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Philosophy
Examine life’s biggest questions, from ethics to existence, with curiosity and critical thinking.
The line between science and pseudoscience is imperceptible to most. Here’s how you can catch it in yourself. When it comes to science, the first principle is that you must […]
The first identified visitor from another solar system gets its own Starts With A Bang podcast! In 2017, the incredible happened: for the first time in history, we were able to […]
Despite what Hawking told you, it really isn’t about particle-antiparticle pairs at all. Nothing in the Universe lives forever. All the stars that will ever form will someday burn out; distant […]
We speak about it, argue over it, and even fight wars for it. We know it when we see it. But just what is energy, anyway? When it comes to being […]
There may be a fundamental reason why time travel, backwards, is impossible. We’ve all had the dream of traveling back in time. Whether there’s a wrong we want to right, […]
Our existence is finite, but that’s no reason for despair. Here’s a version of the story we all should hear at least once. This world, and for that matter, the entire […]
For hundreds of millions of years, most of the starlight never made it through space. Here’s how that changed. Forming stars sounds like the easiest thing in the Universe to do. […]
The cosmic records we have are meant to be broken, but oh, have we ever gone so far. The great cosmic abyss contains more that humanity can ever hope to see, […]
It was Stephen Hawking’s obsession for the last 30 years of his life. Here’s why it matters. When it comes to the sciences, sometimes making two observations or measurements that appear […]
Instead of eternal expansion, could we just be part of a universal cosmic cycle? There are few questions that can keep us up at night the way pondering the eventual fate […]
On September 27, 1972, scientists performed the first test of Bell’s inequality. God does play dice with the Universe, after all. One of the most puzzling and counterintuitive aspects of quantum […]
White dwarfs, neutron stars, and brown dwarfs aren’t actually stars at all. Here’s why. When it comes to stars, there’s a huge variety of different types out there. Our Sun is […]
If the Sun is 93 million miles away, why does sunlight filtering through the clouds or the trees spread out? Rays of sunshine are one of those natural sights that leave […]
We can’t help but wonder if it’s habitable, or even inhabited, but the evidence isn’t there for it. Every star that fills the night sky carries along with it one of […]
LIGO’s enormous arms contract and expand as gravitational waves pass through them. But, puzzlingly, so does the light within them. For the past three years, humanity has known a new kind […]
Our biases, preferences, and ideas of simplicity and elegance can get in the way. Here’s a scientific way to cut through them all. What are the rules governing reality? If you […]
Our Universe may not be all there is, was, or ever will be, after all. There’s been a lot of speculative ideas put forth about the Multiverse, and I dare say […]
Never draw a conclusion, no matter how ‘obvious,’ without doing the experiment first. We all love our most cherished ideas about how the world and the Universe works. Our conception […]
Space may be enormous, but collisions are inevitable. Here’s what happens when they occur. The Universe as we know it has been around for nearly 14 billion years: plenty of time […]
If the Breakthrough Starshot initiative, promoted by Stephen Hawking, works exactly as planned, it could lead to disaster. Imagine yourself on a world not so different from Earth, orbiting a […]