Sessions
Four sessions, not twelve, placed where the chain needs hands on it rather than another lecture.
Twelve lectures build the chain. Four sessions are where you stop reading about it and do it: plot the real CMB spectrum against a blackbody curve you compute yourself, count every microstate of a system small enough to list by hand, redo the Sun's lifetime estimate on paper, and work out what degeneracy pressure can and cannot hold up before gravity wins. Each one sits at the point in the chain where an argument alone stops being enough.
The CMB spectrum, from real data
Real COBE/FIRAS measurements, plotted against a blackbody curve you compute yourself, so "the early universe looks thermal" stops being something you were told.
Week 2 · 12 August 2026
Counting microstates by hand
A system small enough to list completely, until the statistical argument for entropy is something you counted rather than something you read.
Week 5 · 2 September 2026
The Sun's lifetime, calculated
The estimates that rule out chemical burning and gravitational contraction, redone by hand instead of read off the lecture.
Week 7 · 30 September 2026
What degeneracy pressure can and cannot hold up
Reasoning quantitatively about why squeezed electrons push back harder, and why that pushback runs into a ceiling gravity does not share.
Week 11 · 28 October 2026