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.

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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.
Two views of the same celestial object: the fiery orange-blue image on the left and a cooler blue-pink image on the right, showcasing an hourglass-shaped cloud of gas and dust in space.
Just 460 light-years away, the closest newborn protostars are forming in the Taurus molecular cloud. Here are JWST's astonishing insights.
entanglement across space
It's possible to remove all forms of matter, radiation, and curvature from space. When you do, dark energy still remains. Is this mandatory?
spooky action quantum
Do we actually live in a deterministic Universe, despite quantum physics? An alternative, non-spooky interpretation has now been ruled out.
A vivid depiction of a cosmic event showing a jet of orange and red energy extending from a bright source in the vastness of space, surrounded by stars and interstellar matter.
With the discovery of Porphyrion, we've now seen black hole jets spanning 24 million light-years: the scale of the cosmic web.
Parker Solar Probe
It would get rid of our hazardous, radioactive, and pollutive waste for good, but physics tells us it's a losing strategy for elimination.
A dense cluster of young stars and bright blue-white spots set against a dark reddish-brown background, with scattered sparkles of light from numerous stars in the outer Milky Way, captured stunningly by JWST.
Almost all of the stars, planets, and interesting physics happens in the inner portions of galaxies. Is that conventional wisdom all wrong?
Rows of identical Earth-like planets stretch out into the vast copy multiverse, with a dark starry background visible between them.
Within our observable Universe, there's only one Earth and one "you." But in a vast multiverse, so much more becomes possible.
Satellite image showing a dense cloud mass over the southeastern United States and the Gulf of Mexico, with an inset graph from NOAA depicting hurricane frequency peaking around mid-August to late September, a trend exacerbated by global warming.
The laws of physics aren't changing. But the Earth's conditions are different than what they used to be, and so are hurricanes as a result.
atom illustration
Most fundamental constants could be a little larger or smaller, and our Universe would still be similar. But not the mass of the electron.
Two breathtaking pictures of a galaxy and a star taken by the Hubble telescope, highlighting the beauty and cosmic magnitude that fuels the Hubble tension.
In the expanding Universe, different ways of measuring its rate give incompatible answers. Nobel Laureate Adam Riess explains what it means.
The image shows a bright spot labeled "JADES-GS-z13-1-LA," seemingly an impossible light captured by the JWST, surrounded by measurement markers, including a scale bar for 1 kpc and 0.28 arcsec. Filters and colors are listed at the bottom.
The Lyman-α emission line has never been seen earlier than 550 million years after the Big Bang. So why does JADES-GS-z13-1-LA have one?
A detailed image of two galaxies in space, one with spiral arms on the left and the other, more elliptical, on the right, surrounded by distant stars.
Galactic activity doesn't just arrive when supermassive black holes feast on matter. Before, during, and after all create fascinating signs.
uap ufo UAPs UFOs
Although a great many unidentified sights have been seen in the skies, none have conclusively demonstrated the presence of aliens. So far.
A graph depicting projectile motion with displacement on the vertical axis and time on the horizontal axis. The projectile's trajectory forms a perfect parabola, with initial velocity u and angle θ clearly indicated.
Taught in every introductory physics class for centuries, the parabola is only an imperfect approximation for the true path of a projectile.
A person is giving a presentation at a podium with a large abstract, colorful light pattern displayed on a screen behind them.
Inflation, dark matter, and string theory are all proposed extensions to the prior consensus picture. But what does the evidence say?
A satellite orbits Earth against a backdrop of space. Below, the Earth's curvature and cloud formations are visible, making our planet seem even bigger.
The observation that everything we know is made out of matter and not antimatter is one of nature's greatest puzzles. Will we ever solve it?
zero gravity flight stephen hawking
The mass that gravitates and the mass that resists motion are, somehow, the same mass. But even Einstein didn't know why this is so.
Interior of a particle physics laboratory showing a complex particle accelerator setup with multiple cables, detectors, and machinery designed to study glueball particles.
Scientific surprises, driven by experiment, are often how science advances. But more often than not, they’re just bad science.
JWST deep field vs hubble
The "little red dots" were touted as being too massive, too early, for cosmology to explain. With new knowledge, everything adds up.
Comparison of weight on Earth and Mars for a 1 kg mass. On Earth: gravity = 9.81 m/s², weight = 9.81 N. On Mars: gravity = 3.72 m/s², weight = 3.72 N; demonstrating that weight and mass are not the same across different planets due to varying gravitational forces.
Here on Earth, we commonly use terms like weight (in pounds) and mass (in kilograms) as though they're interchangeable. They're not.