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.
Here on Earth, all the right conditions occurred for intelligent life to come about, but the nearest aliens, if they’re on another world, are light years away. But it doesn’t […]
We’re taught that the most massive stars in the Universe all die in supernovae. We were taught wrong. Create a star that’s massive enough, and it won’t go out with a […]
Humanity has mapped the Milky Way better than ever with ESA’s Gaia. But 1.7 billion stars later, there are still no Dyson spheres. Perhaps the greatest ‘holy grail’ in all of […]
With huge suites of data, we can extract plenty of signals where we know to look for them. Everything else? That’s where AI comes in. At the dawn of the 20th […]
And the one “sucker’s question” you must never answer, even if the salesperson asks it. For a majority of American adults, a car is a necessity of daily life. From commuting […]
In 2015, the ultra-distant galaxy CR7 was measured to have hydrogen and helium, but no carbon or oxygen. With new ALMA observations, there’s carbon after all. As brilliant as our Universe’s […]
Dark energy means that the Universe’s expansion is accelerating. But how big will it get, and how fast? Our Universe, as we observe it today, is a vast, enormous place, full […]
In 2015, the United States brokered a revolutionary international deal with Iran about their nuclear programme. Here’s the science behind it. In 2015, a historic agreement was reached between Iran and […]
Dylan McWilliams was bit by a shark in Hawaii less than a year after being bit by a bear in Colorado. What are the odds? There’s an old saying out there […]
‘Luck’ is the wrong word. The Universe cooperated, but we gave ourselves the opportunity by being prepared. It was already 28 years ago that the Hubble Space Telescope was launched […]
And it isn’t Einstein’s equations… but it does come from them! There are some incredibly big questions that humanity has been asking about the Universe since we first began looking upwards: […]
The solar neighborhood is so different than people imagine. But for the first time, we know what it’s like. When you look up at the stars in the night sky, they […]
Whatever you do, don’t try to wash it away with water. Every few months, a volcanic eruption occurs on Earth, with lava flows and enormous plumes of volcanic ash. In 2015, […]
We see matter, but not antimatter, in our Universe. Could black holes be the answer? One of the greatest cosmic puzzles in our entire Universe is why there’s so much more […]
There are a slew of Earth Science missions that NASA has planned for the future. We need all of them (and more) for a thriving planet. When most people think of […]
But if a radical new idea comes to fruition, maybe we can find them after all. After decades of planning, building, prototyping, upgrading, and calibrating, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) […]
Imagine looking at one saturated pixel for years on end, and somehow learning what worlds live around it. That’s what science is for! When you think of what’s out there in […]
Just one equation relates the expansion of space to all the matter and energy we have. If you know this, you can know the fate of the Universe. Last week, […]
The picture itself is breathtaking. But what we learn is truly eye-opening. Galaxy clusters, like the massive one captured here by Hubble, PLCK G004.5–19.5, impress not just for their looks, […]
In the far future, the last star burns out, stellar corpses get violently ejected, and galaxies accelerate away. And then the fun begins. For centuries, the biggest questions about our Universe […]
Just because humans wouldn’t do well over there doesn’t mean there aren’t incredible chances for life. For nearly 30 years, scientists have been discovering planets beyond our Solar System: the exoplanets […]
If it can stretch the Universe from the size of a subatomic particle to billions of light years in a fraction of a second, why doesn’t Einstein’s relativity forbid it? When […]
Sure, we found the Higgs Boson at the LHC earlier this decade. But what else has, and more importantly, hasn’t turned up? It’s now just over five years since the two […]
Among the general public, people compare it to the aether, phlogiston, or epicycles. Yet almost all astronomers are certain: dark matter and dark energy exist. Here’s why. If you go by […]
After generations of speculations, we’ve finally got the images that tell us the full story. Some 4.5 billion years ago, our Sun and Solar System were born from a collapsing cloud […]
It took the Universe 9.2 billion years to create the Earth, and another 4 billion for complex life. Could we have gotten there faster? The story of how the Universe came […]
BICEP2 scientist Brian Keating’s new book is honest and insightful, but just as notable for what it fails to recognize. Imagine what it’s like to be a scientist working on […]
In the aftermath of everything we’ve learned about what’s in the Universe, we can make much better estimates of how many alien civilizations are out there. In 1961, scientist Frank Drake […]
And thanks to a new technique and set of observations, we think we know exactly where to find them. At the center of practically every galaxy is a supermassive black hole, […]
Even with nothing new falling into it, our radius is increasing with every second that goes by. It’s no big secret that galaxies grow over time. The force of gravity is […]