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.
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 […]
There’s a big reason no one, not even Stephen Hawking, could fill Carl Sagan’s shoes. Everyone has a unique story to tell. For scientists, that story is one that usually only […]
Geologically, it might be the most intense Hawaiʻian eruption in over 200 years. But not a single person has died, thanks to science. Hawaii, a chain of islands in the Pacific […]
The data has been taken, collected, and analyzed. So where is the first image of an event horizon, already? Across multiple continents, including Antarctica, an array of radio telescopes observe the […]
If emissions don’t go down, there’s still an option for combatting global warming. We just have to effectively dim the Sun. Global climate change is one of the most pressing long-term […]
As the new Star Wars movie, Solo, premieres, let’s look at the physics of how his most famous achievement might actually be possible. The Millennium Falcon’s greatest achievement, according to […]
For accurate, factual alerts and updates, the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory is the most comprehensive, reliable news source you could possibly go to. Since 1983, the Kilauea volcano on the Big Island […]
Everyone in the Universe needs a break sometimes. They say that all work and no play make Jack a dull boy, and with very few exceptions, I’ve been working hard […]
There really should be life out there beyond Earth. Here’s how we’ll find it. There are three very different ways humanity is searching for alien life beyond Earth. We can directly […]
Many tests have reported an ‘anomalous thrust’ where there should be none. A researcher has finally shown where everyone else has messed up. One of the ultimate dreams of humans everywhere […]
Sedna could be the very first known object from the Inner Oort Cloud. But time is running out to create and launch a mission. In 2003, scientists discovered an object beyond […]
The legacy of what humanity’s greatest telescope has to teach us about the Universe continues to grow. Here in the Universe, in the Milky Way and beyond, new stars are birthed […]