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
50% of stars are in Sun-like ‘singlet’ systems. The planetary nebulae we see just don’t line up. Around 7 billion years from now, our Sun’s life will end. As the Sun […]
Leap years will only get us through the next few thousand years before we have to fix it. With every year that passes, we assume that two separate things will both […]
Ignoring a scientific truth doesn’t change it, even when the consequences are deadly. “If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you do it, too?” Many of us, as children, […]
And why, even at its faintest, it always outshines every other star and planet. If you’ve been looking to the west after sunset recently, you may have noticed that there’s one […]
If our nearest star has an Earth-like planet, here’s how we’ll see it. As seen from up close, the signs of not only life, but our intelligent, technologically advanced human civilization […]
The contact binary system KIC 9832227 is worth another look. Astronomers have seen some incredible occurrences across space and time. The nova of the star GK Persei, shown here in an […]
Hidden variables aren’t ruled out, but they can’t get rid of quantum weirdness. Ever since the discovery of the bizarre behavior of quantum systems, we’ve been forced to reckon with […]
Over the coming decades, over 100,000 new satellites are expected. For countless millennia, whenever we were faced with a clear, cloudless, moonless night, all of humanity was able to witness […]
The dream of zero resistance is closer than you may think. One of the biggest physical problems in modern society is resistance. Not political or social resistance, mind you, but electrical […]
Yes, the Big Bang is real, but what about what came before? If you ask anyone about the origin of some phenomenon that we’ve observed, they’ll usually default to the same […]
With sodium-sensitive eyes, we’d see it every new Moon. With no detectable gases, the Moon appears to be atmosphere-free. The Moon as seen from a view above the majority of Earth’s […]
The rarest stars in the Universe are the ones we need the most to make humanity possible. Like everything in the Universe, stars are born, they live a little while, […]
When you view your right hand in a mirror, it appears as a left hand. Writing is reversed, as is the direction of any spinning object: clockwise becomes counterclockwise and […]
The new record-holder opens up a literal Universe full of possibilities. Someday, even our own Sun will eventually run out of hydrogen fuel in its core, bringing a tremendous set […]
Planets are either rocky, like Earth, or gas-rich, like Neptune, with no in-between. What are the different types of planets that exist in the Universe? If all you could see […]
All scientific theories, at some level, are wrong. That’s why consensus is so vital. There are two important and common words that, when used scientifically, have a very different meaning than […]
An almost 40-year-old theory finally has ‘smoking gun’ evidence for it. During most of their lives, stars burn stably, changing imperceptibly. The rotten egg nebula, at lower right (and shown in […]
Whether they’re gas giants or rocky planets makes all the difference for life. Over the past 30 years, we went from not knowing if there were planets like ours around other […]
Whether you write it 6/28 or 28/6, it’s perfection either way. Perfection might be a wonderful thing to strive for in life, but achieving it is very rare. In the realm […]
Metal really does sometimes stick to some people’s skin. Here’s the science of why. Every once in a while, a claim comes along that wildly challenges the mainstream scientific narrative. These […]
Despite all the challenges, Hubble has vindicated this discovery. Practically everywhere we look in the Universe, the large-scale objects that we see — small galaxies, large galaxies, groups and clusters of galaxies, […]
Despite Betelgeuse’s recent faintening and brightening, I’d bet on these stars instead. Betelgeuse, a nearby red supergiant, will someday explode. The black hole at the center of the Milky Way should […]
And either way, is energy or information conserved? When two things in the Universe that “always” occur meet one another, how do you know which one will win? Gravitational waves, […]
How slight differences could have forever changed our cosmic history. 13.8 billion years ago, what we know today as our Universe began with the hot Big Bang. Filled with matter, antimatter […]
Is the Universe the same everywhere? Or are there truly ‘special places’ around? For practically all of human history, one assumption about our place in the Universe had long gone unchallenged: […]
Filaments, hundreds of millions of light-years long, were just caught spinning. In our own cosmic backyard, everything we see spins, rotates, and revolves in some fashion or other. Our planet […]
If you go young, blue, and massive, you top out at 50,000 K. That’s peanuts! Surprise! The biggest, most massive stars aren’t always the hottest. Although its neighbor, Messier 42, […]
The only doubts are completely unreasonable. Where did the virus that causes COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, come from? Over the past few weeks, there’s been a tremendous push — largely among politicians but also […]
How two seemingly distinct exoplanet systems turned out to be related. Practically every star in the Milky Way has a similar origin story. At some point in the past, a molecular […]
If you want to find life in the Universe, this is how you do it. When it comes to uncovering the ultimate truths about reality, we can only reap what we […]