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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.
Does the expanding Universe stretch space or create new space?
The evidence that the Universe is expanding is overwhelming. But how? By stretching the existing space, or by creating new space itself?
We experience time as real. But what if it's only an illusion: an illusion that's inherently relative? Does time fundamentally even exist?
There's a speed limit to the Universe: the speed of light in a vacuum. But you can beat the speed of light. Just travel through a medium!
Generations ago, cosmologists asserted that the Universe might not just be the same in all directions, but at all times. But is that true?
Today's Milky Way only forms stars slowly. Our galactic center, where the star-forming rate is highest, gives a unique window into our past.
Every proton contains three quarks: two up and one down. But charm quarks, heavier than the proton itself, have been found inside. How?
If you look into a mirror, you'll notice that left-and-right are reversed, but up-and-down is preserved. The reason isn't what you think.
We live in a four-dimensional Universe, where matter and energy curve the fabric of spacetime. But time sure is different from space!
The inside of every black hole leads to the birth of a new Universe. Could our Universe have arisen from one?
Most of us have heard that the Sun is an ordinary, typical, unremarkable star. But science shows we're actually anything but average.
Our Big Bang could be just one region within an infinite, inflating multiverse. If we were born close to the cosmic edge, what would we see?
The double-slit experiment, hundreds of years after it was first performed, still holds the key mystery at the heart of quantum physics.
The sky and oceans are both blue. It's not because one reflects the other. Science explains them both, but for very different reasons.
There are two rival ideas to try to make sense of the Universe: dark matter or modified gravity. Can a new cosmic test settle the issue?
The newest find recovers the earliest merger in galactic history: just 2 billion years after the Big Bang. Here’s what we know today.
Recent evidence could indicate the Universe doesn't expand evenly. Does that change our expected fate: Big Rip, Big Crunch, or Heat Death?
1859's Carrington event gave us a preview of how catastrophic the Sun could be for humanity. But it could get even worse than we imagined.
Time isn't the same for everyone, even on Earth. Flying around the world gave Einstein the ultimate test. No one is immune from relativity.
We assume there's no preferred frame of reference in the Universe, and that light behaves the same in all directions. What if we're wrong?
We've now found many "conjoined" objects in the asteroid and Kuiper belts, including the first contact trinary, Nysa. What does it all mean?
On Earth's surface, we accelerate at 1g: 9.8m/s². In orbit, the acceleration is only slightly less. So why, then, are astronauts weightless?