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
It’s the first, most naive question you might think to ask. The solution is a lot more complicated than you imagine. According to a large amount of evidence, the overwhelming majority […]
If everything was hot, dense, and super close-together at the Big Bang, what kept us from collapsing into a singularity? The Big Bang is one of the most counterintuitive ideas […]
Ever hear of Hawking radiation? Or the black hole information paradox? Time to get your fix! In memory of Stephen Hawking’s life, I’ve decided to share the physics behind his greatest […]
In 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope was launched, leading to a revolution in astronomy. But for many purposes, Earth is still the best place to be. When you think about what’s […]
Spoiler: it isn’t the end of the Universe, and it’s not likely to lead to new evidence for the Multiverse, either. On March 14, 2018, the most famous and celebrated […]
In 2016, the number of opioid-related deaths hit 42,000, an all-time record. But gun deaths were nearly that same number, and have been consistently that high. If you want to know […]
With hundreds of billions of stars burning bright, ‘dead’ seems like a bit of an exaggeration. But every galaxy is headed for this fate, including ours. As long as a […]
We know that it’s ‘the red planet’ because of the iron in its soil. But why, with such a thin, carbon dioxide atmosphere, is the martian sky so red and bright? […]
Before Hawking, black holes were just static points in the background of space. His greatest scientific legacy taught us just how dynamic they are. In 1915, Albert Einstein published his General […]
If it were, we wouldn’t be here. But there’s a scientific answer that’s been spectacularly confirmed. When we examine our Universe, looking out at the planets, stars, galaxies, and vast […]
Even our scientific heroes can’t be right about everything. Let’s learn the lessons that they never did. In the 1960s, a young theoretical physicist named Stephen Hawking rose to prominence as […]
For every planet that orbits a star like our own, there are likely thousands of ‘orphan planets’ wandering the galaxy alone. Here in the Solar System, we can watch our star’s […]
It’s time to bust one of the biggest myths about where the night sky’s most spectacular, seasonal shows come from. Meteor showers are one of the night sky’s most spectacular sights […]
They seem almost indistinguishable in some regards, but only one of them represents our physical Universe. When it comes to describing the physical world, we can do it anecdotally, as […]
The past is gone, the future not yet here, only the present is now. But why does it always flow the way it does for us? Every moment that passes finds […]
One of the three basic circuit elements just got a lot smaller for the very first time, in what promises to be a trillion-dollar breakthrough. In the race for ever-improving […]
Most stars obey very similar rules, making them almost entirely predictable. But then, there are the weirdos. Catch this live-blog event to learn more. When we look out at the Universe […]
There have been a lot of public advocates from the “no dark matter” camp, getting lots of popular attention. But the Universe still needs dark matter. Here’s why. If you took […]
For most of us, it’s something we just accept every year. But there’s arguably no good that comes from it. Every year on the second Sunday in March, most places in […]
We always assume that dark matter is particle-based, and we just need to find which particle it is. But what if it isn’t so? Everything we’ve ever detected in the Universe, […]
And super-Earth, mini-Neptunes, and super-Jupiters aren’t among them. You’ll be surprised to learn why. Just 30 years ago, if you had asked an astronomer if there were planets around other stars […]
The possibilities were almost limitless, so why does everything line up? Our Solar System is an orderly place, with the four inner planets, the asteroid belt, and the gas giant worlds […]
The indirectly find was completely unexpected, and, if it holds up, could give the James Webb Space Telescope its first tantalizing target. In the quest to understand our Universe, and […]
One of astronomy’s most iconic sights in an artifact of faulty optics. Here’s how a new, great design will overcome it. When you look out at the greatest images of the […]
In the quantum world of the unstable, even identical particles don’t have identical masses. In the microscopic world of the quantum particle, there are certain rules that are wholly unfamiliar […]
After a 16 year wait, the star SO-2 will speed past our galaxy’s supermassive black hole at 2.5% the speed of light. It will be the first-of-its-kind test of Einstein’s […]
If the multiverse is real, why hasn’t our Universe, in a sea of infinite possibilities, run into another one at least once? The Universe we inhabit is vast, full of matter […]
Distances in the expanding Universe don’t work like you’d expect. Unless, that is, you learn to think like a cosmologist. There are a few fundamental facts about the Universe — its origin, […]
LISA, the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, will not only be the space-based successor to LIGO, but will predict black hole mergers up to years in advance. Across the Universe, innumerable masses […]
They say there’s a singularity, but must that be true? When you fall inside the event horizon of a black hole, there’s no escaping, no matter what you do or how […]