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
Are we looking for life in all the wrong ways, like SETI with smoke signals? A little over 80 years ago, humanity first began broadcasting radio and television signals with enough […]
They’re less than a billion years old. And, thanks to ALMA, they might finally pave the way to understanding how galaxies form. How do galaxies like our Milky Way come to […]
Multiple teams of scientists can’t agree on how fast the Universe expands. Dark matter may unlock why. There’s an enormous controversy in astrophysics today over how quickly the Universe is expanding. […]
There is no reason for science and faith to be hostile to one another. If you want to figure out how the Universe works, you have to ask. Not by asking […]
Last week, the crew found themselves in the mirror Universe. Here’s what science has to say about that. Star Trek: Discovery entered their midseason hiatus on a terrific cliffhanger: they had […]
They’re the fastest rotators of all. So how distorted are they? There are very few objects in the Universe that stand still; almost everything we know of rotates in some way. […]
If nature makes equal amounts of matter and antimatter, how are we here? When you look out at the vastness of the Universe, at the planets, stars, galaxies, and all there […]
Combining nanotechnology of two different varieties might be the game-changer we’ve always dreamed of. For as long as human beings have been writing about fantasy, myth, and science fiction, the dream […]
A cosmic controversy is back, and at least one camp — perhaps both — is making an unidentified error. Ever since Hubble first discovered the relationship between a galaxy’s distance and its motion away […]
What if alien life — or even intelligence — don’t look like what we’re searching for? When the original Star Trek premiered, it was revolutionary for depicting sentient, intelligent species other than humans, living […]
This list of 10 non-winners is 50% women, but 100% outrageous. In science, advances often come in great leaps. In hindsight, it’s easy to identify perhaps hundreds of small steps […]
Aiming for the nearest star would necessitate a whole slew of advances. Even if the mission fails, humanity wins by investing in itself. There have been some magnificent moments in NASA […]
The truth might not be ‘out there’ at all. There may never have been another intelligent, technologically advanced alien species in the entire history of the Universe. When you take into […]
The Event Horizon Telescope has come online and taken its data. Now, we wait for the results. Black holes are some of the most incredible objects in the Universe. There are […]
How did black holes get so supermassive so fast? Astrophysics may be about to find out, thanks to three big 2017 discoveries. There’s a big problem when we look at […]
From the birth and deaths of stars to the largest structures in the Universe, Hubble shows us what we’d never see otherwise. When it comes to the Universe itself, perhaps […]
Out of five vital questions, which one should we most desire the answer to? Despite all we’ve learned about physics, science, and the Universe before us, there are still some incredibly […]
What does science have to say about the biggest questions about existence of all? Find out on our new Starts With A Bang podcast. Ever wonder about the biggest questions that […]
The President laid out his ambition, but no money to fund it. It’s a classic Trump move, and a recipe for failure. Last week, President Trump signed Space Policy Directive 1, […]
All of this has happened before… but not like this! As the year draws to a close, we approach a very special time of year, at least from an astronomical perspective. […]
Today, our visible Universe contains 2 trillion galaxies, each with billions of stars. But when did the very first one appear? When we look out at our Universe today, there are […]
It isn’t the Big Bang or stars like the Sun that gave rise to us. The story is far more… explosive. At the smallest level, the human body is made […]
Do these five experiments right in your own living room, and explore some of the most baffling phenomena in all of nature. It’s a revolutionary idea that the Universe is made […]
The ‘big discovery’ is nothing of the kind. We need a new planet-finding mission to probe the next frontier. Last week, NASA dropped a bombshell that it’s Kepler mission — the greatest […]
Those awful almost-changes they made? They could have avoided the whole problem by simply doing the math. Designed for artists, writers, and creatives* of all different persuasions, Patreon has become a […]
If you haven’t finished your holiday shopping yet, consider these 10 gifts, good any time of year! One of the hardest things when it comes to holiday shopping is to find […]
We’ve come so far since 2015; what do we know about dark matter now that we didn’t know then? Back in 2015, the dark matter situation was pretty straightforward: the large-scale […]
How do you get so massive so fast? The answer could be a big problem for our standard picture of cosmology. Out in the extreme distances of the Universe, the […]
Instead of nearly-circular ellipses, comets are extraordinarily elongated, or even on an exit path. Why so different? When you look at how the planets orbit in our Solar System, the […]
If December’s best natural sky show seems to get better every year, it isn’t your imagination. It’s science, and it’s spectacular! Every year, the Earth travels some 940 million kilometers […]