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’ve come so far since 2015; what do we know about dark matter now that we didn’t know then? Back in 2015, the dark matter situation was pretty straightforward: the large-scale […]
How do you get so massive so fast? The answer could be a big problem for our standard picture of cosmology. Out in the extreme distances of the Universe, the […]
Instead of nearly-circular ellipses, comets are extraordinarily elongated, or even on an exit path. Why so different? When you look at how the planets orbit in our Solar System, the […]
If December’s best natural sky show seems to get better every year, it isn’t your imagination. It’s science, and it’s spectacular! Every year, the Earth travels some 940 million kilometers […]
Think we’ll just responsibly choose more fuel efficient vehicles, and the market will take care of the rest? Good luck with that. Since the first oil crisis of the 1970s, there […]
Would you work at a job that didn’t treat you like a professional? No wonder public education drove their best teachers away. The ultimate dream of public education is incredibly simple. […]
Dark matter, dark energy, and why there’s more matter than antimatter? There’s an experiment to explore if neutrinos could solve all three. When you take a look at the Universe in […]
Sometimes, you look in a nearby galaxy, and what you find beyond it will change everything. Einstein’s theory of General Relativity has withstood every test for more than a century. […]
There’s so much that we’ve discovered, looking as deeply as possible into the void. But what are we missing? Start with the laws of physics, a Universe full of a specific […]
It isn’t flat, and these simple observations that you can make from the ground can demonstrate it to anyone. From any one location on the surface of the Earth, it’s impossible […]
Just because it isn’t Thanksgiving anymore doesn’t mean we don’t have an entire Universe to be thankful for. Every day, we have a choice whether we take our lives, our existence, […]
Science can do a whole lot of things, but proving a scientific theory is still an impossibility. You’ve heard of our greatest scientific theories: the theory of evolution, the Big […]
You don’t have to wait for 2018 to know that it likely won’t be a year with 25+ magnitude 7.0 earthquakes. A new story based on a fascinating scientific paper […]
Thanks to NASA’s HiRISE camera, prepare to see Mars in a whole new light. Twelve years ago, NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter launched. The descent of Mars Science Laboratory (i.e., the Curiosity […]
If you can’t explain the astrophysical signal that you see and cry ‘dark matter,’ chances are you’re not thinking hard enough. Despite our knowledge of the laws of physics, and the […]
A new look at the intertwined lives of two of the 20th century’s greatest minds. In the years prior to World War II, physics was in an odd, post-revolutionary state. Quantum […]
As wonderful as the evidence that supports or invalidates a theory is, it can never truly kill the ones that don’t work out. When it comes to science, we like to […]
If atmospheric hazes can cool the distant ice dwarf by an extra 30 degrees Celsius, maybe we can geoengineer a solution to our warming problem? When NASA’s New Horizons flew by […]
And you don’t even need a Delorean at 88 MPH. It’s one of the greatest tropes in movies, literature, and television shows: the idea that we could travel back in time […]
It’s more than the Spore Drive, it’s about the heart of science fiction. If you’ve been following Star Trek: Discovery, you knew what we were headed for going into the mid-season […]
Nothing can escape from a black hole… but could another black hole pull something out? Once you fall into the event horizon of a black hole, you can never escape. […]
No matter what the science says, there’s no excuse for cruel behavior to a colleague. Look out into the distant Universe as far as you possibly can, and you’ll come […]
If the gravity isn’t where the matter is, things get into trouble very, very quickly. The above image, a composite of optical data, X-ray data, and a reconstructed mass map, is […]
There’s more to powering the world than releasing energy. When it comes to the ultimate dream of clean, efficient, and prolific energy sources, it’s hard to do better than the […]
Grad students will be taxed at the highest rate in the country, even higher than billionaires. For millions of young people, the American dream is to study the thing you’re […]
Right and wrong has never been so gray in the Star Trek Universe. Imagine you’re in a fight with an enemy, and the fight itself isn’t fair. You might have […]
The first stars formed almost half a billion years before we could see their light. Here’s why. At the moment of the Big Bang, the Universe was full of matter and […]
From millions of miles to millions of light years, there’s nothing else that leaves trails like this. When you point your telescope at the distant Universe, observing a faint, massive object […]
The differences between what you are and what you could be are stunning. The human body consists of somewhere around 1028particles, all bound together. The typical human has a mass […]
For just a year’s worth of US Military budget, we could transform the world. The United States spends more on military spending than the next ten nations combined: an estimated $600 […]