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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.
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Ethan Siegel is an award-winning PhD astrophysicist and the author of four books, including The Grand Cosmic Story, published by National Geographic.
The biggest overlooked problem in the hunt for alien Earths
One big goal of science is to find an inhabited, Earth-like planet. But if we find an Earth-like world, will we even recognize it?
Many reactions emit energy, often in large amounts, but cosmic efficiency is another metric altogether. Here's how to maximize your output.
The Universe is expanding, the expansion is accelerating, and some galaxies even recede faster-than-light. Can we see a change in real time?
Even the most brilliant mind in history couldn't have achieved all he did without significant help from the minds of others.
Before Sun-like stars die, they transition from AGB red giants into preplanetary nebulae. Here's how Hubble sees the famous Egg Nebula.
Carl Sagan's baloney detection kit taught us how to separate good science from the work of charlatans. In 2026, that matters more than ever.
No claim has even made it halfway up the Confidence of Life Detection (CoLD) scale, but 21st century science is just beginning to unfold.
Here in our modern Universe, it's cosmic dust that forms planets, complex molecules, and enables life. But how did the Universe create it?
13.8 billion years have passed since the Big Bang, but many stars will survive for longer than that. What's the longest-lived a star can be?
Even at its faintest, Venus always outshines every other star and planet that's visible from Earth, and then some!
Many collaborations have used JWST to take deep-field images: some wider and some deeper than others. Here's how it can surpass them all.
A century ago, quantum physics overthrew our view of a deterministic Universe. A profound 21st century theorem closes the door even further.
The Universe formed stars, galaxies, and even galaxy clusters extremely early on in our cosmos. This new marvel is one more JWST surprise.
At the upper limits of what's energetically possible, cosmic rays still persist. What happens if a human gets hit by the most energetic one?
Our great hope is that today's indirect, astrophysical evidence will someday lead to successful direct detection. What if that's impossible?
Just like animals, galaxies often have bizarre, unusual, or even unique properties. But finding many, all at once, really does raise alarms.
Our view of the world, the Universe, and ourselves can change with just one glimpse of what's out there. It's happened many times before.
Outer space begins just over 100 kilometers up, but what we can see extends for billions of light-years. Here's what all of it looks like.
Even in an expanding Universe, we expect both redshifted and blueshifted galaxies. But nearly every one we see is redshifted. Here's why.
Two main contributors enabled our modern global positioning system (GPS): Albert Einstein and Gladys West. Here's how she made it happen.
The Sun often produces solar flares and coronal mass ejections, but a rare solar radiation storm made the 2026's first great auroral show.