Search
Ethan Siegel
A theoretical astrophysicist and science writer, host of popular podcast “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.
Read Less
Previously, only the brightest and most active galaxies could pierce the obscuring wall of cosmic dust. At last, normal galaxies break through.
No matter how controversial or politicized our world becomes, science remains humanity's best tool for figuring out how things work.
The stars, planets, and many moons are extremely round. Why don't they take other shapes?
Finding out we're not alone in the Universe would fundamentally change everything. Here's how we could do it.
The majority of the matter in our Universe isn't made of any of the particles in the Standard Model. Could the axion save the day?
The most unique interloper into our Solar System has a natural explanation that fits perfectly — no aliens required.
We once thought the Moon was completely airless, but it turns out it has an atmosphere, after all. Even wilder: It has a tail of its own.
Many still cling to the idea that we live in a deterministic Universe, despite the nature of quantum physics. Now, the "least spooky" interpretation no longer works.
We haven't seen a partial eclipse lasting this long since 1440, and won't again until 2669. North America is perfectly positioned for 2021's.
Although most of the Universe's mass is dark matter, which gravitates just as well as normal matter, it still can't make black holes.
The latest gravitational wave data from LIGO and Virgo finally shows us the truth: there are no "gaps" in the masses of black holes.
Based on the atoms that they're made out of, the innermost planet should always be the densest. Here's why Earth beats Mercury, hands down.
It had long seemed impossible that supermassive black holes could grow to such enormous sizes. But the biggest problem is now solved.
There are over 100 known elements in the periodic table. These 8 ways of making them account for every one.
Big dreams and big telescopes are back at last, but everything depends on sufficiently funding NASA, the NSF, and the DOE.
There's a big difference between the notions of 'false vacuum' and 'true vacuum' states. Here's why we don't want to live in the former.
The Kalam cosmological argument asserts that everything that exists has a cause, and what caused the Universe? It's got to be God.
In 2006, Pluto was demoted in a very controversial decision. Unless you ignore nearly all of planetary science, it'll never be one again.
Our Sun will continue to grow, becoming a red giant and then a planetary nebula. Here's how large it will get.
Quantum physics isn't quite magic, but it requires an entirely novel set of rules to make sense of the quantum universe.