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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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2hr 18mins
"Asking the question of, "Where did the entire universe come from?" is no longer a question for poets and theologians and philosophers. This is a question for scientists, and we have some amazing scientific answers to this question."
In theory, scientists could've produced a deadly virus that accidentally infected lab workers. In practice, we know that didn't happen.
Planets can create nuclear power on their own, naturally, without any intelligence or technology. Earth already did: 1.7 billion years ago.
The most famous Hubble images show glittering stars and galaxies amidst the black backdrop of space. But more was captured than we realized.
25 years ago, our concordance picture of cosmology, also known as ΛCDM, came into focus. 25 years later, are we about to break that model?
In around 7 billion years, we expect the Sun to run out of fuel, dying in a planetary nebula/white dwarf combination. Is that for certain?
Exoplanets can exist anywhere around their parent stars, even so close that they evaporate or disintegrate. Even the rocky ones.
It's difficult to project a sphere onto a flat, two-dimensional surface. All maps of the Earth have flaws; the same is true for the cosmos.
The Kalam cosmological argument asserts that everything that exists must have a cause, and the "first" cause must be God. Is that valid?
We understand many things about our Universe, and our home within it, extremely well. The number of stars in the Milky Way isn't among them.
The Multiverse isn't just a staple of science fiction; there's real-life science behind it, too. Here are 10 facts to expand your mind.
Large, massive, rotating galaxies like the Milky Way are common today. So how could one form a mere ~2 billion years after the Big Bang?
Over a century after we first unlocked the secrets of the quantum universe, people find it more puzzling than ever. Can we make sense of it?
For centuries, even after we knew the Sun was a star like any other, we still didn't know what it was made of. Cecilia Payne changed that.
DESI, by mapping galaxies, has claimed they see evidence for dark energy evolving by getting weaker. But that's only one interpretation.
Even from a single pixel, multiwavelength data taken over time can reveal clouds, icecaps, oceans, continents, and even signs of life.
Someday, we'll look back and see a young galaxy forming stars for the first time. JADES-GS-z14-0, the farthest ever, isn't early enough.
Einstein's general relativity has reigned supreme as our theory of gravity for over a century. Could we reduce it back down to Newton's law?
Our scientific instruments are constantly improving, revealing nature's workings as never before. Without them, we'll remain in the dark.
All scientific theories are limited in scope, power, and application, being mere approximations of reality. That's why consensus is vital.