People from all over the world have enrolled in the Cosmology massive open online course (MOOC), the latest edX offering from ANU.

“The course covers where the universe came from, how big it is and what made the big bang go bang,” said astrophysicist Dr Paul Francis, who co-presents the course with Nobel Prize winner Professor Brian Schmidt.

“What makes it really special is that it is a course on cosmology, presented by the guy who won a Nobel Prize for cosmology,” said Dr Francis.

As well as Professor Schmidt the course includes a number of guest speakers, including particle physicist and TV presenter Professor Brian Cox and theoretical astrophysicist Lawrence Krauss.

The course is the fifth edX course offered by ANU. Four of these have been on astrophysics, which have attracted more than 50,000 enrolments from people aged from 10 to 90.

Anyone with a strong level of high-school maths and physics can enrol.