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.
Get Starts With A Bang in your inbox
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
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 […]
When we think about the birth of the Universe, was time already in place? When we look at the Universe today, we know with an extraordinary amount of scientific certainty that […]
Dark matter’s naysayers latched onto one tiny puzzle. This new find may have solved it completely. Imagine the largest cosmic smashup you can. Take the largest gravitationally bound structures we […]
There aren’t any holes in the Universe at all. What actually exists is far more interesting. Somewhere, far away, if you believe what you read, there’s a hole in the […]
If we don’t push the frontiers of physics, we’ll never learn what lies beyond our current understanding. At a fundamental level, what is our Universe made of? This question has […]