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Ethan Siegel

Ethan was born in New York City as the son of a Jewish postal worker. He did his undergrad at Northwestern, taught public school in Houston, Texas and Los Angeles, California, before moving to Florida, where he got his PhD in theoretical astrophysics at the University of Florida. After that, he moved to Madison, Wisconsin, where he taught at the University of Wisconsin, ate too much cheese, and also met his life partner, Jamie. After working in astrophysics research at the University of Arizona and starting the world-renowned science blog, Starts With A Bang, he moved from the hellish desert to rain-soaked Portland in 2008. Since then, he's been a professor at the University of Portland and Lewis & Clark College, grown a nationally renowned beard and mustache, got invited to join a circus and probably drank more beer than a healthy person should. He currently works as the head curator at Trapit, and can't wait to tell you a little bit more about the Universe.

Posts by this author

Ask Ethan: When A Photon Gets Redshifted, Where Does The Energy Go? (Synopsis)
"...in every kind of chemical change no loss of matter occurs [...] in all the varied modes of physical change, no loss of energy takes place." -Sir Henry Enfield Roscoe When it comes to the physical laws of the Universe, perhaps the most unbreakable of all seems to be the law of…
What are quantum gravity's alternatives to string theory? (Synopsis)
“I just think too many nice things have happened in string theory for it to be all wrong. Humans do not understand it very well, but I just don’t believe there is a big cosmic conspiracy that created this incredible thing that has nothing to do with the real world.” -Edward Witten String theory…
Top 10 Physics Predictions for 2016 (Synopsis)
“For last year's words belong to last year's language And next year's words await another voice.” -T.S. Eliot It's the end of the year, and so you know what that means: time for lazy recaps of "the year that was" everywhere you look. Why settle for last year's news, though, when you can start…
The Astronaut Hopeful's Manifesto (Synopsis)
“I wasn’t destined to be an astronaut. I had to turn myself into one.” -Chris Hadfield Many of us dream of becoming astronauts as a child, but give up on that dream for a number of reasons — the seemingly impossible odds, the demands of daily life, the rigors of preparation — and never even apply.…
Mystery Solved: How Young Stars Appear In Old Clusters (Synopsis)
"Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art." -Stanislaw Jerzy Lec When stars are born, it normally happens in groups of thousands or more, all at once. They range from just 8% the mass of our Sun, which are dim, red, and long-lived, to dozens or even hundreds of times as massive: the…
Gift This, Not That: Coloring the Universe vs. The Hubble Cosmos (Synopsis)
“The time will come when diligent research over long periods will bring to light things which now lie hidden. A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be enough for the investigation of so vast a subject... And so this knowledge will be unfolded only through long…
Comments of the Week #89: from black hole evaporation to scientific theories
“"There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, [and] science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win, because it works."” -Stephen Hawking Every week on Starts With A Bang brings with it a new set of considerations about the Universe…
Ask Ethan: Why Aren't Spiral Galaxies More Wound Up? (Synopsis)
"The farther we peer into space, the more we realize that the nature of the universe cannot be understood fully by inspecting spiral galaxies or watching distant supernovas. It lies deeper." -Robert Lanza When you take a look at a spiral galaxy in the night sky, it seems obvious that the stars on…
The Greatest Unsolved Problem In Theoretical Physics (Synopsis)
“I just think too many nice things have happened in string theory for it to be all wrong. Humans do not understand it very well, but I just don’t believe there is a big cosmic conspiracy that created this incredible thing that has nothing to do with the real world.” -Ed Witten If you calculate the…
Why trust a theory? Physicists and philosophers debate (Synopsis)
“Did you ever read my words, or did you merely finger through them for quotations which you thought might valuably support an already conceived idea concerning some old and distorted connection between us?” -Audre Lorde One of the most damning, albeit accurate, condemnations of String Theory that…
Mystery solved: Ceres' white spots are salt! (Synopsis)
“You are the salt of the earth. But remember that salt is useful when in association, but useless in isolation.” -Israelmore Ayivor When NASA's Dawn spacecraft began photographing Ceres, one big surprise emerged: the presence of a spectacularly and unusually bright spot at the bottom of Occator…
Politics In Hawaii Threatens To End Astronomy As We Know It (Synopsis)
"We cannot be vengeful. We need to find pono [righteous] solutions. We need to find good things for astronomers. Cooperation is, I think, really the true part of our human nature, not competition. I think we have to go back to cooperation to survive the future." -Kealoha Pisciotta, president of…
Could life exist in a star's atmosphere? (Synopsis)
"Mars is much closer to the characteristics of Earth. It has a fall, winter, summer and spring. North Pole, South Pole, mountains and lots of ice. No one is going to live on Venus; no one is going to live on Jupiter." -Buzz Aldrin When we think about life in the Universe, we think about Earth-like…
Amazing final images of stars right before they die (Synopsis)
"It will be found that those contained in one article [class of nebulae], are so closely allied to those in the next, that there is perhaps not so much difference between them, if I may use the comparison, as there would be in an annual description of the human figure, were it given from the birth…
Your Guide To The Best Meteor Shower Of The Year (Synopsis)
“Every moment of light and dark is a miracle.” -Walt Whitman Every once in a while, the Earth hurtles through the orbital path of a comet or asteroid, with the Sun having torn tiny bits of debris from the parent body. As a result, the Earth strikes these dusty fragments at speeds often exceeding…
Comments of the Week #88: from binary planets to the best views of Pluto
“Pluto was part of their mental landscape, the one they had constructed to organize their thinking about the solar system and their own place within it. Pluto seemed like the edge of existence. Ripping Pluto out of that landscape caused what felt like an inconceivably empty hole.” -Mike Brown We…
Ask Ethan: How Do Black Holes Really Evaporate? (Synopsis)
"Maybe that is our mistake: maybe there are no particle positions and velocities, but only waves. It is just that we try to fit the waves to our preconceived ideas of positions and velocities. The resulting mismatch is the cause of the apparent unpredictability." -Stephen Hawking Black holes are…
Highest Resolution Images Of Pluto Reveal The Frozen Universe (Synopsis)
"We've learned that the view of four inner rocky planets and four outer gas giants and one misfit Pluto is wrong. Now we understand Pluto's context." -Alan Stern After a 9 year journey to Pluto, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft made its closest approach to Pluto this past July, taking so much data…
What's the third most common element in the Universe? (Synopsis)
"The two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity." -Harlan Ellison Shortly after the Big Bang, the Universe was filled with 99.99999993% hydrogen and helium, with the rest being lithium. But stars change everything, by fusing those elements -- the lightest ones -- into…
More than half of Kepler’s giant exoplanets are false positives (Synopsis)
"After 20 years of exploring planets as big as Jupiter around other suns, we still have a lot of questions left open. For instance, we don’t understand what is the physical mechanism that forms Jupiter-like planets with orbital periods as little as a few days." -Alexandre Santerne By surveying an…
The smallest galaxies contain the most dark matter (Synopsis)
"A dwarf standing on the shoulders of a giant may see farther than a giant himself." -Robert Burton Both the internal motions of individual galaxies and the wholesale motions of galaxies within clusters require much more mass than normal matter — protons, neutrons and electrons — can account for:…
Ceres' Permanent Shadows May House Relics From The Infant Solar System (Synopsis)
"Lots of science fiction deals with distant times and places. Intrepid prospectors in the Asteroid Belt. Interstellar epics. Galactic empires. Trips to the remote past or future." -Edward M. Lerner Of all the asteroids we've ever discovered, it's arguably the very first one, Ceres, that's got the…
Gift This, Not That: Year In Space vs. Space Views From Hubble Calendars (Synopsis)
"No one regards what is before his feet; we all gaze at the stars." -Quintus Ennius For the space, science or astronomy enthusiast, there's nothing like looking up at the Universe with your own eyes and discovering it. But during the day, while you're seated at your desk, office or computer, many…
Comments of the Week #87: From Quasars to Einstein, and Thanksgiving
“At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.” -Albert Schweitzer It was an action-packed week here at Starts With A Bang, where we took on all of the following…
Ask Ethan: Can Two Planets Share The Same Orbit? (Synopsis)
"We are not like the social insects. They have only the one way of doing things and they will do it forever, coded for that way. We are coded differently, not just for binary choices, go or no-go. We can go four ways at once, depending on how the air feels: go, no-go, but also maybe, plus what the…
The Scientific Truth Everyone Should Be Thankful For On Thanksgiving (Synopsis)
“We live in an atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed of everything that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as we are ashamed of our naked skins.” –George Bernard Shaw On this Thanksgiving day, we're…
How Einstein's relativity saved the Solar System
"Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning." -Albert Einstein While it's easy to look on Einstein's general theory of relativity — which turns 100 today — as a revolutionary new way to interpret space and time, as well as their interplay…
Strange but true: dark matter grows hair around stars and planets (Synopsis)
"Few enterprises of great labor or hazard would be undertaken if we had not the power of magnifying the advantages we expect from them." -Samuel Johnson Dark matter may make up 27% of the Universe's energy density, compared to just 5% of normal (atomic) matter, but in our Solar System, it's…
Mostly Mute Monday: Dark Matter's Secrets Revealed By Colliding Galaxy Clusters (Synopsis)
"It may be that ultimately the search for dark matter will turn out to be the most expensive and largest null result experiment since the Michelson-Morley experiment, which failed to detect the ether." -John Moffat Dark matter is a puzzle that's now more than 80 years old: the presence of all the…
No, ISS Astronaut Scott Kelly Did Not Take A Picture Of A UFO
"It's almost like I feel I'm just moving there, and I'm not coming back." -Scott Kelly On his 233rd day in space, ISS astronaut Scott Kelly took a photo that's since gone viral of the Earth at night, showing a number of cities in India and a star field above the planet's atmosphere and airglow.…