Starts With A Bang

A dense starfield, with various colored stars shimmering through a dark cloud-like formation, lies against a deep black background in the mysterious zone of avoidance.
The Universe is out there, waiting to be discovered

Our mission is to answer the biggest questions of all, scientifically.

What is the Universe made of? How did it become the way it is today? Where did everything come from? What is the ultimate fate of the cosmos?

For most of human history, these questions had no clear answers. Today, they do. Starts With a Bang, written by Dr. Ethan Siegel, explores what we know about the universe and how we came to know it, bringing the latest discoveries in cosmology and astrophysics directly to you.

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Ethan Siegel is an award-winning PhD astrophysicist and the author of four books, including The Grand Cosmic Story, published by National Geographic.

Full Profile
A bald man with a long beard and handlebar mustache gestures with his hands against a backdrop of an upside-down cityscape wearing a purple shirt.
Betelgeuse visualization
The closest known star that will soon undergo a core-collapse supernova is Betelgeuse, just 640 light-years away. Here's what we'll observe.
A digital visualization displays particle collision results with colored tracks and trails diverging from a central point against a black background, hinting at how B-mesons might break the standard model.
We have very specific predictions for how particles ought to decay. When we look at B-mesons all together, something vital doesn't add up.
einstein general relativity curved spacetime
Most waves need a medium to travel through. But the way that light and gravitational waves travel shows that space can't be a medium at all.
Two images of the Sombrero Galaxy viewed edge-on. The top image, captured by JWST, shows a glowing blue center, while the bottom reveals a bright core with dust lanes.
The Sombrero is the closest bright, massive, edge-on galaxy to us. JWST's new image, taken with MIRI, finally shows what's under its hat.
Diagram of atomic orbitals showing various shapes and labels, including s, p, d, and f orbitals, organized in a triangular structure with coordinate axes x, y, z.
One of the fundamental constants of nature, the fine-structure constant, determines so much about our Universe. Here's why it matters.
gravitational wave effects on spacetime
Gravitational waves are the last signatures that are emitted by merging black holes. What happens when these two phenomena meet in space?
lookback time galaxies
For nearly 60 years, the hot Big Bang has been accepted as the best story of our cosmic origin. Could the Steady-State theory be possible?