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.
Combining nanotechnology of two different varieties might be the game-changer we’ve always dreamed of. For as long as human beings have been writing about fantasy, myth, and science fiction, the dream […]
A cosmic controversy is back, and at least one camp — perhaps both — is making an unidentified error. Ever since Hubble first discovered the relationship between a galaxy’s distance and its motion away […]
What if alien life — or even intelligence — don’t look like what we’re searching for? When the original Star Trek premiered, it was revolutionary for depicting sentient, intelligent species other than humans, living […]
This list of 10 non-winners is 50% women, but 100% outrageous. In science, advances often come in great leaps. In hindsight, it’s easy to identify perhaps hundreds of small steps […]
Aiming for the nearest star would necessitate a whole slew of advances. Even if the mission fails, humanity wins by investing in itself. There have been some magnificent moments in NASA […]
The truth might not be ‘out there’ at all. There may never have been another intelligent, technologically advanced alien species in the entire history of the Universe. When you take into […]
The Event Horizon Telescope has come online and taken its data. Now, we wait for the results. Black holes are some of the most incredible objects in the Universe. There are […]
How did black holes get so supermassive so fast? Astrophysics may be about to find out, thanks to three big 2017 discoveries. There’s a big problem when we look at […]
From the birth and deaths of stars to the largest structures in the Universe, Hubble shows us what we’d never see otherwise. When it comes to the Universe itself, perhaps […]
Out of five vital questions, which one should we most desire the answer to? Despite all we’ve learned about physics, science, and the Universe before us, there are still some incredibly […]
What does science have to say about the biggest questions about existence of all? Find out on our new Starts With A Bang podcast. Ever wonder about the biggest questions that […]
The President laid out his ambition, but no money to fund it. It’s a classic Trump move, and a recipe for failure. Last week, President Trump signed Space Policy Directive 1, […]
All of this has happened before… but not like this! As the year draws to a close, we approach a very special time of year, at least from an astronomical perspective. […]
Today, our visible Universe contains 2 trillion galaxies, each with billions of stars. But when did the very first one appear? When we look out at our Universe today, there are […]
It isn’t the Big Bang or stars like the Sun that gave rise to us. The story is far more… explosive. At the smallest level, the human body is made […]
Do these five experiments right in your own living room, and explore some of the most baffling phenomena in all of nature. It’s a revolutionary idea that the Universe is made […]
The ‘big discovery’ is nothing of the kind. We need a new planet-finding mission to probe the next frontier. Last week, NASA dropped a bombshell that it’s Kepler mission — the greatest […]
Those awful almost-changes they made? They could have avoided the whole problem by simply doing the math. Designed for artists, writers, and creatives* of all different persuasions, Patreon has become a […]
If you haven’t finished your holiday shopping yet, consider these 10 gifts, good any time of year! One of the hardest things when it comes to holiday shopping is to find […]
We’ve come so far since 2015; what do we know about dark matter now that we didn’t know then? Back in 2015, the dark matter situation was pretty straightforward: the large-scale […]
How do you get so massive so fast? The answer could be a big problem for our standard picture of cosmology. Out in the extreme distances of the Universe, the […]
Instead of nearly-circular ellipses, comets are extraordinarily elongated, or even on an exit path. Why so different? When you look at how the planets orbit in our Solar System, the […]
If December’s best natural sky show seems to get better every year, it isn’t your imagination. It’s science, and it’s spectacular! Every year, the Earth travels some 940 million kilometers […]
Think we’ll just responsibly choose more fuel efficient vehicles, and the market will take care of the rest? Good luck with that. Since the first oil crisis of the 1970s, there […]
Would you work at a job that didn’t treat you like a professional? No wonder public education drove their best teachers away. The ultimate dream of public education is incredibly simple. […]
Dark matter, dark energy, and why there’s more matter than antimatter? There’s an experiment to explore if neutrinos could solve all three. When you take a look at the Universe in […]
Sometimes, you look in a nearby galaxy, and what you find beyond it will change everything. Einstein’s theory of General Relativity has withstood every test for more than a century. […]
There’s so much that we’ve discovered, looking as deeply as possible into the void. But what are we missing? Start with the laws of physics, a Universe full of a specific […]
It isn’t flat, and these simple observations that you can make from the ground can demonstrate it to anyone. From any one location on the surface of the Earth, it’s impossible […]
Just because it isn’t Thanksgiving anymore doesn’t mean we don’t have an entire Universe to be thankful for. Every day, we have a choice whether we take our lives, our existence, […]