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Ethan Siegel
Theoretical astrophysicist and science writer
Ethan Siegel is a Ph.D. astrophysicist and author of "Starts with a Bang!" He is a science communicator, who professes physics and astronomy at various colleges. He has won numerous awards for science writing since 2008 for his blog, including the award for best science blog by the Institute of Physics. His two books "Treknology: The Science of Star Trek from Tricorders to Warp Drive" and "Beyond the Galaxy: How humanity looked beyond our Milky Way and discovered the entire Universe" are available for purchase at Amazon. Follow him on Twitter @startswithabang.
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For some reason, the charges on the electron and proton are equal and opposite, and their numbers are equal, too. But why?
As far as we can tell, there's no limit to how far it goes on; only a limit to how far we can see. Could the Universe truly be infinite?
We've fooled ourselves before with galaxies that look just like this one. The evidence we have simply isn't strong enough.
In the latest edition of the Starts With A Bang podcast, we talk with soon-to-be Dr. Arianna Long about galaxies, from birth to today.
Our Universe requires dark matter in order to make sense of things, astrophysically. Could massive photons do the trick?
Fermilab's TeVatron just released the best mass measurement of the W-boson, ever. Here's what doesn't add up.
The idea of "absolute time" was our default for millennia. But time is relative, as gravity and motion both cause time to dilate.
The Hubble Space Telescope, 32 years after its launch, broke the all-time record for most distant star. It won't do better.
The story of how Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune were made isn't a universal one. Some gas giants were built different.
For some reason, when we talk about the age of stars, galaxies, and the Universe, we use "years" to measure time. Can we do better?
From life on Earth to the planet itself, there are four ways our planet will actually experience "the end," no matter how we define it.
Galactic archaeology has uncovered a spectacular find: the Milky Way already existed more than 13 billion years ago.
To answer any physical question, you must ask the Universe itself. But what happens when the answers aren't around anymore?
Even a tiny sliver of the Universe can reveal the cosmic story of what's out there and how it came to be the way it is today.
The closest star system to Earth, just over 4 light-years away, has three stars and at least one Earth-sized planet. Is it time to go there?
In 1990, we only knew of the planets in our own Solar System. Today, the exoplanet count is more than 5000. Here's what we've learned.
Empty, intergalactic space is just 2.725 K: not even three degrees above absolute zero. But the Boomerang Nebula is even colder.
When we started imaging the Universe with Hubble, every star had four "spikes" coming from it. Here's why Webb will have more.
In the Saudi Arabian desert, the Al Naslaa rock formation looks completely unnatural. Its perfectly vertical split remains a mystery.
The far infrared reveals both the coldest and hottest gas in the Universe, and can teach us what no other wavelength range can.