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.
When you bring two fingers together, you can feel them "touch" each other. But are your atoms really touching, and if so, how?
It's simpler, more compact, and reusable from year-to-year in a way that no other calendar is. Here's both how it works and how to use it.
In Einstein's relativity and the Standard Model, we only have three spatial dimensions. But there could be more, and many think there are.
Capacitors, acid batteries, and other methods of storing electric charges all lose energy over time. These gravity-fed batteries won't.
Humanity's newest, most powerful space telescope is performing even better than predicted. The reason why is unprecedented.
Individual space telescopes, like Hubble and JWST, revolutionized our knowledge of the Universe. What if we had an array of them, instead?
The information we have in the Universe is finite and limited, but our curiosity and wonder is forever insatiable. And always will be.
It isn't just identical particles that can be entangled, but even those with fundamentally different properties interfere with each other.
The last naked-eye Milky Way supernova happened way back in 1604. The next one could be the key to solving the dark matter mystery.
Most globular clusters appear to form their stars all at once, but there are exceptions. JWST just observed how "second formations" happen.
Here on Earth, the Sun is our primary source of light, heat, and energy. But it also poses a grave threat to human civilization.
Human beings are tiny creatures compared to the 92 billion light-year wide observable Universe. How can we comprehend such large scales?
Red dwarf stars were supposed to be inhospitable. But TOI-700, now with at least two potentially habitable worlds, is quite the exception.
JWST has seen more distant galaxies than any other observatory, ever. But many candidates for "most distant of all" are likely impostors.
Most of us have heard that the Sun is an ordinary, typical, unremarkable star. But science shows we're actually anything but average.
Yes, dark energy is real. Yes, distant galaxies recede faster and faster as time goes on. But the expansion rate isn't accelerating at all.
65 million years ago, a massive asteroid struck Earth. Not only did Jupiter not stop it, but it probably caused the impact itself.
In 1920, astronomers debated the nature of the Universe. The results were meaningless until years later, when the key evidence arrived.
As time goes on, dark energy makes distant galaxies recede from us ever faster in our expanding Universe. But nothing truly disappears.
In the grand scheme of the cosmic story, a single year isn't all that significant. But over time, the annual changes really add up!
There could be variables beyond the ones we've identified and know how to measure. But they can't get rid of quantum weirdness.
The very word "quantum" makes people's imaginations run wild. But chances are you've fallen for at least one of these myths.
Despite the Sun's high core temperatures, particles can't quite overcome their mutual electric repulsion. Good thing for quantum physics!
For nearly a century, physicists have argued over how to interpret quantum physics. But reality exists independent of any interpretation.
Ever since the Big Bang, cataclysmic events have released enormous amounts of energy. Here's the greatest one ever witnessed.
Earth is actively broadcasting and actively searching for intelligent civilizations. But could our technology even detect ourselves?
All the things that surround and compose us didn't always exist. But describing their origin depends on what 'nothing' means.
For years and over three separate experiments, "lepton universality" appeared to violate the Standard Model. LHCb at last proved otherwise.
You can lead an overconfident chatbot to expert knowledge, but can it actually learn and assimilate new information?
2022 was a year full of scientific discoveries and the dawn of the JWST. But Hubble's still going after 32 years. Here's the amazing proof!