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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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
Even 13.8 billion years after the Big Bang, we can reconstruct the first 3 minutes. About 100 years ago, we began to truly understand the nature of the Universe for the […]
If you want to know what the Universe is like, you have to look at it in the right way. Only by observing it can we know what the Universe is […]
The densest objects that haven’t collapsed to black holes can tell us information about the Universe unlike anything else. Swarming through our own galaxy, we’ve detected quite a few bizarre objects: […]
Only 3% of physics graduates and 2% of astronomy graduates are Black. That’s got to change. In the late 1990s, about 5% of the approximately 4000 bachelor’s degrees in physics per […]
The ultimate lesson from Dr. Birx is one we should never, ever repeat. About a year ago, as the world experienced the deadly “first wave” associated with the coronavirus pandemic, many […]
Enough mass in one location will always create a black hole. But not all masses are possible. If you take enough mass and compress it into a small enough volume […]
We need more and better data to know, but that’s exactly what’s coming. Over the past few decades, a number of important advances have helped revolutionize our picture of the Universe. […]
Only 17 years after its discovery have we learned we’re safe from asteroid Apophis. Ever since its 2004 discovery, asteroid 99942 Apophis has threatened planet Earth. Asteroid Apophis has been measured […]
Physics demands that it couldn’t be any other way. Here’s why. Ask anyone — even someone with no background in science — to name something that Einstein did, and odds are they’ll come back with […]
When you measure not just light, but light’s polarization, you learn so much more. It’s been over 100 years since the first solution for a black hole was discovered in General […]
It’s one of Einstein’s most bizarre predictions. And it’s true. There’s no such thing as absolute time. No matter where you are, how fast you’re moving, or how strong the gravitational […]
Something isn’t adding up, but it isn’t a calibration error. It’s been nearly 100 years since we discovered that the Universe was expanding. Ever since, the scientists who study the […]
Both views are equally spectacular, but unequally informative. Every so often, a creative amateur project highlights our professional achievements. This mosaic shows the region between the constellations of Cygnus and […]
Scalars, vectors, and tensors come up all the time in science. But what are they? One of the major goals of science is to describe our reality as accurately as possible. […]
Is a proton fundamentally more ‘quarky’ or ‘gluey’ in nature? One question that every curious child winds up asking at some point or other is, “what are things made of?” Every […]
Here are the best answers science has to a myriad of commonly asked questions. Over the past 12 months, the status of humans on planet Earth has changed dramatically. The […]
The most massive nearby stars could be the seeds our supermassive black holes need. The problem with the Universe, as we see it today, is that we only get a snapshot […]
One image can give over 100 times the data we now get from Hubble. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990, revealed the previously unseen Universe. The most distant galaxy ever […]
Yet, if they only obey the rules that we know, there’s no way to explain why. One of the greatest puzzles in all of physics is that the laws of nature — as […]
A tiny layer of microscopic dust is the only reason it appears red. When we look out at our planet Earth from space, we see a myriad of diverse colors. The […]
It’s how successful our current theories are. Some 500 years ago, there was one scientific phenomenon that was, without controversy, extremely well-understood: the motion of the celestial objects in the sky. […]
Even before the Big Bang, energetic radiation was always present. When it comes to the physical Universe, the notion of “nothing” may truly be possible only in theory, not in […]
Our views from the red planet’s surface are more spectacular than ever. Ever since the earliest spaceflight, humanity has reached for Mars. This photo composite shows Meande Ring, a river on […]
It could have had any curvature at all. So why is it flat? What is the shape of the Universe? If you had come along before the 1800s, it likely never […]
We still don’t know what dark matter is, but at least we now know what it’s not. When it comes to science, we often say that it only takes a single […]
And what might we learn as we collect new, never-before-seen data? If you took one of history’s top scientists from 100 years ago and dropped them into today’s world, what […]
The Universe’s idea of a ‘typical star’ has changed dramatically over time. When you look out at the Universe today, you’re not seeing it exactly as it is at one particular […]
The Crab Nebula goes back to 1054, opening a window into our cosmic past. On July 4, 1054, Chinese astronomers recorded a “guest star” in the Taurus constellation. A ‘guest star’ […]
Dark matter was thought to be cold and collisionless. But maybe that’s not the full story. If you look out at the Universe and measure all the matter out there, including […]
Not nearly well enough. And we should all be concerned. In 1859, the science of solar physics truly began with the largest eruption in recorded history: the Carrington event. Prior […]