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.
Get Starts With A Bang in your inbox
Featured
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.
Popular
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?
All Stories
Interferometry gave us a black hole’s event horizon, but that was in the radio. What can we accomplish with a new optical interferometer?
Today, the deepest depths of intergalactic space aren’t at absolute zero, but at a chill 2.73 K. How does that temperature change over time?
The Universe has been creating stars for nearly all 13.8 billion years of its history. But those photons can’t match the Big Bang’s light.
Comet A3, also known as Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, has sprung to life since 2024’s last equinox. Here’s how to catch the show for yourself.
In theory, dark matter is cold, collisionless, and only interacts via gravity. What we see in ultra-diffuse galaxies indicates otherwise.
The Parker Solar Probe is about to undergo its seventh encounter with Venus on its journey toward the Sun. Here’s how fast it’ll go.
In all directions, at great distances, the Universe looks younger, more uniform, and less evolved. Does that mean Earth must be the center?
Time is relative, not absolute, as gravity and motion both cause time to dilate. Your head and feet, therefore, don’t age at the same rate.
Despite many ultra-distant galaxy candidates found with JWST, we still haven’t seen anything from the Universe’s first 250 million years.
LHC scientists just showed that spooky quantum entanglement applies to the highest-energy, shortest-lived particles of all: top quarks.
Just 460 light-years away, the closest newborn protostars are forming in the Taurus molecular cloud. Here are JWST’s astonishing insights.
It’s possible to remove all forms of matter, radiation, and curvature from space. When you do, dark energy still remains. Is this mandatory?
Do we actually live in a deterministic Universe, despite quantum physics? An alternative, non-spooky interpretation has now been ruled out.
With the discovery of Porphyrion, we’ve now seen black hole jets spanning 24 million light-years: the scale of the cosmic web.
It would get rid of our hazardous, radioactive, and pollutive waste for good, but physics tells us it’s a losing strategy for elimination.
Almost all of the stars, planets, and interesting physics happens in the inner portions of galaxies. Is that conventional wisdom all wrong?
Within our observable Universe, there’s only one Earth and one “you.” But in a vast multiverse, so much more becomes possible.
The laws of physics aren’t changing. But the Earth’s conditions are different than what they used to be, and so are hurricanes as a result.
Most fundamental constants could be a little larger or smaller, and our Universe would still be similar. But not the mass of the electron.
In the expanding Universe, different ways of measuring its rate give incompatible answers. Nobel Laureate Adam Riess explains what it means.
The Lyman-α emission line has never been seen earlier than 550 million years after the Big Bang. So why does JADES-GS-z13-1-LA have one?
Galactic activity doesn’t just arrive when supermassive black holes feast on matter. Before, during, and after all create fascinating signs.
Although a great many unidentified sights have been seen in the skies, none have conclusively demonstrated the presence of aliens. So far.
Taught in every introductory physics class for centuries, the parabola is only an imperfect approximation for the true path of a projectile.
Inflation, dark matter, and string theory are all proposed extensions to the prior consensus picture. But what does the evidence say?
The observation that everything we know is made out of matter and not antimatter is one of nature’s greatest puzzles. Will we ever solve it?
The mass that gravitates and the mass that resists motion are, somehow, the same mass. But even Einstein didn’t know why this is so.
Scientific surprises, driven by experiment, are often how science advances. But more often than not, they’re just bad science.
The “little red dots” were touted as being too massive, too early, for cosmology to explain. With new knowledge, everything adds up.
Here on Earth, we commonly use terms like weight (in pounds) and mass (in kilograms) as though they’re interchangeable. They’re not.