Big History

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Big History

From the Big Bang to modern life 🌐 Big History brings the story of the universe to life for Grades 5–6.

Bite-sized, mind-expanding, and designed to spark lifelong curiosity 🪐

21/09/2026

Episode 14 of Big History explores one of the most remarkable turning points in human history — the moment writing stopped being just a record, and became a story.

The earliest written documents were simple lists — cattle, goods and property owned by the rich.

But some early documents did something entirely new. They told stories.

One of the world’s first works of literature, the Epic of Gilgamesh, followed a king living more than 4,000 years ago. Other ancient poems described bustling cities filled with trade, wealth and human activity.

Created by Emeritus Professor David Christian, Big History helps children understand why writing evolved — not just to record information, but to make sense of the world and our place within it.

19/09/2026

Today there are more than eight times as many humans as in 1800, and we use around twenty-five times as much energy. Most of this change has happened in just the past hundred years, reshaping the planet and affecting the entire biosphere.

Big History helps children understand how moments like this fit into the larger story of our world - connecting science, history and human society into one clear narrative.

17/09/2026

Imagine running time backwards. The Universe shrinks and shrinks — galaxies pulling together, matter condensing — until everything that exists today is compressed into a space smaller than a single atom.

That unimaginably dense, impossibly hot point of energy is where our story begins. It’s what we now call the Big Bang.

It’s one of the opening ideas in Episode 3 of Big History, created by Emeritus Professor David Christian — helping children grasp one of the most extraordinary moments in the history of everything.

15/09/2026

Episode 3 of Big History explores one of the most extraordinary moments in the story of everything — the first seconds of our Universe.

In the moments after the Big Bang, the Universe was too hot and violent for anything complex to exist. Just vast flows of energy and the simplest particles — protons and electrons.

Then, around 400,000 years later, something changed. The Universe had cooled enough for the first atoms to form.

Here’s a remarkable way to picture that: 400,000 years is roughly the same length of time that humans have existed on Earth.

Created by Emeritus Professor David Christian, Big History helps children understand moments like this as part of one clear, connected story.

13/09/2026

Just how old is the Universe?

It’s one of the first big questions tackled in Episode 3 of Big History — and the answer is almost impossible to truly imagine.

By studying how fast the Universe is expanding, scientists can work backwards to estimate when it all began. Their best answer? Almost 14 billion years ago.

Professor David Christian puts it this way — if every year were just one second long, you would have to count non-stop until you were 450 years old to reach the age of the Universe.

Created by Emeritus Professor David Christian, Big History helps children make sense of ideas like this as part of one clear, connected story.

11/09/2026

Not all planets can support life.

Some are too hot. Some are too cold. But a few have conditions that are just right — what scientists call a “Goldilocks” environment.

These planets have the right balance of elements, heat and energy for atoms to combine into complex molecules — the building blocks of life.

Big History helps children understand ideas like this in a clear, connected way — showing how planets, chemistry and life all fit together.

✔ Builds curiosity about how the world works
✔ Helps children understand science simply
✔ Turns screen time into meaningful learning

08/09/2026

Two thousand years ago, much of the world still lived in small, isolated communities. But within the great agrarian empires, growing networks were already connecting people through trade, travel and the exchange of ideas.

Goods, resources and information moved between villages, towns and distant regions - laying the foundations for the interconnected world we live in today.

Created by Emeritus Professor David Christian, Big History helps children understand how human societies became more connected over time - linking history, geography and culture into one clear, engaging story.

05/09/2026

Episode 19 of Big History explores what lies ahead for humanity through three possible scenarios — catastrophe, survival, and growth.

Here we’ll focus on the survival scenario.

A future where humanity learns to manage our planet well enough to avoid a global breakdown. Crises and conflicts will still come — but many of the gains of the modern world could be preserved.

Getting there would require three things: learning to work together better, reducing our most damaging impacts, and developing new technologies to help us understand and manage complex global systems.

None of it will be easy. But Professor David Christian argues the challenges are not impossible.

Created by Professor Christian, Big History helps children think clearly and confidently about the future they’re growing up into.

03/09/2026

This moment comes from Episode 5 of Big History — exploring how dying stars made the Universe more chemically interesting.

A supernova is one of the most powerful events in the Universe. When the largest stars run out of fuel, they collapse and explode — with temperatures high enough to forge most of the elements in the Periodic Table.

From Earth, a supernova looks like a bright new star suddenly appearing in the night sky.

Created by Emeritus Professor David Christian, Big History helps children understand how events like this created the building blocks for planets, chemistry and life itself, in a one-off payment of just $30 AUD.

01/09/2026

No oceans. No Moon. No oxygen. A sky that burned orange and volcanoes oozing lava across the surface.

The young Earth was almost unrecognisable - a violent, searing world nothing like the planet we call home today.

Episode 7 of Big History takes you back four and a half billion years to explore how our planet was born — and the extraordinary journey that transformed it into the world we live in today.

Created by Emeritus Professor David Christian, Big History helps children understand the deep history of our planet as part of one clear, connected story.

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Sydney, NSW
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Website

https://www.bighistory.com.au/

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