AST 100: Our Cosmic History

1. Content

The course content is written as fictional dialogues between Socrates and his seven students who live in a fictional Barzakh.

Chapter	Name	Week	Main character	River
0	Seven Ages of the Universe	1, 2	Socrates
1	Particle Age	3, 4	Rabi	Angsi
2	Galactic Age	5, 6	Shashi	Tsangpo
3	Stellar Age	8	Mars	Siang
4	Planetary Age	9	Hermes	Brahmaputra
5	Chemical Age	10	Juno	Jamuna
6	Biological Age	11	Ishtar	Padma
7	Cultural Age	12, 13	Rhea	Meghna

Type	Assessment	Marks	Total
Continuous	Attendance	10	40
	Punctuality	10
	Group work	20
Summative	Midterm presentation	20	60
	Midterm quiz	10
	Final presentation	20
	Final quiz	10

Eric Chaisson, Epic of Evolution, Columbia University Press.
Thomas Arny and Stephen Schneider, Explorations: Introduction to Astronomy, McGraw Hill.
Fred Spier, Big History and the Future of Humanity, Wiley.
Jay M. Pasachoff and Alex Filippenko, The Cosmos: Astronomy in the New Millennium, Cambridge University Press.
David Christian, Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History, University of California Press.