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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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If they eat everything they come in contact with, how do quasars shine so bright? “Twinkle, twinkle quasi-star.Biggest puzzle from afar.How unlike the other ones.Brighter than a billion suns.Twinkle, twinkle, quasi-star.How […]
Chances are you wound up following Starts With A Bang here on Medium because of something we said, wrote or shared about the Universe. Chances are you love the natural […]
Happy Birthday To The Person Who Literally Brought Us The Entire Universe “Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science.” –Edwin Hubble As […]
And it couldn’t have done it without the heat from our world. “Cheap little rhymesA cheap little tuneAre sometimes as dangerousAs a sliver of the moon.” –Langston Hughes If you’ve ever […]
The force that has only been seen on the largest cosmic scales affects smaller ones, too. We just need to look well enough. “There are still so many questions to answer. […]
As we all still recover from the Paris attacks, remember the beauty and joy of one of the most forgotten French discoveries. “Truth is more valuable if it takes you […]
We really did design the world in our own image. “Every great work makes the human face more admirable and richer, and that is its whole secret.” –Albert Camus Whenever we […]
And what technology will it take for us to get there? “Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step; only he who keeps his eye fixed on […]
And because of it, we can learn about quantum entanglement across a black hole’s event horizon. This article was contributed to Starts With A Bang by Sabine Hossenfelder, whose blog, Backreaction, […]
See it over the coming six weeks, before it disappears and heads out of the Solar System forever. “I have worn myself thin trying to find out about this comet, and […]
And the method teaches us just how far Pluto is from actual planethood. “Some kind of celestial event. No — no words. No words to describe it. Poetry! They should have sent […]
The Planck satellite measures the polarization of light, inferring our galaxy’s magnetic field. The result is spectacular art. “It is true that we are made of dust. And the world […]
Most of you know that we run a Patreon campaign for Starts With A Bang, enabling us to bring you the best content in the Universe, ad-free, here on Medium. […]
Wanting to believe in the impossible can be far worse than keeping an open mind. “No man is so foolish but he may sometimes give another good counsel, and no man […]
There’s a big, big difference between a “scientific” theory and all other types. It should make you more confident, not less. One of the most important things any expert hoping to […]
Mars used to be a warm, wet world, filled with oceans, rivers, and maybe even life. Here’s what happened. “Studying whether there’s life on Mars or studying how the universe […]
There are likely no more than five this big, this early in the entire Universe. “Based on our understanding of how galaxy clusters grow from the very beginning of our […]
Looks like the inner planets formed *after* the gas giants moved to their current position, and Jupiter ejected a fifth giant, too! “The stars look the same from night to […]
Sometimes, space itself comes with its own magnifying lens. “We see the world through the lens of all our experiences; that is a fundamental part of the human condition.” –Madeleine […]
Planets, Stars, Galaxies, Groups and Clusters are all real. But Superclusters? They’re nothing more than optical illusions. “It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.” –Virginia Woolf […]