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.
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 […]
You’re gonna die, cloud! All stars, even our Sun, will someday eventually die. After burning on the main sequence for billions of years, the Sun will expand into a red giant, […]
We’ve found our first ones! The question is: how did they survive? Over the past 2 years, an exciting development has finally arisen: scientists have measured a large number of small, […]
If we’re migrating slowly away, is our speed changing, too? Every year, planet Earth completes one revolution around the Sun while spinning on its axis. On a year-to-year basis, our […]
There’s a flowchart if you aren’t sure. It’s a situation that comes up all too frequently: an expert in their field publicly states a conclusion that is thoroughly accepted by the […]
Our ultimate fate depends on something we’ve barely begun to measure. One of the biggest mysteries in all of physics is dark energy. According to our best observations, the Universe cannot […]
A cosmic puzzle is finally solved, as new observations answer the question of why this galaxy exists at all. For the last couple of years, astronomy has had a tremendous puzzle […]
Don’t wait until Christmas to gift a telescope this year. All throughout the year, two bright lights have stood out in the post-sunset skies. Earlier this year, on March 31, 2020, […]
And can scientists even agree on what ‘nothing’ means? The more curious we get about the great cosmic unknowns, the more unanswered questions our investigations of the Universe will reveal. […]
If you forgot to defrost your turkey, definitely don’t put it in a deep fryer. Every year, households all across the United States face a troubling dilemma with no good solutions: […]
How many potentially habitable planets are there? We sincerely don’t know. One of the most compelling scientific goals humanity has set for itself is to find extraterrestrial life: biological activity originating […]
There’s more light than we can account for, and we’ve just measured it robustly for the first time. When we look out at the darkest night skies available on Earth, even […]
The brightest object in the night sky, our Moon is an unmistakable sight. The brightest object in the night sky, our Moon is an unmistakable sight. The Moon, in a […]
They’re not just a theoretical prediction of quantum gravity. They should be detectable, too. The Universe, if you look at it closely and carefully enough, is fundamentally quantum in nature. […]
In our Universe, a left hand reflected in a mirror or pond appears to be a right hand. While most of the laws of nature are symmetric under reflections, obeying […]
With three colors and three anticolors, there aren’t actually nine gluons; only eight. One of the most puzzling features of the Universe is the strong nuclear force. Inside every proton or […]
Often viewed as a theoretical, calculational tool only, the Lamb Shift proved their existence. If you spend enough time listening to theoretical physicists, it starts to sound like there are […]
And if it does strike us, how much damage will it cause? Will near-Earth asteroid Apophis strike us in 2068? Generically, asteroids under ~1 km in size are irregularly shaped, will […]
We haven’t discovered life beyond our Solar System yet, but we’re closer than ever before. Over the past 30 years, we’ve gone from zero exoplanets to thousands. With each new […]
Entropy always increases, but that doesn’t mean it was zero to start with. One of the most inviolable laws in the Universe is the second law of thermodynamics: that in any […]
Once only dark energy remains, empty space still won’t be completely empty. Imagine, if you dare, the very end of the Universe. The stars — past, present, and future — have all burned out. […]
No matter how accurately you place two Plinko chips, you cannot count on the same outcome twice. Of all the pricing games on the iconic television show The Price Is Right, […]
You might be inclined to modify gravity instead, but those ideas have grossly unequal evidence supporting them. What is it, exactly, that you’re supposed to do when the predictions of […]
Known as the ‘North Star,’ Polaris won’t stay that way forever. Planet Earth spins a full 360°, about its axis, every 24 hours. The Earth in orbit around the Sun, with […]