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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.
Ask Ethan: What’s the biggest misconception in astronomy?
Many facts are well-known to professionals, but are unappreciated or even rejected outright by the public. "How stars work" takes the cake.
Many collaborations have used JWST to take deep-field images: some wider and some deeper than others. Here's how it can surpass them all.
A century ago, quantum physics overthrew our view of a deterministic Universe. A profound 21st century theorem closes the door even further.
The Universe formed stars, galaxies, and even galaxy clusters extremely early on in our cosmos. This new marvel is one more JWST surprise.
At the upper limits of what's energetically possible, cosmic rays still persist. What happens if a human gets hit by the most energetic one?
Our great hope is that today's indirect, astrophysical evidence will someday lead to successful direct detection. What if that's impossible?
Just like animals, galaxies often have bizarre, unusual, or even unique properties. But finding many, all at once, really does raise alarms.
Our view of the world, the Universe, and ourselves can change with just one glimpse of what's out there. It's happened many times before.
Outer space begins just over 100 kilometers up, but what we can see extends for billions of light-years. Here's what all of it looks like.
Even in an expanding Universe, we expect both redshifted and blueshifted galaxies. But nearly every one we see is redshifted. Here's why.
Two main contributors enabled our modern global positioning system (GPS): Albert Einstein and Gladys West. Here's how she made it happen.
The Sun often produces solar flares and coronal mass ejections, but a rare solar radiation storm made the 2026's first great auroral show.
Many view the development of fringe, alternative theories as a useless waste of time. But when they can be tested, it shows what reality is.
With unprecedented resolution, wavelength sensitivity, and light-gathering power, JWST reveals our cosmos like no other observatory ever.
Gravitational lenses arise when foreground masses and background light sources properly align. Einstein rings are rare, but crosses abound.
It's not about particle-antiparticle pairs falling into or escaping from a black hole. A deeper explanation alters our view of reality.
The VENUS survey isn't about planets at all, but about finding multiply-lensed supernovae. The ambition? To save the expanding Universe.
US science is worth fighting for, but so are the science projects and scientists denied opportunities. Here are 4 paths all worth exploring.
Back in 1604, Johannes Kepler discovered the Milky Way's last naked-eye supernova. Here's how NASA's Chandra sees it over the 21st century.
The seeds of cosmic structure that were planted back during the Big Bang grew into the cosmic web we see today. What is it telling us?
When objects are gravitationally bound, they cannot escape from one another's influence. How does that work within the expanding Universe?