Ethan Siegel

Ethan Siegel

Theoretical astrophysicist and science writer

Ethan Siegel Starts with a Bang!

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.

dark energy
If we were born trillions of years in the future, could we even figure out our cosmic history?
multiverse
If there really is another version of you out there in a parallel universe, what can that teach us about reality?
hot big bang
The universe is only 13.8 billion years old, but we can see back 46.1 billion light-years. Here's how the expanding universe does it.
Gravitation, all on its own, can reveal what's present in the cosmos like nothing else.
stellar remnants
Are the stellar remnants in our cosmic backyard actually our parents and grandparents?
The most massive galaxies lost their star-forming material very early on and never got it back.
big bang
Everything else in the universe is either a particle or field. Dark energy behaves as neither, and it may be a property inherent to space itself.
A large impact from an asteroid billions of years ago may have created the moons of Mars, including an inner, larger one that no longer exists today! (Credit: Medialab, ESA 2001)
Phobos and Deimos only have two explanations, and neither one adds up.
But the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope compels us to add, “so far.” Beginning with its 1990 launch, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope revolutionized our conception of the Universe. This photo of […]
Even with all the recent impacts we've seen, it might be more "foe" than "friend" to us.
How the search for alien life is taking place right here in our own Solar System. If you want to understand the origin of life in the Universe, you have three […]
The highest-energy particles of all come from space, not human-made colliders. When it comes to the most energetic particle collisions of all, you might think that the Large Hadron Collider […]
Is the time crystal really an otherworldly revolution, leveraging quantum computing that will change physics forever?
Without these two elements, we’re doomed to fail. In this day and age, it’s virtually impossible to have sufficient expertise to figure out what the complete, comprehensive, scientifically validated truth surrounding […]
Quantum foam
An exclusive interview with physicist Lee Smolin reveals how abandoning Einstein's dream may have been a terrible mistake.
Why are the rest masses of fundamental particles related like this? When it comes to the nature of matter in the Universe, the Standard Model describes the known elementary particles perfectly […]
Mathematically, it is a monster, but we can understand it in plain English.
More energy means more potential for discovery, but we’re topped out. If your goal is to discover something completely novel, you have to look in a way that no one else […]
Signals from across the universe point toward a fascinating possibility.
If you had a clear western horizon, you had your shot at this view! On September 9, 2021, the Moon and Venus nearly overlapped. A simulated view of the post-sunset skies […]