Ethan Siegel

Ethan Siegel

A theoretical astrophysicist and science writer, host of popular podcast “Starts with a Bang!”

Ethan Siegel Starts with a Bang!

Ethan Siegel is a Ph.D. astrophysicist and author of "Starts with a Bang!" He is a science communicator, who professes physics and astronomy at various colleges. He has won numerous awards for science writing since 2008 for his blog, including the award for best science blog by the Institute of Physics. His two books "Treknology: The Science of Star Trek from Tricorders to Warp Drive" and "Beyond the Galaxy: How humanity looked beyond our Milky Way and discovered the entire Universe" are available for purchase at Amazon. Follow him on Twitter @startswithabang.

Composition of the dark energy prominence universe showing percentages of dark energy, dark matter, and visible matter.
Early on, only matter and radiation were important for the expanding Universe. After a few billion years, dark energy changed everything.
Nasa's JWST captures spiral galaxies in a series of photos.
Stars are born, live, and die within the spiral arms of galaxies like the Milky Way. These 19 JWST spirals deliver unprecedented riches.
An image of a galaxy cluster.
If our Milky Way were located in the Virgo cluster instead of the Local Group, chances are we'd already be a "red and dead" galaxy.
An image of the surface of Mars, showcasing its captivating and unique geological formations resembling a grand canyon.
Valles Marineris is the Solar System's grandest canyon, many times longer, wider, and deeper than the Grand Canyon. What scarred Mars so?
The Milky Way, a galaxy in space filled with stars, grew up.
Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is both completely normal and absolutely remarkable in a number of ways. Here's the story of our cosmic home.
A digitally generated image of a glowing, elongated object framed by a translucent rectangle against a dark background with cosmic web-like structures.
On the largest cosmic scales, galaxies line up along filaments, with great clusters forming at their intersection. Here's how it took shape.
A giant, colorful ring of glowing lines suspended in space
Astronomers claim to have found structures so large, they shouldn't exist. With such biased, incomplete observations, perhaps they don't.
A map of a cluster of stars illustrating star birth.
Here in our Solar System, we only have one star: a singlet. For many systems, including the highest-mass ones, that's anything but the norm.
An image of a spiral galaxy with stars in the background, showcasing the mesmerizing beauty of cosmic formations.
The pattern 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, etc., is the Fibonacci sequence. It shows up all over nature. But what's the full explanation behind it?
An image of a planet with a moon, highlighting one of the first living worlds discovered.
Life became a possibility in the Universe as soon as the raw ingredients were present. But living, inhabited worlds required a bit more.
primordial black holes
Today, supermassive black holes and their host galaxies tell a specific story in terms of mass. But JWST reveals a different story early on.
A black and white photo of albert einstein laughing.
The most celebrated genius in human history didn't just revolutionize physics, but taught many valuable lessons about living a better life.
An artist's rendering of two **changed** planets in space.
Our cosmic home, planet Earth, has been through a lot over the past 4.5 billion years. Here are some of its most spectacular changes
An image of a sphere with stars in it.
For every proton, there were over a billion others that annihilated away with an antimatter counterpart. So where did all that energy go?
supernova remnant star formation spitzer
One newly discovered, ancient star has a composition unlike any other. Explaining its existence is already blowing astronomers' minds.
An artist's rendering of an evaporating exoplanet in the night sky.
Planets can be Earth-like or Neptune-like, but only rarely are in between. This hot, Saturn-like planet hints at a solution to this puzzle.
An image of a colorful object resembling a dark primordial galaxy in the sky.
Finding it at all was a happy accident. Examining it further may help unlock the secrets hiding within the earliest galaxies of all.
A diagram showing the earth and tpaper folding to the moon.
Each time you fold a piece of paper, you double the paper's thickness. It doesn't take all that long to even reach the Moon.
A gold cylinder with a yellow handle crafted for quantum computing.
Here in the 21st century, quantum computing is quickly going from a dream to a reality. But what's hype, and what's actually true?
Sunlit pebbles on a black background.
The cosmic scales governing the Universe are almost unbelievably large. What if we shrunk the Sun down to be just a grain of sand?