Ethan Siegel

Ethan Siegel

A theoretical astrophysicist and science writer, host of popular podcast “Starts with a Bang!”

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.

A digital 3D visualization shows translucent blue shapes in front of a blue wall and floor, illustrating an abstract concept—perhaps a universe without dark matter.
In our Universe, dark matter outmasses normal matter by a 5-to-1 ratio, shaping the Universe as we know it. What if it simply weren't there?
It rotates on its axis, revolves around the Sun, moves throughout the Milky Way, and gets carried by our galaxy all throughout space.
Close-up of a large, metallic, circular structure with concentric rings and radial lines, illuminated by natural light from one side—evoking experiments that revealed the neutrino mass is smaller than once believed.
The long-elusive neutrino was shown to have a bizarre property no one expected: mass. New, tightest-ever limits have profound implications.
An artist's impression of a cluster of stars.
Many were hoping that JWST would find the first stars of all. Despite many hopeful claims, it hasn't, and probably can't. Here's how we can.
black hole baby universe
Here in our Universe, time passes at a fixed rate for all observers: one second-per-second. Before the Big Bang, things were very different.
heavy neutral atom
If it weren't for the intricate rules of quantum physics, we wouldn't have formed neutral atoms "only" ~380,000 years after the Big Bang.
A colored pixelated grid with rectangular outlines; a legend in the top right labels blue as F115W, green as F200W, and red as F277W—capturing data from the JWST to record a distant galaxy.
Coming from just 280 million years after the Big Bang, or 98% of cosmic history ago, this new, massive galaxy is a puzzle, but not a mirage.