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.

As we gain new knowledge, our scientific picture of how the Universe works must evolve. This is a feature of the Big Bang, not a bug.
most distant
The universe is filled with unlikely events, but it is also full of ways to fool ourselves.
A woman sits at a desk covered with tall stacks of papers, reviewing and pointing to documents as she conducts a purpose-driven peer review in a busy office setting.
Just because a paper passes peer review doesn't mean that what's written, or what the author asserts, is true. Here's why it still matters.
Multiplication table from 1 to 20, featuring pythagorean runs and perfect squares highlighted in yellow along the diagonal from top left (1) to bottom right (400).
It's not just an odd quirk of numbers that makes it true, but a deep mathematical insight that dates all the way back to Pythagoras.
LIGO Livingston
10 years ago, LIGO first began directly detecting gravitational waves. Now better than ever, it's revealing previously unreachable features.
ESO milky way
Questions about our origins, biologically, chemically, and cosmically, are the most profound ones we can ask. Here are today's best answers.
Two large Martian rocks with circular drill holes and light-colored dust are shown on a sandy, rocky surface. Part of a rover’s equipment, searching for traces of organics or signs of Mars life, is visible at the bottom of the image.
The red planet, Mars, may once have been teeming with life, just as Earth is today. Finding "organics" on Mars, however, doesn't mean life.