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
They make up 95% of our Universe today, but they weren’t always so important. One of the most puzzling mysteries about the Universe is simply, “where is everything?” All that […]
Dark matter is our leading theory for a reason. New, detailed studies of the smallest galaxies could kill off the most studied alternative. When you look out at the Universe, […]
One of the most popular viral videos about space is dead wrong. But it gives us a chance to learn something incredible. There are a lot of moving parts to […]
It took hundreds of thousands of years to make atoms for the first time. If things were just a little different, it could have taken an eternity. When it comes […]
Stars don’t stay the same throughout their life, and the Sun is no exception. Here’s what’s going on. Here on Earth, the ingredients for life to survive, thrive, evolve, and sustain […]
NASA’s 28-year-old workhorse is still lighting up our knowledge and imagination of the Universe. A generation ago, Hubble opened its eyes on the great cosmic abyss: viewing the depths of […]
The most massive star in the known Universe is 260 times as heavy as our Sun. But viewing the early Universe will shatter that record. Place enough mass together in one […]
Our Universe may not be all there is, was, or ever will be, after all. There’s been a lot of speculative ideas put forth about the Multiverse, and I dare say […]
We don’t need the many-worlds of quantum mechanics to have more Universes than we know what to do with. “The Universe is all there is, or was, or will be.” That […]
For the Pluto fans, another sad state of affairs: your favorite world won’t make it. Nothing on Earth lasts forever, and that’s a truth that even extends to all the objects […]
Before there were humans, planets, or even stars and galaxies, we had to make the first elements. Here’s how they happened. From the first moments of Big Bang to the […]
Different measurements of the Universe’s rate of expansion give inconsistent results. But this simple solution could fix everything. In 1915, Einstein’s theory of General Relativity gave us a brand new […]
With every second that goes by, tens of thousands of star disappear from our reach. And it’s getting worse. It’s been nearly a century since scientists first theorized that the Universe […]
Never draw a conclusion, no matter how ‘obvious,’ without doing the experiment first. We all love our most cherished ideas about how the world and the Universe works. Our conception […]
The Universe was born matter-antimatter symmetric. Here’s what happened when the last of our antimatter disappeared. Things happen fast in the earliest stages of the Universe. In the first 25 […]
In all the years of NASA, we’ve never touched the Sun before. Here’s why it’s so hard. This past weekend, NASA successfully launched the Parker Solar Probe: the first spacecraft that […]
The Universe is an enormous place, but we can’t see all the way back to the beginning. Here’s the latest record-breaker. No matter how far back we look in the […]
In General Relativity, even space and time themselves aren’t what they seem. Gravity might have been the first fundamental force ever discovered, but in many ways, it remains the least-well understood. […]
Space may be enormous, but collisions are inevitable. Here’s what happens when they occur. The Universe as we know it has been around for nearly 14 billion years: plenty of time […]
The ices and rock aren’t green, and neither are the tails. So where does a comet’s green color come from? Every so often, with extreme regularity, comets will plunge from beyond […]