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
The first observational evidence showing the Universe is expanding is 100 years old now: in 2023. Here's the story of its 100th anniversary.
How fast is the Universe expanding? Two major methods disagree. New JWST data, just released, strengthens this Hubble tension even further.
Some constants, like the speed of light, exist with no underlying explanation. How many "fundamental constants" does our Universe require?
Two fundamentally different ways of measuring the expanding Universe disagree. What's the root cause of this Hubble tension?
The Schumann resonances are the background hum of the entire planet. But they don't affect humans in any way.
LK-99, almost certainly, isn't a room-temperature superconductor. The underlying physics of the phenomenon helps us understand why.
The visible Universe extends 46.1 billion light-years from us, while we've probed scales down to as small as ~10^-19 meters.
How scientists are hearing the gravitational background "hum" of the Universe for the very first time.
Einstein's laws of gravity have been challenged many times, but have always emerged victorious. Could wide binary stars change all that?
Each of our three nearest stars might have an Earth-like planet in orbit around it. Here's what we'll learn when we finally observe it.
Is LK-99 truly a room temperature superconductor? These 4 tests, none of which have yet been passed, will separate fact from fiction.
The National Ignition Facility just repeated, and improved upon, their earlier demonstration of nuclear fusion. Now, the true race begins.
From when its light was emitted, the El Gordo galaxy cluster might be the most massive object in all of existence. Here's how JWST sees it.
Recent claims put LK-99 as the first room temperature, ambient pressure superconductor ever. Has the game changed, or is it merely hype?
Scientists are notoriously resistant to new ideas. Are they falling prey to groupthink? Or are our current theories just that successful?
Each year in mid-August, Earth plows through the debris stream of an enormous comet, creating the Perseids. 2023's show will be magnificent!
Even with the quantum rules governing the Universe, there are limits to what matter can withstand. Beyond that, black holes are unavoidable.
There are two types of missing, or "dark" matter: baryonic (made of normal matter) and non-baryonic. Have we finally found the normal stuff?
Nothing can escape from a black hole. So where do Hawking radiation, relativistic jets, and X-ray emissions around black holes come from?
All of the matter and radiation we measure today originated in a hot Big Bang long ago. The Universe was never empty, not even before that.
Back in the 1930s, Fritz Zwicky postulated the existence of dark matter. No one took it seriously until Vera Rubin's work: 40 years later.
Can two planets stably share the same orbit? Conventional wisdom says no, but a look at Saturn's moons might tell a different story.
All stars, eventually, run out of fuel and die. Given all the stars we can see and the vast distance to them, are any of them already dead?
Over 50 years since humans last walked on the Moon, astronaut footprints and rover tracks are still visible. But they won't last forever.
Today, our observable Universe extends for 46 billion light-years in all directions. But early on in our history, things were much smaller.
The giant impact theory suggests our Moon was formed from proto-Earth getting a Mars-sized strike. An exoplanet system shows it's plausible.
For many years, cosmologists have claimed the Universe is 13.8 billion years old. A new paper says no, it's 26.7 billion. How do we decide?
If you've found yourself befuddled by extraordinary scientific-sounding claims, you're not alone. But this centuries-old lesson can help.
What are supermassive black holes, how common are they, and how do they grow up throughout cosmic history? Listen and find out!
A Harvard astronomer went to the bottom of the ocean, claiming he recovered alien technology. But what does the science actually indicate?