Don’t wait until Christmas to gift a telescope this year. All throughout the year, two bright lights have stood out in the post-sunset skies. Earlier this year, on March 31, 2020, […]

And can scientists even agree on what ‘nothing’ means? The more curious we get about the great cosmic unknowns, the more unanswered questions our investigations of the Universe will reveal. […]

There’s more light than we can account for, and we’ve just measured it robustly for the first time. When we look out at the darkest night skies available on Earth, even […]

In our Universe, a left hand reflected in a mirror or pond appears to be a right hand. While most of the laws of nature are symmetric under reflections, obeying […]

With three colors and three anticolors, there aren’t actually nine gluons; only eight. One of the most puzzling features of the Universe is the strong nuclear force. Inside every proton or […]

Often viewed as a theoretical, calculational tool only, the Lamb Shift proved their existence. If you spend enough time listening to theoretical physicists, it starts to sound like there are […]

We haven’t discovered life beyond our Solar System yet, but we’re closer than ever before. Over the past 30 years, we’ve gone from zero exoplanets to thousands. With each new […]

Entropy always increases, but that doesn’t mean it was zero to start with. One of the most inviolable laws in the Universe is the second law of thermodynamics: that in any […]

No matter how accurately you place two Plinko chips, you cannot count on the same outcome twice. Of all the pricing games on the iconic television show The Price Is Right, […]

You might be inclined to modify gravity instead, but those ideas have grossly unequal evidence supporting them. What is it, exactly, that you’re supposed to do when the predictions of […]

As long as it remains operational, we’ll have a chance to conduct groundbreaking science with it. In the history of spaceflight, only five spacecraft ever launched by humanity possess enough energy […]

And the Macho King, Randy Savage! Over this coming week, things will be quiet here at Starts With A Bang, as I’ll be taking the next week off. But to help […]

If we want our conclusions to be meaningful, our data had better be robust. When it comes to the Universe, there’s a whole lot that doesn’t add up. All the matter […]

If there’s no phosphine, there’s no indirect evidence for biological activity there. In one of the biggest surprises in the history of planetary science, a September 2020 study announced the presence […]

As we embrace green solutions, nuclear should absolutely be part of the equation. For thousands upon thousands of years, humans have been harnessing the power of nature to provide energy […]

Sure, we’re warming now. But will this continue, or will natural factors change things? According to our best understanding of Earth’s climate, the global average temperature has increased significantly over the […]

We’re Earth’s first intelligent, technologically advanced civilization. But maybe not the last. For most of our planet’s history, life in some form has existed on our world. Planet Earth formed some […]

From galaxies with no dark matter to ones with hundreds of times more dark matter than normal, our Universe needs it more than ever. One of the most mysterious substances in […]

It’s last “hard” test is over. Now, we wait for its launch. Despite numerous delays, funding crises, and technical challenges, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is almost ready. The science instruments […]

Have we always had quantum fields in the Universe? Or did they emerge at some finite time? No matter how we look at the Universe — at low temperatures or ultra-high energies, from […]