The universe is out there, waiting for you to discover it.
Our mission: to answer, scientifically, the biggest questions of all.
- What is our universe made of?
- How did it become the way it is today?
- Where did everything come from?
- What is the ultimate fate of the cosmos?
For countless generations, these were questions without resolutions. Now, for the first time in history, we have scientific answers. Starts With A Bang, written by Dr. Ethan Siegel, brings these stories — of what we know and how we know it — directly to you.
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Why power generated through nuclear fusion will be the future, but not the present, solution to humanity’s energy needs.
It’s a strange idea to consider: that a tiny building block of matter, the atomic nucleus, holds the greatest potential for energy release.
And yet, it’s true; while electron transitions in atoms or molecules typically release energy on the order of ~1 electron-Volt, nuclear transitions between different configurations release energies a million times as great, on the order of ~1 Mega-electron-Volt.
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From before the Big Bang to the present day, the Universe goes through many eras. Dark energy heralds the final one.
A wild, compelling idea without a direct, practical test, the Multiverse is highly controversial. But its supporting pillars sure are stable.
The surface and atmosphere is colored by ferric oxides. Beneath a very thin layer, mere millimeters deep in places, it’s not red anymore.
The first supernova ever discovered through its X-rays has an enormously powerful engine at its core. It’s unlike anything ever seen.
Just 13.8 billion years after the hot Big Bang, we can see 46.1 billion light-years away in all directions. Doesn’t that violate…something?
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We thought the Big Bang started it all. Then we realized that something else came before, and it erased everything that existed prior.
The science fiction dream of a traversable wormhole is no closer to reality, despite a quantum computer's suggestive simulation.
It's not only the gravity from galaxies in a cluster that reveal dark matter, but the ejected, intracluster stars actually trace it out.
A Carrington-magnitude event would kill millions, and cause trillions of dollars in damage. Sadly, it isn't even the worst-case scenario.
Compared to Earth, Mars is small, cold, dry, and lifeless. But 3.4 billion years ago, a killer asteroid caused a Martian megatsunami.
We'll never be able to extract any information about what's inside a black hole's event horizon. Here's why a singularity is inevitable.
The great hope is that beyond the indirect, astrophysical evidence we have today, we'll someday detect it directly. But what if we can't?
By studying the dwarf galaxy Wolf-Lundmark-Melotte ~3 million light-years away, JWST reveals the Universe's star-forming history firsthand.
We confidently state that the Universe is known to be 13.8 billion years old, with an uncertainty of just 1%. Here's how we know.
Every time our Universe cools below a critical threshold, we fall out of equilibrium. That's the best thing that ever happened to us.
The strongest tests of curved space are only possible around the lowest-mass black holes of all. Their small event horizons are the key.
Realizing that matter and energy are quantized is important, but quantum particles isn't the full story; quantum fields are needed, too.
Our galactic home in the cosmos — the Milky Way — is only one of many trillions of galaxies within in the observable Universe. Do we have a twin?
The Universe is 13.8 billion years old, going back to the hot Big Bang. But was that truly the beginning, and is that truly its age?
SpinLaunch will cleverly attempt to reach space with minimal rocket fuel. But will physics prevent a full-scale version from succeeding?
The image you're seeing isn't a hole in the Universe, and the cosmic voids that do exist aren't hole-like at all.
We think of physical reality as what objectively exists, independent of any observer. But relativity and quantum physics say otherwise.
It's rare that one single image packs so much beauty and science simultaneously. This Hubble view of a nearby star-forming region has both.
Supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies gobble up whatever matter ventures too close, becoming active. Here's how they work.
We're used to scientists telling us about the math and physics behind astronomical events. But what does studying space make us feel?
Based on data since 2000 alone, global warming is still occurring at a whopping 7-sigma significance. How hot will planet Earth get?
All across the Universe, planets come in a wide variety of sizes, masses, compositions, and temperatures. And most have rain and snow.
With a record-setting $1.9 billion jackpot, you'd think it's a no-brainer to buy a Powerball ticket. But the math truly shows otherwise.
The ESA's Gaia mission just broke the record for closest black hole by over 1,000 light-years. Is there an even closer one out there?
Science is for everyone, even those possessing strongly held beliefs that seem to conflict with the best available evidence.
IceCube just found an active galaxy in the nearby Universe, 47 million light-years away, through its neutrino emissions: a cosmic first.
Using physics, Ross Chastain floored it during the final turn, scraping the wall and passing 5 cars to advance to the NASCAR championship.
Billions of years ago, the ever-increasing entropy must've been much lower: the past hypothesis. Here's how cosmic inflation solves it.
The largest hazardous asteroid found in the last 8 years showcases a little-known class of planet-killers. And we're woefully unprepared.
In 1974, Stephen Hawking showed that even black holes don't live forever, but emit radiation and eventually evaporate. Here's how.