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 we could see in three dimensions instead of two, we’d never have thought otherwise. Perhaps the most famous sight of a dying star is the Ring Nebula, discovered in […]
It’s the ultimate way to go… and yet, it still isn’t what you’d expect. There are many terrifying ways that the Universe can destroy something. In space, if you tried to […]
13.8 billion years isn’t close to enough time, but if we wait long enough, even our Sun will become one. The Big Bang happened approximately 13.8 billion years ago, and it […]
If you look everywhere between the numbers 1 and 2, you’ll never find 3. Let’s say you have an idea about how our physical reality might be different from how we […]
The solar eclipse of May 29, 1919, was the nail in the coffin of a Newtonian Universe. On May 29, 1919, the world changed forever. For hundreds of years, Isaac […]
Everything on Earth is made of atoms and their building blocks. Without this one rule, they’d never make anything interesting. Take a look around you at everything on Earth. If […]
Imagine how different our understanding of the Universe would be if we saw nothing beyond the Milky Way. Our corner of the Universe was gifted with a plethora of bright, nearby […]
Forget the speed of light or the electron’s charge. This is the physical constant that really matters. Why is our Universe the way it is, and not some other way? There […]
What took hundreds of millions of years to create is being wasted on… party balloons? There’s a natural resource found beneath Earth’s surface that’s been building up for hundreds of […]
And if they exist, are there alternate-reality versions of you out there, too? You’ve likely imagined it before: another Universe out there, just like this one, where all the random events […]
The past 300,000 years occurs in the blink of a cosmic eye, but it’s meant everything to humanity. The history of humanity was anything but inevitable. Although the Universe created […]
Even the best science imaginable has its limits. In terms of ambition, it’s hard to ask for more than to know absolutely everything there is to know about the Universe. That’s […]
A 1060-hour amateur exposure of a nearby galaxy does what even Hubble couldn’t do. The Universe is full of astronomical wonders, but it’s up to humanity to observe and analyze them. […]
Neither one reflects the other; they’re both blue for entirely different reasons. If you’ve ever been curious about the world you live in, you’ve probably wondered why the sky is […]
There are real problems that our society faces, and only through expert-level knowledge can we solve them. All across the country, you can see how the seeds of it develop from […]
The cosmic story of us wasn’t inevitable, but the culmination of many chance events. By the time our planet was four billion years old, the rise of large plants and animals […]
The two planets most suited for habitability had very different fates. At last, scientists know why. Imagine the early days of our Solar System, going back billions of years. The Sun […]
The thin ribbon is a rare and spectacular celestial phenomenon, but so much more than a mere aurora. It isn’t often that skywatchers discover a new naked-eye phenomenon in astronomy, but […]
Some claim that inflation isn’t science, but it sure has made some incredibly successful scientific predictions. So, you want to know how the Universe began? You’re not alone. Every other […]
Depending on how you measure it, there are two different answers that could be right. If you want to see what’s out there in the Universe, you first have to be […]
The world’s greatest observatory can go no further with its current instrument set. The Hubble Space Telescope has provided humanity with our deepest views of the Universe ever. It has […]
The history of life on Earth took many meandering turns before it gave rise to us. When Earth first formed, all the raw ingredients for life — atoms, molecules, a potentially habitable planet […]
Dark matter, dark energy, inflation and the Big Bang are real, and the alternatives all fail spectacularly. If you keep up with the latest science news, you’re probably familiar with […]
The small step that one man took would never have happened without this narrow escape. On July 20, 1969, history was made as humanity set foot on the Moon for the […]
It’s made up of scores of telescopes at many different sites across the world. But it acts like one giant telescope. Here’s how. If you want to observe the Universe more […]
How fast is the Universe expanding? The results might be pointing to something incredible. If you want to know how something in the Universe works, all you need to do […]
Nothing is 100% safe or 100% effective, but vaccine-hesitancy is even worse. It’s one of the most important decisions you’ll ever make in your life: do I vaccinate my child, and […]
We’re a long way from the beginnings of life on Earth. Here’s the key to how we got there. The Universe was already two-thirds of its present age by the time […]
Who should sit atop the iron throne? Let your DNA decide. Here on Earth, we hold one important truth to be self-evident above all others: that all humans are created equal. […]
Our Sun will someday run out of fuel. Here’s what it will look like when that happens. The fate of our Sun is unambiguous, determined solely by its mass. If all […]