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.
If you expected them to be like Earth’s dunes, prepare to be surprised! “Actually I think Art lies in both directions — the broad strokes, big picture but on the other hand […]
Einstein called it spooky, but if we figure it out right, can we learn about distant star systems instantaneously? “Trying to understand the way nature works involves a most terrible […]
13.8 billion years is a great number. But how sure are we of this, and how did we get there? “Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We […]
Newton thought it was instantaneous, but the story is much richer than that! “The fact that gravitational damping is measured at all is a strong indication that the propagation speed of […]
Think we’d never do better from the ground than from space? This adaptive optics system is proving this wrong! “This event marks the culmination of many years of hard work on […]
The answer depends on what scales you’re looking at. “The world is the great gymnasium where we come to make ourselves strong.” –Swami Vivekananda When it comes to the fundamental laws […]
Think Saturn is the only ringed world? The story is far better than that! “The phenomena of nature, especially those that fall under the inspection of the astronomer, are to be […]
If we’re going to send a probe to another star at 20% the speed of light, what hope do we have of slowing it down? “Yes, now there is this technological […]
Earth day may have been last week, but the lessons we learned about Earth from space are with us always. “We are not learning to view ourselves as an advanced, evolving […]
“Where did it come from” is pretty high up there! “Space is certainly something more complicated than the average person would probably realize. Space is not just an empty background in […]
From Space, in HD. “You cannot rob me of free nature’s grace,You cannot shut the windows of the skyThrough which Aurora shows her brightening face.” –James Thomson Ever since humanity first […]
Gamma rays from black holes? It’s an incredible idea… and it’s probably wrong. “That’s the next step: to simultaneously see [gravitational waves] with three, four or five interferometers, localize it quickly, […]
You’ll get another good chance in two years, and then not again until the 2030s! “This is the plan. Get your ass to Mars, and go to the Hilton Hotel and […]
And why you shouldn’t even be asking a question like that. “If we cannot now end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.” –John F. […]
With $100 million invested towards it and an incredible concept behind it, could this be the start of interstellar travel? “Fundamental physics is like an art more or less. It’s […]
When they ask, will you tell them the truth, or something comforting? Why not do both! “It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness, […]
A live blog event from Nobel Prizewinner Art McDonald. “It’s ironic: in order to observe the Sun, you need to go kilometers underground.” –Art McDonald In the 1960s, a huge […]
We have every reason to believe gravity is an inherently quantum theory. Here’s how we’ll prove it once and for all! The following article was written by Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder. Sabine […]
And why it might spell trouble for dark energy as we know it. “That’s all regular matter, just five percent. A quarter is “dark matter,” which is invisible and detectable only […]
They’re even more spectacular in the close-up detail it delivers. “This then, I thought, as I looked round about me, is the representation of history. It requires a falsification of […]
And could what we see over there spell disaster for Earth? “An asteroid or a supervolcano could certainly destroy us, but we also face risks the dinosaurs never saw: An engineered […]
I scored an exclusive interview with Dave Reitze, the executive director of LIGO. Take a trip inside his Universe. “When I was in high school, I was certain that being […]
That our atoms come from stars? You’ve got to think bigger than that! “The older people that one admires seem to be fearless. They go right out into the world. It’s […]
By devising the first truly brilliant physics experiment, Galileo gave us the equations of motion we still use today. “All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point […]
Without a boost, they’ll all come crashing down. “I’m here for several reason, Mr. Pepin, first of all for aid. When something tragic happens in our skies, we do our utmost […]
A view that no one ever had — not even from space — until Astronaut Don Pettit changed everything with these stunning photographs. “This job is a great scientific adventure. But it’s also a […]
Should George Clooney’s character have floated away? Or do the laws of physics tell a different story? “You’ve got to learn to let go.” –Matt Kowalski, Gravity The movies play […]
And if relativity tells us there’s no such thing as “absolute motion,” how do we measure it? “The slow philosophy is not about doing everything in tortoise mode. It’s less about […]
A stunning new image of ALMA’s protoplanetary disk sheds light on planetary formation. “TW Hydrae is quite special. It is the nearest known protoplanetary disc to Earth and it may […]