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.
The Soviet Union’s space program was years ahead of the USA’s. So how did they lose the space race? Here in the United States and all across the world, humanity is […]
Physicists sure do give counterintuitive names to the things they find. Most of us are confounded by the idea of relativity when we first encounter it. Objects don’t just move through […]
Not only can’t astronomers and planetary scientists agree, but the IAU made it worse for everyone. If you were alive in 2006, you likely remember a momentous event in astronomy: […]
When stars get ejected from galaxies within massive clusters, they go where the dark matter is. Dark matter is one of the greatest mysteries in the Universe, displaying its effects in […]
General Relativity has nothing to do with light or electromagnetism at all. So how to gravitational waves know to travel at the speed of light? There are two fundamental classes of […]
The laws of physics are not time-reversal invariant. Here’s how we know. No matter when, where, or what you are in the Universe, you experience time in only one direction: forwards. […]
From explosions to their unique and vibrant colors, the fireworks displays we adore require quantum physics. This Thursday, July 4, 2019, is remarkable for a number of reasons. It happens to […]
It’s found everywhere we know how to look, and just might be nature’s perfect fuel. Here’s how to harness it. Dark matter is one of the biggest mysteries in all of […]
No matter how long you wait, the matter that makes you probably won’t end up inside a black hole. It’s one of the most pervasive ideas out there: if you wait […]
The total solar eclipse of July 2, 2019, is the longest one we’ll have until 2027. And that’s not all. On July 2, 2019, the new Moon will pass between Earth […]
The quest for a quantum theory of gravity is the holy grail of physics. Here’s why it’s murkier than anyone expected. If you want to fully describe how the Universe […]
If you think nothing can move faster than light, check out this clever way to defeat that limit. Nothing can move faster than the speed of light. When Einstein set forth […]
The remote volcano Raikoke just erupted after nearly 100 years of silence. Here’s why it matters. On June 22, 2019, a volcano that had been dormant and inactive for nearly a […]
The Planck length is a lot smaller than anything we’ve ever accessed. But is it a true limit? If you wanted to understand how our Universe operates, you’d have to examine […]
Here are four separate ways you can prove it, even 50 years after-the-fact. 50 years ago, on July 20, 1969, humanity took our first footsteps on the surface of another […]
Discovered by NASA’s Chandra X-ray observatory, it’s powered by a supermassive black hole. 2019 marks 20 years of NASA’s Chandra, humanity’s most powerful X-ray observatory. Artist illustration of the Chandra X-ray […]
The summer solstice is the longest day of the year, but doesn’t have the earliest sunrise or the latest sunset. Here’s why. The length of a day on planet Earth might […]
It’s where Earth’s axial tilt with respect to the Sun is most extreme. Here are the consequences. Today is June 21st, 2019: the day of the solstice. Although there are […]
Some galaxies might not have any dark matter. Here’s why you should care. There are two assumptions that everyone makes about the Universe for extremely good reasons, but they might not […]
A vacuum cleaner is the wrong picture. Time to bust that myth. There are no classes of object in our Universe more extreme than black holes. With so much mass present […]
If you thought that diamonds were the hardest things of all, this will have you thinking again. Carbon is one of the most fascinating elements in all of nature, with chemical […]
At the core of the largest star-forming region of the Local Group sits the biggest star we know of. Mass is the single most important astronomical property in determining the lives […]
Two independent techniques give precise but incompatible answers. Here’s how to resolve it. If you didn’t know anything about the Universe beyond our own galaxy, there are two different pathways you […]
If we restrict ourselves to looking for extraterrestrial life on Earth-like worlds, we might miss it entirely. When we think about life out there in the Universe, far beyond the […]
The world of particle physics sure does have surprises, even for the most educated of physicists out there. If you ever take a visit to the physical site of CERN, where […]
There really is a cosmic conundrum about how fast the Universe is expanding. Changing its age won’t help. One of the most surprising and interesting discoveries of the 21st century is […]
An entire Universe of possibilities await stars like our own, even after they run out of fuel. One of the most profound rules in all the Universe is that nothing lasts […]
It’s not impossible according to physics, but we truly don’t know how this object came to exist. Out in the extremities of the distant Universe, the earliest quasars can be found. […]
Has the mystery really been solved? Doubtful. The real science goes much deeper. For perhaps the last year or so, a small galaxy located not too far away has captivated the […]
If we only look for life on worlds like our own, we might miss the most commonly inhabited planets of all. With all the planets out there in the galaxy and […]