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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Featured
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.
Popular
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?
All Stories
If you thought the Planck satellite just made temperature maps of the cosmic microwave background, this will astound you. The Milky Way, to human eyes, appears as simply a mix of […]
With the discovery of the Higgs boson, the Standard Model is now complete. Can we be sure there isn’t another generation of particles out there? The Universe, at a fundamental level, […]
It would be the ultimate method for solving our pollution or hazardous/radioactive waste problems, but we’ll never do it. Here’s why. Imagine our planet as it was for the first 4.55 […]
Maybe, but that probably doesn’t mean what you think it does. Of all the unsolved puzzles in the Universe, perhaps the most confounding is the dark matter problem. If we look […]
It doesn’t matter what’s popular, logical, or intuitive. What matters is what you can observe and measure. Imagine asking the biggest, most fundamental question of all: what is reality? How would […]
The Sudbury neutrino observatory, which was instrumental in demonstrating neutrino oscillations and the massiveness of neutrinos. With additional results from atmospheric, solar, and terrestrial observatories and experiments, we may not […]
It’s a great scientific opportunity of modern times, but we won’t get there with our current observatories. One of the holy grails of modern science is to find a world, […]
As more data comes in, the puzzle gets deeper and deeper. Whenever you set out to solve a problem, there are a series of steps you have to take in order […]
The line-in-the-sand was drawn in sharpie, and the time to declare ‘no more’ is now. When you have a question about the physical world, there are a lot of different approaches […]
Forget Copenhagen, Many-Worlds, Pilot Waves and all the others. What you’re left with is reality. When it comes to understanding the Universe, scientists have traditionally taken two approaches in tandem with […]
What’s more massive than the heaviest known neutron star but lighter than the lightest known black hole? LIGO may be about to solve that mystery. Whenever a star is born in […]
Is there life beyond Earth, even in our Solar System? This mission might be humanity’s best hope of finding it. The biggest question facing humanity might be, “Does life exists beyond […]
You’ve seen a black hole’s event horizon for the first time thanks to them. But they’re only getting started. Earlier this year, 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration revealed the first […]
In 1789, William Herschel discovered this unique moon around Saturn. 230 years later, its secrets are more promising than ever. Today marks the 230th anniversary of the discovery of Enceladus, one […]
You might think that we live in a three dimensional Universe based on space alone. But you cannot leave time out of it. If you were asked to describe how you […]
The story behind the meme is one of those rare cases where everybody wins. The spectacle of a large fish getting fired out of a cannon has taken the internet […]
When people learn the Universe is expanding, they want to know where the center is. The ‘answer’ isn’t what they expect. There are two things that people learn about the Universe […]
Stronger than the LHC and faster than anything except light, the world’s cleverest particle detector sees the particles we could never create on Earth. It might be true that there’s an […]
Electron-positron or proton-proton colliders are all the rage. But the unstable muon might be the key to unlocking the next frontier. If you want to probe the frontiers of fundamental […]
When we split something into its most fundamental, indivisible components, are we truly seeing something that’s point-like, or is there a finite minimum size? Imagine that you wanted to know what […]
The darkness of the night sky was a mystery for generations of humans. Here’s the reason why. From our perspective here in the Solar System, it makes absolute intuitive sense why […]
Jupiter’s Great Red Spot has been around for longer, but Saturn’s periodic storms are far larger. On Earth, hurricanes can span hundreds of kilometers, wreaking devastation whenever landfall occurs. In 2007, […]
Black holes are regions of extreme gravity, but dark matter barely interacts at all. Do they play well together? Black holes are some of the most extreme objects in the […]
It’s the largest, most massive planet in the Solar System. But what’s the real story behind all the impacts on Jupiter? One of the most terrifying prospects here on Earth is […]
If quantum gravity is right, these gravitational ripples must be more than waves; they must be particles, too. Back in February of 2016, LIGO made an announcement that changed our […]
When the Universe expands, photons redshift to longer wavelengths and lower energies. So where does that energy go? Imagine the ultimate version of a toy Universe: it’s expanding, it’s full of […]
And one of our planets has the orbiting moons to prove it. Despite the dangers posed to planet Earth by a comet or asteroid strike, our Solar System is actually an […]
We’re one step closer to solving the mystery of how they get so big so fast. A great cosmic mystery for science is explaining how supermassive black holes form. An ultra-distant […]
After Kepler but before James Webb, TESS is preparing astronomers for the coming exoplanet revolution. There are always new discoveries and achievements occurring in science, and certain fields have experienced […]
The top of Mauna Kea is the ideal physical site for this new, ready-to-be-built telescope. But that’s far from the only concern. For many years, astronomers have looked forward to a […]