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.

Compton gamma-ray observatory deployment
Across all wavelengths of light, the Sun is brighter than the Moon. Until we went to the highest energies and saw a gamma-ray surprise.
An artist's rendering of the nasa jupiter spacecraft.
The Juno spacecraft, orbiting and imaging Jupiter since 2016, is still succeeding. Without a further extension, the mission now faces death.
An artist's impression of a cluster of stars.
With several seemingly incompatible observations, cosmology faces many puzzles. Could early, supermassive stars be the unified solution?
As we look to larger cosmic scales, we get a broader view of the expansive cosmic forest, eventually revealing the grandest views of all.
An abstract animation of white, textured patterns symmetrically forming on a blue and black background evokes the mysterious dance of dark energy, subtly hinting at its weakening presence as if guided by the precision of DESI.
The Universe isn't just expanding; the expansion is accelerating. If different methods yield incompatible results, is dark energy evolving?
Two diagrams: the left shows a complex, circular, multicolored network; the right displays a theoretical physics diagram with labeled axes and colored particle symbols, capturing the intricate nature of physics hard concepts.
When you don't have enough clues to bring your detective story to a close, you should expect that your educated guesses will all be wrong.
A chart titled "Masses in the Stellar Graveyard" shows the black holes and neutron stars detected by LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA, plotted on a logarithmic scale in solar masses, highlighting how LIGO triples black hole haul with each new discovery.
10 years ago, LIGO saw its first gravitational wave. After 218 detections, our view of black holes has changed forever. Can this era endure?