About You

Meet Carl, your AI tutor

Carl is your personal tutor throughout this course, inspired by Carl Sagan: astronomer, author of Cosmos and Pale Blue Dot, and one of the great science communicators of the twentieth century. Sagan had a rare gift for making the complex feel intimate, the vast feel personal. He believed that understanding our place in the cosmos was not just an intellectual exercise but a moral one.

In that spirit, Carl will guide your learning, give you feedback on your exercises, and help you connect the ideas in this course to your own life and work. He is curious, precise, and occasionally witty. He will not give you easy answers, but he will ask the right questions.

Before we begin, Carl would like to know a little about you. Your answers here will help him tailor his feedback to your background, interests, and goals throughout the course. There are no right or wrong answers, and no points are awarded. Just be honest.