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
We have two ways of measuring the expansion rate. Here’s the harder one. If you want to understand where our Universe came from and where it’s going, you need to measure […]
The successor to Hubble is almost ready for launch. It’s really coming this year, too! NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, originally proposed in the 1990s, is finally slated to launch later […]
The newest record-setting quasar houses an enormous black hole. No one knows how. In every scientific field, we’re always on the lookout for whatever new discovery might reveal what’s currently beyond […]
Binary pulsars are doing what no other measurement has done: measure our galactic acceleration directly. Even though the majority of the matter that makes up our Universe may be completely […]
If you thought it was just one rich region in space, look deeper and wider. Shining brilliantly in January’s skies is the Great Orion Nebula. By 10 PM every night in […]
And can we devise an experiment to tell, even when we aren’t looking? One of the most bizarre aspects of quantum physics is that the fundamental entities that make up the […]
In 2020, we experienced the shortest ‘day’ in 50 years. Here’s the reason why. On the timescales that humans experience, there are lots of things that we consider to be extremely […]
There are many things on large scales that also appear on small scales. But is the Universe truly a fractal? If you take a look at the structures that form in […]
The expansion rate is dropping, but distant galaxies are accelerating. Here’s how. If you take a look at any galaxy in the Universe that isn’t gravitationally bound to our own, we’ve […]
For the cosmos, it’s all too easy being green. Stars come in a wide variety of colors, but never green. Stars form in a wide variety of sizes, colors and masses, […]
The smallest and faintest stars of all, even the failed stars that didn’t make it, are hiding some fascinating secrets. You might have thought that if we were going to […]
It’s 92 billion light-years wide after just 13.8 billion years. And that’s just fine. If there’s one rule that people know about how fast things can move, it’s that there’s a […]
It’s that the Universe can be understood at all. Don’t deafen yourself to its lessons. In a nutshell, 2020 has been a unique year in human history. For the first time […]
A single lifetime is more than enough to take you to the limits of the Universe. Right now, there are only three things limiting how far our spacecrafts can take […]
If you think ‘particles are matter’ and ‘antiparticles are antimatter,’ think again. In this Universe, there are certain rules that have never been observed to be broken. Some of these […]
No matter how your year went, Hubble’s views of the Universe never disappoint. Year after year, Hubble’s telescopic views are unparalleled. Saturn, its rings, and 5 of its moons are […]
It might have been Einstein’s greatest blunder, but it’s our leading theory today. One of the most mysterious components in the entire Universe is dark energy, which — if we’re being honest with […]
Two stellar mass black holes, if they merge in the vicinity of a supermassive black hole, could have their gravitational wave signal affected by the strongly curved space around them. […]
The first COVID-19 vaccines are here. So are the anti-vaxxers. Over the past year, most of us have learned more about coronaviruses than we ever thought we’d need to know. […]
It might not feel that way, but a 95% dark Universe really is the best game in town. No matter how much we might try and hide it, there’s an enormous […]
After a wait of 397 years in orbit, we’re finally getting a truly ‘Great’ Conjunction. Recently, December 21, 2020, Jupiter and Saturn finally met. Looking towards the southwest skies from […]
It doesn’t propagate at infinite speeds, and that’s a problem for Newton. When you look at the Sun, the light you’re seeing isn’t the light that’s being emitted right now. Instead, […]
With just a few more neutron star mergers, we’ll have the best constraints of all-time. How fast is the Universe expanding? Ever since the expanding Universe was first discovered nearly […]
We have been rejecting science for far too long. We all need to embrace it. For as long as human civilization has existed, those societies that have embraced science have had […]
And what can it teach us about our Solar System’s earliest days? In many ways, astronomy is unique among the sciences. In every other field, you have the ability to design […]
The Sun produces a wide variety of particles and radiation throughout it, but all of its neutrinos are produced in the core: where nuclear reactions take place. The various reactions […]
If the multiverse is real, where does all the energy for it come from? One of the biggest scientific puzzles, even given our knowledge of the Big Bang, is to understand […]
The act of observing doesn’t just determine a previously indeterminate state, but can destroy information, too. Imagine that you’re a scientist attempting to understand reality at a fundamental level. How […]
Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but no one is entitled to their own facts. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but no one is entitled to their own […]
Learn how to get the best views no matter where you are. Every year, no matter what else is occurring on Earth or in the heavens, you can rely on two […]