Galaxy Zoo Talk

Free online course – Philosophy and the Sciences

  • Capella05 by Capella05 moderator

    For those of you that missed the Daily Zooniverse yesterday (27/10/2014):

    University of Edinburgh has released a free online course today called Philosophy and the Sciences, and we have teamed up with them to provide Galaxy Zoo in the cosmology section of the course. There are some great lecturers giving the course, which lasts for 8 weeks, and I highly recommend checking it out if you would like to learn more about the science that underpins Galaxy Zoo. Register for free here https://class.coursera.org/philsci-001

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  • Capella05 by Capella05 moderator

    Just a FYI,

    The course is currently in it's second week (of eight) - it is easy to catch up, and you do not have to pay the £30 'Science Track' fee. I am still currently evaluating it, and so far I am enjoying it.

    If you do not want to take the plunge just yet, there will be more courses at a later date.

    BTW - I am not promoting the course, I was just intrigued by the Zooniverse post and thought I would investigate 😃

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  • Capella05 by Capella05 moderator

    Well, I have taken the plunge and enrolled on the course, and I have just caught up with the first two weeks of lectures 😃

    I found the Cosmology lectures easier than the ones on Philosophy!

    It is not too late to join 😃

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  • JeanTate by JeanTate

    I've joined, but not in order to get a certificate (so I guess I'm 'auditing' the course).

    We're up to Week 3, "Dark Matter and Dark Energy". I'm finding it a bit puzzling in places; for example, in talking about the discovery of Neptune, they refer to 'the perihelion of Uranus'. Presumably this is meant as a kind of parallel to 'anomalous advance of the perihelion of Mercury' (which could not be explained by any unobserved planet - Vulcan - and had to wait until Einstein published his theory of General Relativity). As far as I know, historically the anomalies in the observed positions of Uranus (with respect to orbits calculated using the then known planets' masses) were not of the 'anomalous perihelion' kind.

    Curious to know what any other zooite who's participating/monitoring the course thinks of it (so far)!

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