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
Scientists are notoriously resistant to new ideas. Are they falling prey to groupthink? Or are our current theories just that successful?

Ethan Siegel

solar system model
primordial black holes
Today, supermassive black holes and their host galaxies tell a specific story in terms of mass. But JWST reveals a different story early on.
A black and white photo of albert einstein laughing.
The most celebrated genius in human history didn't just revolutionize physics, but taught many valuable lessons about living a better life.
An artist's rendering of two **changed** planets in space.
Our cosmic home, planet Earth, has been through a lot over the past 4.5 billion years. Here are some of its most spectacular changes
An image of a sphere with stars in it.
For every proton, there were over a billion others that annihilated away with an antimatter counterpart. So where did all that energy go?
supernova remnant star formation spitzer
One newly discovered, ancient star has a composition unlike any other. Explaining its existence is already blowing astronomers' minds.
An artist's rendering of an evaporating exoplanet in the night sky.
Planets can be Earth-like or Neptune-like, but only rarely are in between. This hot, Saturn-like planet hints at a solution to this puzzle.
An image of a colorful object resembling a dark primordial galaxy in the sky.
Finding it at all was a happy accident. Examining it further may help unlock the secrets hiding within the earliest galaxies of all.