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.

An artist's impression of an ultra high energy cosmic ray.
The highest-energy particles could be a sign of new, unexpected physics. But the simplest, most mundane explanation is particularly iron-ic.
JADES galaxies
In 2022, Hubble owned the record for most distant galaxy. Today, that galaxy is down to the 9th most distant object. Thanks, JWST.
Diagram illustrating the phase transition between hadronic matter, where protons and neutrons are formed, and quark-gluon plasma as a function of temperature and density.
For a substantial fraction of a second after the Big Bang, there was only a quark-gluon plasma. Here's how protons and neutrons arose.
higgs event atlas detector CERN LHC
In the very early Universe, practically all particles were massless. Then the Higgs symmetry broke, and suddenly everything was different.
A diagram showing the difference between matter and antimatter.
In the earliest stages of the hot Big Bang, equal amounts of matter and antimatter should have existed. Why aren't they equal today?
A graphical representation illustrating the concept of the big bang and the subsequent expansion of the universe, depicted by a transition from a singular point of energy to a wide, grid-like spread of galaxies and celestial elements
When the hot Big Bang first occurred, the Universe reached a maximum temperature never recreated since. What was it like back then?
Visualization of the timeline of the universe, from the beginning big bang to the present.
Some 13.8 billion years ago, the Universe became hot, dense, and filled with high-energy quanta all at once. Here's what it was like.