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
How ‘special’ are we for life to have survived and thrived the way it did? While there are hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy, many with Earth-sized planets at […]
Finding the ingredients for life is a very different prospect than finding the products of life. Perhaps the greatest quest in science today is to find life that originated beyond Earth. […]
North Korea’s statements, actions, and the physics of how to do it all point to the same terrifying conclusion. There are few things in this world that have the capability […]
13.8 billion years ago, our Universe as-we-know-it came into existence. Here’s what it was like. Looking out at our Universe today, we not only see a huge variety of stars and […]
There’s a halo of dark matter permeating every galaxy, and that means its particles pass through us, too. The Universe, despite all the planets, stars, gas, dust, galaxies, and more we […]
Forget the spectacular explosions we create here on Earth. The Universe outdoes us in every way imaginable. Forget mere chemical reactions; in space, matter-energy conversion creates unprecedentedly powerful explosive events. […]
Dark energy is pushing distant galaxies apart from one another at an increasing rate. If the Big Rip hypothesis is true, things will only get worse from here. One of the […]
The rate at which the Universe has expanding has changed tremendously in 13.8 billion years. So why do we call it the Hubble constant? The Universe is an enormous place, […]
There are only two perfect numbers that fit on the calendar: 6 and 28, making June 28th Perfect Number Day. Find out what makes a number perfect, and why they matter. […]
Cosmic inflation is what happened before, and set up, the Big Bang. Here’s what it’s like to live in an inflating Universe. Our Universe today is full of matter and […]
Intelligent aliens, if they exist in the galaxy or the Universe, might be detectable from a variety of signals: electromagnetic, from planet modification, or because they’re spacefaring. But we haven’t […]
Many hoped we could do without dark matter. On cosmic scales, the evidence has finally spoken. For over 40 years, scientists have argued over dark matter’s existence. The extended rotation curve […]
The accelerated expansion of the Universe is one of the greatest puzzles today. Could this out-of-the-box idea explain it without dark energy? When it comes to our quest to understand the […]
What’s going on at the smallest and largest scales of all? Let’s look to the absolute limits of physics. Have you ever wondered what’s out there in the Universe, on the […]
The Universe is expanding, but different techniques can’t agree on how fast. No matter what, something major has got to give. Look out at a distant galaxy, and you’ll see it […]
The result validate Einstein on a whole new scale, and pose serious problems for alternative, modified theories of gravity. In 1915, Albert Einstein put forth a new theory of gravity: General […]
20 years ago, we discovered that distant galaxies were accelerating away from us. Here’s how the Universe makes it happen. Matter and energy tell spacetime how to curve; curved spacetime tells […]
If we don’t invest in learning about the Universe, we aren’t going to learn very much. Every ten years, the field of astronomy and astrophysics undergoes a Decadal Survey. This charts […]
If you thought LIGO’s recent discoveries were profound and unusual, wait until you meet OJ 287. Recently, LIGO has revolutionized our knowledge of the Universe by discovering merging black holes. The […]
We’ve all heard the number: 4.5 billion years. But how do we know, and how certain are we that the Earth and Sun are the same age? Billions of years ago, […]
Designed for a 90-day mission each, dust killed the overachieving Spirit and threatens to now kill Opportunity. But it didn’t have to be this way. In 2004, NASA launched two exploration […]
In the search for fundamental truths in our Universe, one of the biggest questions, “are space and time continuous or discrete,” remains unanswered. Throughout the history of science, one of […]
There’s something very special inside a proton and neutron that holds the key. There are few things in the Universe that are as easy to form, in theory, as black holes […]
There’s no such thing as a theory that’s too beautiful to be wrong, if it doesn’t agree with experiment. The history of physics is filled with great ideas that you’ve […]
When it comes to the Solar System, all we have left are the survivors. At last, that might be enough to know what happened 4.5 billion years ago. We know what […]
A color you’ll never find in a star is responsible for the universal color of star-forming regions. If you look through a telescope’s eyepiece, distant galaxies always appears white. Spiral-shaped […]
If spacetime is like a fabric, and mass bends it, what flattens it back out again? Matter tells space how to curve, and curved space tells matter how to move. That’s […]
There’s a big difference between evidence and wishful thinking. The story of how life arose on Earth is one of the great mysteries of modern science. We know, in many […]
And if we did, what would happen if you fell in? Out in the countryside of rural America, you can find all sorts of attractions that are too-good-to-be-true. One of the […]
In 2015, Ed Witten, the greatest living string theorist, wrote a piece on why. Here’s the version for everyone. It’s one of the most brilliant, controversial and unproven ideas in […]