Ethan Siegel
A theoretical astrophysicist and science writer, host of popular podcast "Starts with a Bang!"
Ethan Siegel is a Ph.D. astrophysicist and author of "Starts with a Bang!" He is a science communicator, who professes physics and astronomy at various colleges. He has won numerous awards for science writing since 2008 for his blog, including the award for best science blog by the Institute of Physics. His two books "Treknology: The Science of Star Trek from Tricorders to Warp Drive" and "Beyond the Galaxy: How humanity looked beyond our Milky Way and discovered the entire Universe" are available for purchase at Amazon. Follow him on Twitter @startswithabang.
With launch, deployment, calibration, and science operations about to commence, here are 10 facts that are absolutely true.
When three wise men gifted baby Jesus with gold, frankincense, and myrrh, they had no idea one was made from colliding neutron stars.
The photometric filters for the Vera Rubin Observatory are complete and showcase why they are indispensable for astronomy.
Life arose on Earth very early on. After a few billion years, here we are: intelligent and technologically advanced. Where’s everyone else?
How can you “touch the Sun” if you’ve always been inside the solar corona, yet will never reach the Sun’s photosphere?
From exoplanets to supermassive black holes to the first stars and galaxies, Webb will show us the Universe as we’ve never seen it before.
After more than two decades of precision measurements, we’ve now reached the “gold standard” for how the pieces don’t fit.
After decades of development, whether NASA’s Webb succeeds or fails all comes down to five critical milestones that are only days away.
The same (former) NASA engineer who previously claimed to violate Newton’s laws is now claiming to have made a warp bubble. He didn’t.
Every December, the Geminid meteor shower reaches its peak. Its 2021 show will be spectacular, but only if you do it right.
Even without the greatest individual scientist of all, every one of his great scientific advances would still have occurred. Eventually.
Binary black holes eventually inspiral and merge. That’s why the OJ 287 system is destined for the most energetic event in history.
Our Solar System’s outer reaches, and what’s in them, was predicted long before the first Oort Cloud object was ever discovered.
Did the Milky Way form by slowly accreting matter or by devouring its neighboring galaxies? At last, we’re uncovering our own history.
From high school through the professional ranks, physicists never tire of Newton’s second law.
As particles travel through the Universe, there’s a speed limit to how fast they’re allowed to go. No, not the speed of light: below it.
Previously, only the brightest and most active galaxies could pierce the obscuring wall of cosmic dust. At last, normal galaxies break through.
No matter how controversial or politicized our world becomes, science remains humanity’s best tool for figuring out how things work.
The stars, planets, and many moons are extremely round. Why don’t they take other shapes?
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?
Finding out we’re not alone in the Universe would fundamentally change everything. Here’s how we could do it.
The majority of the matter in our Universe isn’t made of any of the particles in the Standard Model. Could the axion save the day?
The most unique interloper into our Solar System has a natural explanation that fits perfectly — no aliens required.
We once thought the Moon was completely airless, but it turns out it has an atmosphere, after all. Even wilder: It has a tail of its own.
Many still cling to the idea that we live in a deterministic Universe, despite the nature of quantum physics. Now, the “least spooky” interpretation no longer works.
We haven’t seen a partial eclipse lasting this long since 1440, and won’t again until 2669. North America is perfectly positioned for 2021’s.
Although most of the Universe’s mass is dark matter, which gravitates just as well as normal matter, it still can’t make black holes.
The latest gravitational wave data from LIGO and Virgo finally shows us the truth: there are no “gaps” in the masses of black holes.
Based on the atoms that they’re made out of, the innermost planet should always be the densest. Here’s why Earth beats Mercury, hands down.
It had long seemed impossible that supermassive black holes could grow to such enormous sizes. But the biggest problem is now solved.