The Universe is out there, waiting for you to discover it.
Our mission: to answer, scientifically, the biggest questions of all.
- What is our Universe made of?
- How did it become the way it is today?
- Where did everything come from?
- What is the ultimate fate of the cosmos?
For countless generations, these were questions without resolutions. Now, for the first time in history, we have scientific answers. Starts With A Bang, written by Dr. Ethan Siegel, brings these stories — of what we know and how we know it — directly to you.
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Why power generated through nuclear fusion will be the future, but not the present, solution to humanity’s energy needs.
It’s a strange idea to consider: that a tiny building block of matter, the atomic nucleus, holds the greatest potential for energy release.
And yet, it’s true; while electron transitions in atoms or molecules typically release energy on the order of ~1 electron-Volt, nuclear transitions between different configurations release energies a million times as great, on the order of ~1 Mega-electron-Volt.
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From before the Big Bang to the present day, the Universe goes through many eras. Dark energy heralds the final one.
A wild, compelling idea without a direct, practical test, the Multiverse is highly controversial. But its supporting pillars sure are stable.
The surface and atmosphere is colored by ferric oxides. Beneath a very thin layer, mere millimeters deep in places, it’s not red anymore.
The first supernova ever discovered through its X-rays has an enormously powerful engine at its core. It’s unlike anything ever seen.
Just 13.8 billion years after the hot Big Bang, we can see 46.1 billion light-years away in all directions. Doesn’t that violate…something?
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It’s the ultimate setup for a Thanksgiving Day disaster. The physics of water and its solid, liquid, and gas phases compels us not to do it.
The most massive early galaxies grew up faster, and have more stars, than astronomers expected, according to JWST. What does it all mean?
There are a few small cosmic details that, if things were just a little different, wouldn’t have allowed our existence to be possible.
When we see pictures from Hubble or JWST, they show the Universe in a series of brilliant colors. But what do those colors really tell us?
The last naked-eye Milky Way supernova happened way back in 1604. With today’s detectors, the next one could solve the dark matter mystery.
Since 1930, type Ia supernovae have been thought to arise from white dwarfs exceeding the Chandrasekhar mass limit. Here’s why that’s wrong.
In partisan political times, recognizing the scientific truth is more important than ever. Scientists must be vocal and clear about reality.
In astronomy, a star’s initial mass determines its ultimate outcome in life. Unless, that is, a stellar companion alters the deal.
Black holes are the most massive individual objects, spanning up to a light-day across. So how do they make jets that affect the cosmic web?
Humans, when we consider space travel, recognize the need for gravity. Without our planet, is artificial or antigravity even possible?
All the stars, stellar corpses, planets, and other large, massive objects take on spherical or spheroidal shapes. Why is that universal?
A crowdsourced “final exam” for AI promises to test LLMs like never before. Here’s how the idea, and its implementation, dooms us to fail.
The 5th brightest star in our night sky is young, blue, and apparently devoid of massive planets. New JWST observations deepen the mystery.
Whether your hair is straight, wavy, curly, or kinky isn’t just genetic in nature. It depends on the physics of your hair’s very atoms.
One of the 20th century’s most famous, influential, and successful physicists is lauded the world over. But Feynman is no hero to me.
Due to chaos, it was long thought that planets couldn’t stably orbit systems containing three stars. GW Orionis is the first counterexample.
Mars and Earth were sister planets in many ways, with early similar conditions. Why did Mars die? The leading explanation isn’t universal.
NASA’s space telescopes and observatories bring humanity unrivaled science images and scientific discoveries. Here’s what should be next.
In the year 1181, a “guest star” was recorded in the constellation of Cassiopeia. Its modern supernova remnant is weirder than we imagined.
Almost everyone asserts that the Big Bang was the beginning of everything, followed by inflation. Has everyone gotten the order wrong?
Many mavericks look to Einstein as a unique figure, whose lone genius revolutionized the Universe. The big problem? It isn’t true.
Beyond stars, galaxies, and gravity, studying the fundamental workings of nature reveals widely applicable lessons for learners everywhere.
More than two years after JWST began science operations, our Universe now looks very different. Here are its biggest science contributions.
What are dark matter and dark energy? The large-scale structure of the cosmos encodes them both, with ESA’s Euclid mission leading the way.
The most common visual depictions of the history of the Universe show the Big Bang as a growing tube with an “ignition” point. Why is that?
The fabric of spacetime is four-dimensional, with three for space and only one for time. But wow, time sure is different from space!
Could life be widespread throughout the cosmos, in the subsurface oceans of ice-covered worlds? NASA’s Europa Clipper mission investigates.
An in-depth interview with astronomer Kelsey Johnson, whose new book, Into the Unknown, explores what remains unknown about the Universe.
There are a number of factors to consider when choosing where to build a telescope. These 3 locations, on their merits, surpass all others.
The Universe changes remarkably over time, with some entities surviving and others simply decaying away. Is this cosmic evolution at work?