Skip to content
Skip to main content

About this free course

Download this course

Share this free course

Understanding science: what we cannot know
Understanding science: what we cannot know

Start this free course now. Just create an account and sign in. Enrol and complete the course for a free statement of participation or digital badge if available.

Acknowledgements

This week was written by Tony Jones. The course is adapted from the book What We Cannot Know by Marcus du Sautoy.

Except for third party materials and otherwise stated (see terms and conditions [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] ), this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence.

The material acknowledged below (and within the course) is Proprietary and used under licence (not subject to Creative Commons Licence). Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following sources for permission to reproduce material in this free course:

Images

Figure 1: The Milky Way: Xing-Wu Zheng & Mark Reid BeSSeL/NJU/CFA Copyright © 2019 by Xing-Wu Zheng and Mark Reid

Figure 2: Superclusters: Richard Powell: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Superclusters_atlasoftheuniverse.gif Creative Commons — Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Generic — CC BY-SA 2.5

Figure 3: M31 Andromeda: Luca Argalia: https://www.flickr.com/photos/skiwalker79/5309249905/ //creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/

Figure 4: Screenshot of the Stellarium Web interface: Fabien Chéreau (creator of Stellarium) / Stellarium developer group https://stellarium-web.org/

Figure 6: The Extreme Deep Field: NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth, D. Magee, and P. Oesch (University of California, Santa Cruz), R. Bouwens (Leiden University), and the HUDF09 Team

Figure 7: A map of the CMBR: European Space Agency (ESA) and the Planck Collaboration

Figure 10: Positive curvature: Naypong/Getty Images

Figure 11: Negative curvature: Marat Musabirov/Getty Images Plus

Audio/Video

Video 2: Timeline of our understanding © The Open University (2022) with thanks to the following: NASA/MSFC/Meteoroid Environment Office/Bill Cooke; NASA https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:COBE_cmb_fluctuations.png; G. Hüdepohl (atacamaphoto.com)/ESO https://www.eso.org/public/outreach/copyright/; Credit: NASA, ESA, A. Zitrin (California Institute of Technology), and J. Lotz, M. Mountain, A. Koekemoer, and the HFF Team (STScI) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en; Alfredo Garcia Saz/ Alamy Stock Photo; NASA https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Horn_Antenna-in_Holmdel,_New_Jersey.jpeg; Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA; https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Milky_Way_galaxy1.jpg; ESO/S. Brunier https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/; NASA Goddard Space Flight Center from Greenbelt, MD, USA https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Video 3: The size of the universe © The Open University

Every effort has been made to contact copyright owners. If any have been inadvertently overlooked, the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangements at the first opportunity.

Don’t miss out

If reading this text has inspired you to learn more, you may be interested in joining the millions of people who discover our free learning resources and qualifications by visiting The Open University – www.open.edu/ openlearn/ free-courses.