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.
There’s more to powering the world than releasing energy. When it comes to the ultimate dream of clean, efficient, and prolific energy sources, it’s hard to do better than the […]
Grad students will be taxed at the highest rate in the country, even higher than billionaires. For millions of young people, the American dream is to study the thing you’re […]
Right and wrong has never been so gray in the Star Trek Universe. Imagine you’re in a fight with an enemy, and the fight itself isn’t fair. You might have […]
The first stars formed almost half a billion years before we could see their light. Here’s why. At the moment of the Big Bang, the Universe was full of matter and […]
From millions of miles to millions of light years, there’s nothing else that leaves trails like this. When you point your telescope at the distant Universe, observing a faint, massive object […]
The differences between what you are and what you could be are stunning. The human body consists of somewhere around 1028particles, all bound together. The typical human has a mass […]
For just a year’s worth of US Military budget, we could transform the world. The United States spends more on military spending than the next ten nations combined: an estimated $600 […]
The discovery of the first-ever asteroid to arrive from interstellar space is full of lessons for us all. On October 19th, astronomers discovered an objectunlike any other we’d seen before: a […]
There are plenty of questions we don’t know the answer to. With quantum gravity, they might be solved! This article is written by Sabine Hossenfelder. Sabine is a theoretical physicist specialized […]
For the first time, I genuinely enjoyed the new series. There’s been one question that’s bothered me in every episode since Star Trek: Discovery began: why would anyone want to be […]
With a journey of 130 million light years, both signals should move at the speed of light. So why did one get here first? On August 17, after a journey taking […]
If you think we know it all, you’ll never be ready for the next big breakthrough. When you’re taught the scientific method, you think of a neat procedure you can […]
If a former Nazi realized its importance nearly 50 years ago, perhaps we all can, too. Around the country and around the world, there is no shortage of human suffering. Poverty, […]
Don’t believe in dark matter or dark energy? Your view of the Universe just got a lot more difficult. If you ask an astrophysicist what’s the greatest puzzle in the […]
There’s no science in this episode of science fiction… but there’s a lot of suspicious happenings that no one’s noticing. Following up on the best episode of the season, thus […]
Do we need quantum gravity? We sure do… and here’s how we’re trying to get there! Our current best theories describing the Universe, general relativity for gravity, quantum field theory for […]
Very sure. Here’s how we know. You’ve no doubt heard that the Universe itself has been around for 13.8 billion years since the Big Bang, and that scientists are extremely confident […]
Each discovery we make seems to raise even more questions. It’s a wonderful example of how science never ends. On August 17th, both the light and the gravitational wave signals from […]
All sorts of futuristic technologies have come true. So why are astronauts all still weightless? Put a human being up in space, away from the gravitational bonds of the surface […]
Okay, so everyone who wanted to order an autographed copy (or N autographed copies) of my new book, Treknology: The Science of Star Trek from Tricorders to Warp Drive, here’s […]
And if we don’t prepare to catch it now, it’ll be too late. Since 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope has been redefining how we view our Universe. From hundreds of miles […]
The first detections were incredible. But now the real fun — and the real science — truly begins. On August 17, the signals from two merging neutron stars reached Earth after a journey of 130 […]
For the first time, we’ve seen neutron stars merge. At last, the gravitational and electromagnetic sky are one. “It’s becoming clear that in a sense the cosmos provides the only laboratory […]
At long last, we’re getting a confrontation with ethics, with science, and with human frailty, not just the Federation at war. “You are… six years old. You are weak and helpless! […]
Either possibility offers a tremendous existence, but philosophically, there’s so much more to think about. “If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, […]
From the most beautiful to the most impactful, some of these are so powerful it’s breathtaking. “Truth in science, however, is never final, and what is accepted as a fact […]
If you thought all we could see is all that’s out there, prepare to rethink everything you knew. “It’s hard to build models of inflation that don’t lead to a multiverse. […]
If you don’t learn this one lesson, you’ll not only never be good at science, you’ll never learn anything new. “Right is right even if no one is doing it; wrong […]
Finding a warm-hot intergalactic plasma is amazing! But we still need dark matter just as much as ever. “There are stars leaving the Milky Way, and immense gas clouds falling […]
IFLS might be fun for the armchair enthusiast, but couldn’t you have at least consulted an expert? “You were always a good officer. Until you weren’t.”–Saru, from Star Trek: Discovery With […]