and discuss what we may learn in the near future. This course is offered in English....

Top reviews

AA

Apr 17, 2020

I really liked the method of teaching the professor follows.The course helped me to gain insights on the universe. I really liked and hopes that professor would do more online courses in the future.:)

DC

Dec 5, 2019

Professor Hitoshi Murayama is a great lecturer. His passion for the research conducted and explained in the lectures is evident and helped motivate me to complete the course. Absolutely brilliant man!

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1 - 25 of 953 Reviews for From the Big Bang to Dark Energy

By Daniela C

Dec 6, 2019

Professor Hitoshi Murayama is a great lecturer. His passion for the research conducted and explained in the lectures is evident and helped motivate me to complete the course. Absolutely brilliant man!

By Anuj G

Mar 6, 2019

Professor Hitoshi really did a nice work. I will recommend this course to all of the people who are interested in science. I like how beautifully he starts from basic and goes to the advance thing make a clean path.

Thanks Professor Hitoshi for your work.

By angelinaraj

Apr 17, 2020

I really liked the method of teaching the professor follows.The course helped me to gain insights on the universe. I really liked and hopes that professor would do more online courses in the future.:)

By William K

Apr 8, 2020

Incredible course! I learned so much more than I had expected, and so many of my questions have been answered. This course has fuelled my interest and curiosity about our universe. Thank you so much.

By Benjamin P

Jul 9, 2020

Prof. Murayama explains complex concepts in fairly simple terms and it makes it accessible for people, who like me, have not touched on theoretical physics in over 15 years.

What to me are very complex topics were explained using examples, graphs and material that was both engaging and compelling. You want to listen to the next lecture right away!

What can make or break an online course is engagement. I searched the forums extensively before posting a new thread with a question and found not only very useful replies from the mentor and teaching staff, but when I posted a thread, Christy, the mentor would reply within hours. This made it possible for me to not fall behind and find explanations and reading material that supported the topics being discussed by Prof. Murayama. A big congrats to Christy for all the help, the speed of reply and the quality of the responses!

By NIKHIL P .

Apr 22, 2020

Professor Murayama is an excellent tutor and mentor. He tried to cover many aspects and tried explaining everything from the smallest level of quarks to the greatest level upto 13.8billion years and yes the best thing was that he didn't let the mind to divert anywhere even for a fraction of second during the whole course. Even the practice quizzes were so well prepared that many doubts and HOTS things were covered in those too. Thanks Prof for quenching my thirst of knowledge for the Universe and am looking forward for many newer things in this field now. All the best!!

By Margarita

Jun 5, 2020

That's an amazing course! I've learnt so many fascinating things about our Universe. What's more, the material is told brilliantly by professor, you do understand it. Great course, I do recommend it!

By Jean-Jacques W

Aug 23, 2020

This is a fantastic course! I enjoyed the motivation and enthusiasm of prof. Hitoshi Murayama. Before, I never fully understood things such as inflation, dark matter, dark energy and the Higgs Boson. Now, I do! The course shows the relations and interconnections between subject areas such as cosmology, astronomy, astrophysics, elementary particle physics, etc. It shows the connection and interdependence between quantum physics (the world of the very small) and large scale physics. I was astonished how much understanding of these complex (and often counter-intuitive) concepts can be achieved through simple (high school level) mathematics. The structure of the course has been well thought through. The sheets are nice and contain beautiful and instructive video clips. Furthermore the sheets can be downloaded as PDF’s, so that the course can be reviewed after a while. I warmly recommend this course to everybody who is interested in astronomy, cosmology and physics.

By Meet S

May 8, 2020

I am very much passionate and curious about Astronomy and after watching this course; I have understood many of the things related to big bang and cosmology.

As the name indicates From the Big Bang to Dark Energy; the course includes very good amount of information from the big bang and early universe to the future predictions of the universe.

Thanks to Coursera for providing this course and also special thanks to professor Hitoshi Murayama for presenting this course. Professor uses very simple language in order to explain the scientific and technical terms.

By Vaishali.S

Mar 15, 2017

I loved this course... It made me realise how small we are yet how big!!! It helped me understand various aspects of universe and also about quantum physics...

Thank you so much for the course..

By Mauro L

Jun 1, 2019

Awesome course, very interesting and well explained! I hope Professor Murayama will add more extra videos in the future! Thank you very much to everyone who made this possible

By Hari K S

May 12, 2020

This is an amazing course for those amateur and aspiring physicists who are starting their journey to understand the mysteries of Universe

By Rodrigo S S

May 8, 2019

The Instructor is very clear. Makes difficult ideas simple to understand.

By Subodh D T S

Jul 11, 2020

A very very very excellent and outstanding course

By Rod B

Oct 30, 2015

A waste of time.

By Александрова А Н

Nov 6, 2019

Просто прекрасен в качестве обзорного курса современной космологии. Материал объясняется без привлечения излишних формул или специальных знаний (а даже где они и используются, то вам заботливо предложат их пропустить или дадут краткую выжимку сути), но при этом позволяет понять очень многие концепции и вопросы на неплохом уровне. По крайней мере искренне ими заинтересоваться и больше не считать их чем-то страшным и неподъёмным. Очень рекомендую не связанным с областью людям или физикам совсем других направлений, что, тем не менее, хотят хотя бы примерно понимать происходящее в космологии.

By Ray G

Feb 19, 2021

I would like to thank the team for presenting a really interesting and informative online course.

The presentation style and examples help me broaden my understanding of the big bang, dark energy and dark matter. I can recommend this course to anyone who is looking to gain a greater understanding on the universe.

By Joan C A

Feb 19, 2021

Very interesting topic and very well exposed. 4th part is the hardest and I'm still trying to wrap my head around but I liked how mr Murayam explains it all. Arigatoo gozaimasu Murayama sensei.

By Osvaldo L

May 17, 2024

Professor Hitoshi Murayama prepared an excellent summary of updated information on the Big Bang an related studies up to 2018, as completed with all the Extra lectures, highly appreciated. He explains clearly most of subjects, animatedly, and we feel very amused of his plain languaje. I've enjoyed this brief course very much, according to my low level of knowledge on this matter, and my interest on cosmology. In some Quizzes, and both the Optional Challenge Problems, I couldn't understand some of the problem subjects and think it was necessary a more detailed description, considering some of us are starting with the cosmological matters. Other difficulties were the cases in which he used graphs or equations with unknown variables not duly clarified, which prevent us from the proper understanding. Anyway this course, developed by such an upgraded scientist like Mr Murayama turned to be highly clarifying on the Big Bang and Dark Matter, and I strongly recommend it for learners like me which intend to know clearly this subject without enterinng in depth high level of cosmology.

By AMIT G

Aug 12, 2016

Very complex topic and also the one of most curious one too. A very good amount of knowledge one can gain about the big bang and our universe. Straight forward lectures through images and animations. but I feel that some of the explanations were very twisted in the 3rd week although I understand that the subject itself is one of the most complex topic of the research and these are scientists and not teacher but there is this room for the improvement. Also the quizzes were too easy and very straight forward and don't test the understanding of the topic very much. I am a very big supporter of the Coursera, I have stared many courses but due to some reasons couldn't complete any, this is the 1st course that I followed till the end. Thank you Coursera for this wonderful opportunity.

By Yevgeniy G

Sep 11, 2020

This was just an amazing, breathtaking experience!

I am so grateful Professor Murayama presented this course in a manner he did.

Highly engaging! The way professor talks about the thing of his life made me curious about the Universe and particles so I looked up a lot of extra stuff in the Internet. I found much of what I found out highly useful for my understanding of life generally. Thanks to the approach used by Pr. Murayama I learned and actually understood a lot more than for the whole High School programme of physics and astronomy. Just for 2 weeks, Karl!

I became convinced everybody should know what the Universe is all about at least on the basic level in order to get fulfilled intellectually, as well as spiritually.

Thank you!

By Gary U

Dec 30, 2015

From the Big Bang to Dark Energy

A very interesting survey of the universe from the big bang to the possible future of the universe. Professor Hitoshi Murayama presents the course in a very unassuming and welcoming manner. The idea of dark matter is explained in the problem of galaxy rotation speed, and the idea of dark energy is introduced to explain the strange idea that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. The idea of discovery of Higgs, dark matter, Cosmic background radiation and atom formation related to the time history of the universe is also introduced. Future telescope/spectroscopic experiments are given in the last lecture, and can be further looked at on the web with more understanding from this course.

By Sumer S

May 2, 2020

This course is a really good introduction to cosmology, general relativity, and particle physics. As the title indicates it teaches pretty much any concept you might think of at an elementary level. Having taken this course, I now have a good understanding of concepts such as gravitational waves and how they are detected, Higgs Boson and their importance to us and so forth.

Professor Murayama's way of delivering the course is really engaging, you will definitely not feel bored. The exercises are just right, they aren't tough, but they aren't for free either.

I would recommend this course to anyone who wants to have a foundation in astrophysics, general relativity, and quantum mechanics.

By Ninisha M

Apr 13, 2020

This course is so helpful to me because I'm vigorously interested in astronomy and also want to do PhD in this but for this year I've applied summer internship in many places in India popular places like prl, iucaa, iiser etc for which I thought some basic knowledge in this field is necessary. By doing this course my interest goes double but unfortunately there are perhaps no internships this year due to covid-19. But I definitely recommend this course for all the beginners who want to explore in this field. Professor Hitoshi Murayama explain this course so neatly and even if you're having any doubts then they reply to your doubt in the shortest time possible. Thank you for this course.

By Carlos C

Jun 23, 2017

This is a very well-structured course that covers in a very user-friendly way the basics of the current state of the universe. Dr. Murayama is an excellent teacher, very patient in his explanations and with a very good sense of humor. For the most part very little math/physics knowledge is needed, but it really helps to better grasp most content. I am really happy I decided to take the course and get a certificate. I have really learned from Dr. Murayama, even beyond cosmology: I suggest you listen to his lecture about science for peace, which he delivered in the UN. Overall, I've been inspired to continue learning about life and our universe.