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
If you think we’ve done a great job with planet-finding so far, just wait until you learn what’s possible with microlensing! When we think about finding planets in the Universe, […]
Imagine you had perfect technology and unlimited fuel. How far could you go? Human spaceflight has brought us beyond Earth, but we could potentially venture even farther. The very first launch […]
In all the Universe, there’s only one Earth. But can we find the other worlds that are like ours? Even though the ingredients for life have been confirmed to be practically […]
There is a fundamental difference between matter and antimatter. But not enough of one to explain our Universe. Our Universe is a vast and enormous place, and if there’s one […]
It’s rare but spectacular when the Moon passes in front of another planet. Here’s how to see it. From our perspective on Earth, the night sky appears virtually unchanged with the […]
Earth wasn’t the only potentially habitable planet in the early Solar System. What happened to Mars? If you could travel back in time to the early stages of the Solar System, […]
If dark energy is causing the Universe to disappear, how can we still find and see ultra-distant stars and galaxies? In the 1920s, scientists discovered that the Universe was expandingbased […]
The visible light portion of the spectrum is tiny compared to the whole thing. Here’s what we’re missing. When you look at the Milky Way in visible light, you might see […]
LIGO and Virgo have now detected a total of 11 binary merger events. But exactly 0 were in the Milky Way. Here’s why. One of the most spectacular recent advances in […]
In order to reap the greatest rewards, we have to think big and invest big. One of these four missions will deliver like never before. When it comes to exploring the […]
The transition across a quantum barrier is known as quantum tunneling, and the amount of time it takes for such a transition to occur had never been measured before. For […]
A climate catastrophe 2 billion years ago almost ended life on Earth. Here’s the biggest lesson of all. Although it was more than 4½ billion years ago that planet Earth formed, […]
If you’re careful enough, you can learn more about the Solar System than you ever imagined. This year, on March 20th, the full Moon will illuminate the night sky. With […]
So, you want to know about black holes, including how we’re seeing them, what happens when you fall into them, what our future plans for direct and indirect detection are, […]
Even if we don’t destroy ourselves, we always have the Universe to contend with. Wiping out all life on Earth is hard, but causing mass extinctions is easy. The 1991 eruption […]
Both effects could be responsible for a redshift. But only one makes sense for our Universe. In physics, like in life, there are often multiple solutions to a problem that […]
If you accept cosmic inflation and quantum physics, there’s no way out. The Multiverse is real. Look out at the Universe all you want, with arbitrarily powerful technology, and you’ll never […]
The only other large galaxy in the local group is larger in size and has more stars. But mass? Perhaps we’re the biggest, after all. The Milky Way is home to […]
The planet has had life on it, in some form or another, for nearly as long as Earth has existed. If you came to our Solar System right after it formed, […]
If your goal was to destroy the science of astronomy and astrophysics, this is exactly how you’d do it. One of the perks of being President of the United States of […]
If you understand gravity well enough, you might not even need a telescope to revolutionize astronomy. In science, advances arise at the intersection of theory and real-world observation. One of […]
Our future fate is likely already determined. If we end in a Big Crunch, what does that mean? The ultimate fate of the Universe is one of the biggest existential questions […]
Yes, life exists in our Universe. No, that statement doesn’t equal science. Imagine you’ve encountered a natural phenomenon you want to understand better, but don’t have the tools to do so. […]
While the web of dark matter (purple) might seem to determine cosmic structure formation on its own, the feedback from normal matter (red) can severely impact galactic scales. Both dark […]
The ‘giant impact’ that led to Earth might not have been so giant, after all. A little over 4.5 billion years ago, our Solar System began to form. Somewhere in the […]
As more time passes since the Big Bang, more of the Universe comes into view. But how much? Even though it’s been billions of years since the Big Bang, there’s a […]
50 years ago, Apollo 9 launched. Without it, we never would’ve landed on the Moon. The Apollo program is most famous for its greatest achievement: taking humanity to the Moon. It […]
Gravity gets weaker as the distance squared. But gravitational waves only get weaker as the distance. Why? One of the things we often just accept about the world is that […]
Faraday’s law of induction was set forth in 1834, and was the experiment that led Einstein to discover relativity. When we think about Einstein and the theory of relativity, all […]
Before we formed stars, atoms, elements, or even got rid of our antimatter, the Big Bang made neutrinos. And we found them. The idea of the Big Bang has captivated the […]