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.

with Ethan Siegel
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.
Groupthink in science isn’t a problem; it’s a myth
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Ethan Siegel

solar system model
gaia ESA milky way
For thousands of years, humanity had no idea how far away the stars were. In the 1600s, Newton, Huygens, and Hooke all claimed to get there.
Einstein field equations
Although many of Einstein's papers revolutionized physics, there's one Einsteinian advance, generally, that towers over all the rest.
A cluster of galaxies with a star in the middle.
Beyond the planets, stars, and Milky Way lie ultra-distant objects: galaxies and quasars. Here's how far back we've seen throughout history.
black hole
It's not about particle-antiparticle pairs falling into or escaping from a black hole. A deeper explanation alters our view of reality.
An abstract composite image depicting where life began with mountainous terrain, chemical structures, and a monochrome inset of a cloudy sky.
Although early Earth was a molten hellscape, once it cooled, life arose almost immediately. That original chain of life remains unbroken.
A digitally enhanced view of a crescent planet Earth with a galaxy in the background.
The Earth that exists today wasn't formed simultaneously with the Sun and the other planets. In some ways, we're quite a latecomer.
A diagram showing the structure of a galaxy.
The Universe didn't begin with a bang, but with an inflationary "whoosh" that came before. Here are the biggest questions that still remain.