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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.
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We speak with cosmologist Dan Hooper, and ponder the literal edge of what we know about the Universe. Have you ever wondered what the first moments of our Universe were […]
How can physics on the smallest scales affect what the Universe does on its largest ones? Cosmic inflation holds the answer. On a macroscopic level, the Universe appears to be entirely […]
The quest for the ultimate vacuum just got taken to the next level thanks to a new technique: the quantum squeezer. One of the most understated frontiers in all of […]
Even extremely simple configurations in General Relativity cannot be solved exactly. Here’s the science of why. It’s difficult to appreciate how revolutionary of a transformation it is to consider the Universe […]
If this discovery came in a pre-LIGO era, maybe it would have been a surprise. But in 2019, there’s no mystery at all. Did you hear that astronomers had recently […]
Hubble has been operational for nearly 30 years, and still produces the most spectacular images of all. Here are this year’s best. Hubble, astronomy’s revolutionary observatory, narrowly survived last year’s gyroscope […]
In science, breakthroughs don’t always begin with a ‘eureka’ moment. Sometimes, the true story is absolutely unbelievable. When it comes to our Universe’s origin story, many competing ideas once thrived. […]
2019 offers an outstanding selection of books, accessories, and much more for the science-lover in your life! With each passing year, a whole slew of new scientific discoveries, refinements, and improvements […]
Without this one ingredient, there wouldn’t be enough ‘glue’ to hold the Universe together. Of all the things in the Universe to be thankful for — the stars, planets, atoms, molecules, and […]
If we ruin the night sky too severely, ground-based astronomy could suffer tremendously. Here’s why space is no replacement. There is an existential threat to astronomy as we know it, […]
If it holds up, it would revolutionize physics and be a slam-dunk Nobel Prize. Here’s why that’s unlikely to be the case. Every so often, an experiment comes along in physics […]
The Moon, Venus, and Jupiter are the brightest night sky objects. On Thursday evening, November 28, they’ll all align, plus Saturn, too. As the planets orbit the Sun throughout the year, […]
The shape of our Universe has long been recognized to be flat. But that isn’t the only possibility. The Universe is expanding, and goes on for farther than even our […]
It’s true that we have a thermodynamic arrow of time, and entropy always increases. But that can’t explain what we perceive. One of the enormous conceptual ideas that came along […]
If an AT-AT walker (or something even larger) wanted to walk across a frozen lake, how thick would the ice have to be? Each winter, one of the most spectacular phenomena […]
Observations have been ruined; scientific satellites with the right-of-way have had to alter course. Here’s a how-to guide to doing better. In any field of business or industry, the prevailing rule […]
In physics, anything that isn’t forbidden must occur. So why don’t the strong interactions violate CP-symmetry? If you ask a physicist what the biggest unsolved problem facing the field today […]
The Leonid meteor shower peaks today. Its parent comet taught us where meteor showers come from. Every year, as Earth regularly orbits the Sun, meteor showers repeatedly recur. While August’s Perseids […]
Even before MMA was a combat sport, it was a unique type of astronomy. Today, it’s opening up the Universe as never before. On February 24, 1987, a spectacular signal was […]
Helium and carbon are made copiously in the interiors of stars. But the in-between elements? They’re rarities everywhere. If you were to take every element in the periodic table and […]