Starts With A Bang

A field of stars and colorful cosmic dust clouds scattered across the dark expanse of space.
The Universe is out there, waiting to be discovered

Our mission is to answer the biggest questions of all, scientifically.

What is the 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 most of human history, these questions had no clear answers. Today, they do. Starts With a Bang, written by Dr. Ethan Siegel, explores what we know about the universe and how we came to know it, bringing the latest discoveries in cosmology and astrophysics directly to you.

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Ethan Siegel is an award-winning PhD astrophysicist and the author of four books, including The Grand Cosmic Story, published by National Geographic.

Full Profile
A bald man with a long beard and handlebar mustache gestures with his hands against a backdrop of an upside-down cityscape wearing a purple shirt.
The most overlooked fact about JWST’s Little Red Dots
When JWST opened its eyes, it spied a huge number of Little Red Dots. What we saw inside was a puzzle, but what's missing could solve it.

Ethan Siegel

The grid features 15 images of distant galaxies, each labeled with identifiers and redshift values from z=4.75 to z=8.92. Captured by JWST, these celestial wonders include intriguing little red dots scattered across the vast cosmos.
LHC insides
CERN's Large Hadron Collider is the most powerful particle accelerator ever. To go even further, we'll have to overcome something big.
planetary nebulae infrared spitzer
In ~7 billion years, our Sun will run out of fuel and die. So will every star, eventually. Here are the different fates they'll encounter.
hubble tension
The mutual distance between well-separated galaxies increases with time as the Universe expands. What else expands, and what doesn't?
pulse polio day india
It’s not a gambit. It’s not fraud. It’s not driven by opinion, prejudice, or bias. It's not unchallengeable. And it's more than facts alone.
CERN_ATLAS_Detector The standard model in physics
With new W-boson, top quark, and Higgs boson measurements, the LHC contradicts earlier Fermilab results. The Standard Model still holds.
A vibrant aurora borealis with green and purple hues in a starry sky, viewed over the silhouette of a tree, reminiscent of the "aurora hubble" phenomenon.
The most iconic, longest-lived space telescope of all, NASA's Hubble, is experiencing orbital decay as the solar cycle peaks. Here's why.
The galactic center is home to the most powerful engine in the Milky Way: a supermassive black hole. How does its energy ultimately escape?
Astronomical image showing a galaxy cluster with multiple bright glowing sources and smaller points against a deep blue and purple space background.
We normally think of dark matter as the "glue" that holds galaxies and larger structures together. But it's so much more than that.
separation normal matter dark matter galaxy cluster
There are many theories of gravity out there, and many interpretations of wide binary star data. What have we really learned from it all?
Raisin bread expanding Universe
The evidence that the Universe is expanding is overwhelming. But how? By stretching the existing space, or by creating new space itself?
elements
In 2017, we detected gold being forged in a neutron star-neutron star merger. Now, in 2024, the amounts created simply don't add up.
Interior of a particle physics laboratory showing a complex particle accelerator setup with multiple cables, detectors, and machinery designed to study glueball particles.
Glueballs are an unusual, unconfirmed Standard Model prediction, suggesting bound states of gluons alone exist. We just found our first one.
A vibrant image of the Horsehead Nebula captured by JWST, featuring a radiant blue and white glow against a deep red starry background.
The most iconic "dark nebula" of all lights up under JWST's infrared gaze. Here's what's newly discovered inside.
Holograms preserve all of an object's 3D information, but on a 2D surface. Could the holographic Universe idea lead us to higher dimensions?
A bright flash of light in the Universe
In general relativity, white holes are just as mathematically plausible as black holes. Black holes are real; what about white holes?
timeline of the universe history
From the earliest stages of the hot Big Bang (and even before) to our dark energy-dominated present, how and when did the Universe grow up?
X-ray style image of a human head with brain highlighted by luminous, branching electric currents made of particles against a dark background.
At a fundamental level, only a few particles and forces govern all of reality. How do their combinations create human consciousness?
dark energy
Dark energy is one of the biggest mysteries in all the Universe. Is there any way to avoid "having to live with it?"
universe temperature
In the 20th century, many options abounded as to our cosmic origins. Today, only the Big Bang survives, thanks to this critical evidence.
how many planets
For some reason, when we talk about the age of stars, galaxies, and the Universe, we use "years" to measure time. Can we do better?