When you fall inside the event horizon of a black hole, there's no escaping, no matter what you do or how you accelerate. Even if you travel at the Universe's speed limit, the speed of light, there's simply no way to get any closer to the exit. Instead, scientists say, you have no choice but to fall inevitably towards the singularity at the center. But why must you arrive at a singularity? Couldn't you wind up at some degenerate object instead? We don't think so, and here's the science behind wh...
Feb 28, 2018•19 min
A simple, innocent question that I received had me thinking for days about how to answer it. The question? "If humans were made in God's image, whose image were aliens made in?" There's so much to say from a science perspective about how humans were made, and how aliens might be made, that I couldn't resist giving it my absolute best! Do you agree? Comment below!
Jan 31, 2018•19 min
Ever wonder about the biggest questions that there are? You know the ones I mean: about what is the Universe, where does it come from, and what is its fate? For millennia, these were questions for poets, philosophers, and theologians. Yet, despite all the "answers" that they offered, there was no way to test or verify whether they were correct. Enter science. After countless lifetimes struggling mightily with these, we have the answers, and they're spectacular. What do we know? How do we know it...
Dec 29, 2017•22 min
Ever dream of traveling back in time? According to all the laws of special relativity, all you can do is travel forwards through time, controlling your rate by controlling your motion through space. But in General Relativity, the curvature of spacetime allows you to play with those rules a little more flexibly. You can make it back in time, but you still can't kill your own grandpa before your parents were conceived. Find out why on this edition of the Starts With A Bang podcast! Video version (...
Dec 01, 2017•17 min
Our current best theories describing the Universe, general relativity for gravity, quantum field theory for electromagnetism and the nuclear forces, do a fantastic job independently and together. But there are fundamental questions that go unanswered if we take these as the final answers. What happens to the gravitational field of an electron passing through a double slit? What happens to the information on a black hole's surface when it decays? And what happens close by a gravitational singular...
Oct 28, 2017•18 min
Right around one year from today, the James Webb Space Telescope will launch to a position 1.5 million kilometers away from Earth, deploying into a quasi-stable orbit around the L2 Lagrange point. Its magnificent, 5-layer sunshield will unfold, allowing it to passively cool down to temperatures cold enough to turn nitrogen into a liquid. Beyond that, it will have on-board coolant taking it down to 7 Kelvin, allowing us to observe light that's 50 times as long as the wavelengths the human eye can...
Sep 29, 2017•18 min
On August 21, 2017, a total solar eclipse occurred over the continental United States for the first time in nearly 39 years, when half the current US population wasn't even born. For many of us, it was our first opportunity to ever experience a sight like this for ourselves, and not only lived up to the hype, it was something that even a scientist couldn't fully anticipate. Here's a first-person account of what the experience was like, and how to enjoy it to the fullest, yourself, the next time ...
Aug 30, 2017•27 min
On August 21, 2017, a coast-to-coast total eclipse across the United States will occur, the first one in 99 years. As the Moon's shadow hits the Earth and speeds across it, there's so much to see and enjoy, but only if you're prepared. What should you look for? Where should you go? How can you stay safe? And what's the science behind it? Come get the full story on the latest edition of the Starts With A Bang podcast! More information: https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/07/27/the-s...
Jul 27, 2017•23 min
At a fundamental level, everything we know of in this Universe is made of the same few fundamental particles: quarks, gluons, electrons and photons, which combine to give us atoms, which in turn make up all the molecules, cells, organs and living creatures inhabiting our world today. But how do we go from these tiny scales where everything looks so similar to the huge diversity of what exists at a larger, more macroscopic scale? The secret is encoded in a single quantum rule that governs how it ...
Jun 25, 2017•20 min
Have you ever wondered how the Universe will end? In the far future, everything that we know, see, measure and perceive today will someday decay away, becoming something very different from what we know it as today. The Earth will cease to harbor life, the Sun will die, the galaxies will merge and recede, and eventually everything will fade to black. But beyond that, space itself will push everything apart, stellar remnants will get ejected, and even the most massive objects at all will decay in...
May 28, 2017•20 min
Is time travel possible? Of course it's inevitable in some sense, as we always move through the Universe at the "boring" rate of one second per second. But what about traveling into the future? If we go, can we ever come back? And what about back in time? Would it be possible to alter the past, or revisit a historical event as an observer? The mathematics of relativity opens the door to a lot of possibilities, but the physical Universe has a lot to say about it, too.
Apr 28, 2017•17 min
In 1930, Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto: our Solar System's ninth planet. For over 60 years, the Plutonian system was the only one known beyond Neptune, and Pluto retained its planetary status for all that time despite its diminutive size. Yet an explosion of exoplanets and of other Trans-Neptunian Objects within our own Solar System beginning in the 1990s meant that we'd need to reconsider what it means to truly be a "planet". The debate still rages today, but astronomers agree: when it comes ...
Mar 26, 2017•22 min
Our Universe was born pristine, with no stars, galaxies, molecules or even stable atoms, some 13.8 billion years ago. Yet today, we're filled with all the complex structure we see today, including with planets, organics and even something as complex and differentiated as a human being. So how did we get here? We had to form stars and galaxies, and evolve the Universe to a point where the raw ingredients to make us existed in great enough abundances and in the right conditions. There are some ste...
Feb 26, 2017•18 min
The discovery almost 100 years ago that the Universe was expanding was a revolution for science, for cosmology and for our conception of existence. Hubble discovered what Einstein's couldn't imagine, and after that, the race was on to learn exactly what those observations meant for our cosmic origins. After decades of controversies, we now have a better picture of our Universe than ever before, yet questions remain. What will be the ultimate answer? Find out the possibilities, and what the limit...
Jan 29, 2017•19 min
Black holes are incredibly massive objects that are so dense that, from within a given region of space, nothing can escape, not even light. Yet it's arguable that from our point of view, nothing can escape our observable Universe. Moreover, even though our Universe is huge, it's also incredibly massive, and since it's expanding, it was denser and smaller in the past. Could our Universe be the inside of a black hole? And do we have evidence either supporting this or ruling it out? Find out on the...
Dec 25, 2016•16 min
Ever since we first uncovered the quantum nature of our Universe, humanity has struggled to interpret it. Is there a wavefunction that collapses? Is it the quantum operators themselves that change? Does the end state evolve? Or are there an infinite number of parallel Universes that correspond to all the possible outcomes? This last possibility may actually be plausible, and this podcast is a deep dive into the adventure that ensues if they're real. But beware, there are a lot of assumptions nee...
Dec 01, 2016•19 min
Did you hear the news, that it isn't "billions and billions" anymore, but that there are TWO TRILLION (or 2,000,000,000,000) galaxies in the observable Universe? Come get the science behind this amazing story, including how we know, what it means and what we'll even have the potential to learn in the near future.
Oct 23, 2016•20 min
For thousands upon thousands of years, we didn't know whether the other stars in the Universe were even like our Sun, much less whether they had planets around them like we find in our Solar System. Over the past 25 years, however, that question has not only been answered, but we've discovered thousands of confirmed planets. Even more exciting, we've found that the star systems out there are similar to our own in some ways but tremendously different in others, and that there are already more tha...
Sep 25, 2016•19 min
Our Universe has been expanding and evolving since the hot, dense, expanding state known as the Big Bang first came to be. But there was a "day without yesterday," where the Big Bang occurred at a moment in time! Was that the birth of space and time itself? Or was there a pre-existing state that came before and gave rise to the Big Bang? Come find out the evidence that's led us to our greatest conclusions about the very beginning of where everything came from!
Aug 28, 2016•19 min
While there are presently more than ~10^23 stars in the Universe shining today, each one of them is fated to live only for a finite amount of time. While more and more will continue to form, we're already past the point of peak star formation in the Universe. How long will we have until, for the last time, the Universe's last star goes out? Find out on this edition of the Starts With A Bang podcast!
Jul 27, 2016•18 min
Ever since humanity had the thought that the distant, twinkling stars might be Suns like our own, with their own planetary systems and chances at life, we've dreamed of extending humanity's reach to the galaxy and beyond. What are our actual chances of doing so, technologically, scientifically and practically? This podcast -- based on an exclusive interview with Larry Niven -- explores what's possible.
Jun 29, 2016•18 min
How will the Universe end? Will it recollapse in on itself, ending in a Big Crunch? Will it expand forever, ending in a Big Freeze? Or will it tear itself apart, ending in a Big Rip? With the discovery of dark energy, we finally think we know, but there's always more science to be done, more possibilities to consider, and new evidence to look for to help point the way.
May 13, 2016•18 min
Could there be a ninth planet in our Solar System, farther out than Neptune? Recent evidence points to a tantalizing possibliity, and searches are underway to look for it. Here's the science behind the full 'Planet Nine' story, in one amazing, easy-to-follow podcast!
Apr 22, 2016•24 min
The Hubble Space Telescope has just shattered the record for most distant galaxy in the Universe. How did we break this record, and what do we expect to find even farther back?
Apr 03, 2016•18 min
In February of 2016, less than six months after first becoming operational, LIGO (the laser interferometer gravitational wave observatory) announced the first-ever direct detection of gravitational waves. What are they? What does it mean? What did we learn? And what can we do with them now that we know they exist? All this and more on this month's Starts With A Bang podcast!
Feb 27, 2016•23 min
In 1930, Clyde Tombaugh serendipitously discovered Pluto: the first object in our Solar System out past Neptune. For 48 years, it was the only object known out there, until Charon -- its giant moon -- was discovered. But the 1990s brought with it a slew of Kuiper Belt objects, and in 2006, Pluto was officially demoted to a "dwarf planet." But also in 2006, NASA's New Horizons mission was launched: the first dedicated mission to the outer Solar System. In 2015, it flew by both Pluto and Charon, d...
Feb 02, 2016•19 min
Everywhere we look in the Universe, we find that planets, stars, galaxies, and even the gas between them are all made of matter and not antimatter. Yet as far as we know, the laws of nature are symmetric between matter and antimatter: you can't create or destroy one without the other. So how did our Universe get to be the way it is? Come right up to the frontiers of our scientific knowledge and have a listen!
Dec 30, 2015•26 min
Although it's been only 13.8 billion years since the Big Bang, we can see objects as distant as 46.1 billion light years away. How is this possible? Ethan Siegel explains in the second Starts With A Bang podcast. Plus, how to see Comet Catalina in the December skies, and why it's on its way out of the Solar System forever. This podcast is free to download and distribute in perpetuity thanks to the support of our Patreon donors at www.patreon.com/startswithabang?ty=h
Nov 30, 2015•19 min
In the first inaugural Starts With A Bang podcast, astrophysicist Ethan Siegel discusses the latest evidence for water on Mars, what it means for Earth and potential life on the surface, as well as other topics. Guest (and Patreon supporter) Maciek makes an appearance, and we discuss the future of physics and speculate on what the next great advance might be. This podcast is free to download and distribute in perpetuity thanks to the support of our Patreon donors at https://www.patreon.com/start...
Oct 30, 2015•28 min
