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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.
Whether your hair is straight, wavy, curly, or kinky isn't just genetic in nature. It depends on the physics of your hair's very atoms.
One of the 20th century's most famous, influential, and successful physicists is lauded the world over. But Feynman is no hero to me.
Due to chaos, it was long thought that planets couldn't stably orbit systems containing three stars. GW Orionis is the first counterexample.
Mars and Earth were sister planets in many ways, with early similar conditions. Why did Mars die? The leading explanation isn't universal.
NASA's space telescopes and observatories bring humanity unrivaled science images and scientific discoveries. Here's what should be next.
In the year 1181, a "guest star" was recorded in the constellation of Cassiopeia. Its modern supernova remnant is weirder than we imagined.
Almost everyone asserts that the Big Bang was the beginning of everything, followed by inflation. Has everyone gotten the order wrong?
Many mavericks look to Einstein as a unique figure, whose lone genius revolutionized the Universe. The big problem? It isn't true.
Beyond stars, galaxies, and gravity, studying the fundamental workings of nature reveals widely applicable lessons for learners everywhere.
More than two years after JWST began science operations, our Universe now looks very different. Here are its biggest science contributions.
What are dark matter and dark energy? The large-scale structure of the cosmos encodes them both, with ESA's Euclid mission leading the way.
The most common visual depictions of the history of the Universe show the Big Bang as a growing tube with an "ignition" point. Why is that?
The fabric of spacetime is four-dimensional, with three for space and only one for time. But wow, time sure is different from space!
Could life be widespread throughout the cosmos, in the subsurface oceans of ice-covered worlds? NASA's Europa Clipper mission investigates.
An in-depth interview with astronomer Kelsey Johnson, whose new book, Into the Unknown, explores what remains unknown about the Universe.
There are a number of factors to consider when choosing where to build a telescope. These 3 locations, on their merits, surpass all others.
The Universe changes remarkably over time, with some entities surviving and others simply decaying away. Is this cosmic evolution at work?
Black holes encode information on their surfaces, but evaporate away into Hawking radiation. Is that information preserved, and if so, how?
Artificial intelligence is much more than image generation and smart-sounding chatbots; it's also a Nobel-worthy endeavor rooted in physics!
National Geographic's first James Webb Space Telescope book shows us the cosmos like never before.