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Explore the discoveries that reveal how the world works, alongside the technologies that extend, reshape, and sometimes challenge what’s possible.

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A bright star emits light in a field of smaller, scattered stars against a dark sky.
Starts With A Bang
Starts With A Bang podcast #113 – Weird stars
Most stars shine with properties, like brightness, that barely change at all with time. The ones that do vary help us unlock the Universe.
Ethan Siegel
Diagram of particle interactions with wavy and straight lines, illustrating how photons mediate attraction and repulsion in various Feynman diagrams in particle physics.
Starts With A Bang
Ask Ethan: How do photons mediate both attraction and repulsion?
The electromagnetic force can be attractive, repulsive, or "bendy," but is always mediated by the photon. How does one particle do it all?
Ethan Siegel
Black and white abstract design featuring swirling, concentric patterns resembling a ripple effect with a yin-yang-like motif at the center.
Hard Science
Will physics ever prove that gravitons are real?
Despite no experimental evidence showing that gravitons exist, they remain a respectable concept in the world of professional physicists.
Don Lincoln
A superintelligent robot stands against a striking backdrop of red and gray financial graphs and a globe, with the text "The Nightcrawler" boldly emblazoned above.
Business
Sam Altman: The superintelligent robots are coming
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
Eric Markowitz
A swirling black hole, prepared to suck in surrounding matter, features a glowing, distorted ring of light against a starry backdrop.
Starts With A Bang
Black hole myth busted: they don’t suck anything in
Many of us look at black holes as cosmic vacuum cleaners: sucking in everything in their vicinity. But it turns out they don't suck at all.
Ethan Siegel
Large hall with rows of hospital beds occupied by patients and attended by medical staff, likely during an early 20th-century medical crisis.
Health
The dangers of keeping epidemiology the “hidden science”
Caitlin Rivers wants to tell the story of epidemiology and the public health heroes who keep the world safe and healthy.
Kevin Dickinson
Three historical documents: Two titled "Reflections on the Weekly Bill of Mortality" surround an illustration of a plague doctor in a bird-like mask holding a staff, with a cityscape in the background. The scene captures the dark brilliance of an era grappling with mortality.
The Past
The dark brilliance of John Graunt: “Father of modern statistics”
An extraordinary haberdasher obsessed with buttons, lace collars, and death pioneered modern statistical analysis during the Age of Reason.
Paul Strathern
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