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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.
Flying clocks in opposite directions around the world proved Einstein right
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.
Gravitational lenses arise when foreground masses and background light sources properly align. Einstein rings are rare, but crosses abound.
It's not about particle-antiparticle pairs falling into or escaping from a black hole. A deeper explanation alters our view of reality.
The VENUS survey isn't about planets at all, but about finding multiply-lensed supernovae. The ambition? To save the expanding Universe.
US science is worth fighting for, but so are the science projects and scientists denied opportunities. Here are 4 paths all worth exploring.
Back in 1604, Johannes Kepler discovered the Milky Way's last naked-eye supernova. Here's how NASA's Chandra sees it over the 21st century.
The seeds of cosmic structure that were planted back during the Big Bang grew into the cosmic web we see today. What is it telling us?
When objects are gravitationally bound, they cannot escape from one another's influence. How does that work within the expanding Universe?
Travel half the distance to your destination, and there's always another half to go. So how do you eventually arrive? That's Zeno's Paradox.
Even the youngest galaxies are often dust-rich, even with very low levels of heavy elements. Nearby dwarf galaxy Sextans A explains why.
Astronomers have found starless gas clouds before, but Cloud 9 might be the most pristine one of all, with big lessons for cosmic history.
In a galaxy less than 300 million years after the Big Bang, oxygen's presence abounds. That's expected; its absence would truly be profound.
In general relativity, matter and energy curve spacetime, which we experience as gravity. Why can't there be an "antigravity" force?
The very word "quantum" makes people's imaginations run wild. But chances are you've fallen for at least one of these myths.
There will always be "wolf-criers" whose claims wither under scrutiny. But aliens are certainly out there, if science dares to find them.
Particles are everywhere, including particles from space that stream through the human body. Here's how they prove Einstein's relativity.
If you can identify a foreground star, the spike patterns are a dead giveaway as to whether it's a JWST image or any other observatory.
Perhaps the most remarkable fact about the Universe is simply that it, and everything in it, exists. But what's the reason why?
We think of physical reality as what objectively exists, independent of any observer. But relativity and quantum physics say otherwise.
While ice itself is slick, slippery, and difficult to navigate across under most circumstances, skaters easily glide across the ice.
The highest-energy particles could be a sign of new, unexpected physics. But the simplest, most mundane explanation is particularly iron-ic.