Course no. 1830.

Accompanying book is the course guidebook for this lecture series. It contains a summary of each lecture plus bibliographical references.

Thirty-six lectures of 30 minutes each.

Disc 1. The journey ahead -- Denizens of the universe -- Overall cosmic properties -- The stuff of the universe -- The sweep of cosmic history -- Measuring distances. Disc 2. Expansion and age -- Distances, appearances, and horizons -- Dark matter and dark energy: 96%! -- Cosmic geometry: triangles in the sky -- Cosmic expansion: keeping track of energy -- Cosmic acceleration: falling outward. Disc 3. The cosmic microwave background -- Conditions during the first million years -- Primordial sound: big bang acoustics -- Using sound as cosmic diagnostic -- Primordial roughness: seeding structure -- The dark age: from sound to the first stars. Disc 4. Infant galaxies -- From child to maturity: galaxy evolution -- Giant black holes: construction and carnage -- The galaxy web: a relic of primordial sound -- Atom factories: stellar interiors -- Understanding element abundances. Disc 5. Light elements: made in the big bang -- Putting it together: the concordance model -- Physics at ultrahigh temperatures -- Back to a microsecond: the particle cascade -- Back to the GUT: matter and forces emerge -- Puzzling problems remain. Disc 6. Inflation provides the solution -- The quantum origin of all structure -- Inflation's stunning creativity -- Fine tuning and anthropic arguments -- What's next for cosmology? -- A comprehensible universe?

Lecturer: Mark Whittle, professor of astronomy, University of Virginia.

DVD.