Ethan Siegel
A theoretical astrophysicist and science writer, host of popular podcast "Starts with a Bang!"
Ethan Siegel is a Ph.D. astrophysicist and author of "Starts with a Bang!" He is a science communicator, who professes physics and astronomy at various colleges. He has won numerous awards for science writing since 2008 for his blog, including the award for best science blog by the Institute of Physics. His two books "Treknology: The Science of Star Trek from Tricorders to Warp Drive" and "Beyond the Galaxy: How humanity looked beyond our Milky Way and discovered the entire Universe" are available for purchase at Amazon. Follow him on Twitter @startswithabang.
The laws of physics obey certain symmetries and defy others. It’s theoretically tempting to add new ones, but reality doesn’t agree.
For centuries, vaccines have been the top life-saving, expert medical intervention known to humans. How can individuals make the right call?
It took nearly 400,000 years, after the Big Bang, to first form neutral atoms. The imprints from that early time can now be seen everywhere.
The COSMOS-Web survey is now complete, combining JWST and Hubble infrared data. Its spectacular views show us the Universe as never before.
Since 1998, we’ve known our Universe isn’t just expanding, but the expansion is accelerating. Could the Big Bang itself be the reason why?
For millennia, diamonds were the hardest known material, but they only rank at #7 on the current list. Can you guess which material is #1?
As democracy recedes and fascism rises in the USA and around the world in 2025, history provides a lesson in how science can fight fascism.
The laws of nature are almost perfectly symmetric between matter and antimatter, and yet our Universe is made ~100% of matter only. But why?
There are limits to where physics makes meaningful predictions: beyond the Planck length, time, or energy. Here’s why we can’t go further.
All stars shine due to an internal source of energy. Usually, it’s nuclear fusion: converting mass into energy. What makes them most bright?
Photons come in every wavelength you can imagine. But one particular quantum transition makes light at precisely 21 cm, and it’s magical.
You don’t need to be a scientist or a philosopher for facts, reality, and the truth to matter. The alternative is simply known as bullshit.
A Cambridge-based team claims to find molecules on an exoplanet that are only produced by life on Earth. Don’t fall for the unfounded hype.
According to Stephen Hawking, spontaneously emitted radiation should cause all black holes to decay. But we’ve never seen it: not even once.
In all the known Universe, Earth is the only planet known to have native life. What should guide us in expanding humanity beyond our world?
Empty space itself, the quantum vacuum, could be in either a true, stable state or a false, unstable state. Our fate depends on the answer.
After drastic cuts to the NIH, the FDA, the NSF, and the DOE, NASA science faces down its smallest budget ever. All of society will suffer.
Perhaps no existential question looms larger than that of our ultimate cosmic origins. At long last, science has provided the answers.
The Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990, was originally seen as a colossal mistake. This one image, taken in 1995, changed everything.
“Asking the question of, “Where did the entire universe come from?” is no longer a question for poets and theologians and philosophers. This is a question for scientists, and we have some amazing scientific answers to this question.”
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In theory, scientists could’ve produced a deadly virus that accidentally infected lab workers. In practice, we know that didn’t happen.
Planets can create nuclear power on their own, naturally, without any intelligence or technology. Earth already did: 1.7 billion years ago.
The most famous Hubble images show glittering stars and galaxies amidst the black backdrop of space. But more was captured than we realized.
25 years ago, our concordance picture of cosmology, also known as ΛCDM, came into focus. 25 years later, are we about to break that model?
In around 7 billion years, we expect the Sun to run out of fuel, dying in a planetary nebula/white dwarf combination. Is that for certain?
Exoplanets can exist anywhere around their parent stars, even so close that they evaporate or disintegrate. Even the rocky ones.
It’s difficult to project a sphere onto a flat, two-dimensional surface. All maps of the Earth have flaws; the same is true for the cosmos.
The Kalam cosmological argument asserts that everything that exists must have a cause, and the “first” cause must be God. Is that valid?
We understand many things about our Universe, and our home within it, extremely well. The number of stars in the Milky Way isn’t among them.
The Multiverse isn’t just a staple of science fiction; there’s real-life science behind it, too. Here are 10 facts to expand your mind.