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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

How to tell a child that the Sun will someday die (Synopsis)
"It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness, that is life." -Jean-Luc Picard The cosmic story common to all of us -- where we came from, how we got here and where we're headed into the future -- is both amazing and daunting. But when we're first exposed to the…
Winning a Nobel Prize two kilometers under the Earth (Synopsis)
"It's ironic: in order to observe the Sun, you need to go kilometers underground." -Art McDonald Imagine you finally thought you understood how the Sun worked: how light elements fused into heavier ones, emitting energy in the process. And when you finally completed your calculations, you got…
How we'll finally wind up testing quantum gravity (Synopsis)
"There was a long history of speculation that in quantum gravity, unlike Einstein's classical theory, it might be possible for the topology of spacetime to change." -Edward Witten Quantum gravity is one of the holy grails of physics, and showing that gravitation is an inherently quantum force would…
The Biggest Problem With The Expanding Universe Might Be Trouble For Dark Energy (Synopsis)
"That’s all regular matter, just five percent. A quarter is “dark matter,” which is invisible and detectable only by gravitational pull, and a whopping 70 percent of the universe is made up of “dark energy,” described as a cosmic antigravity, as yet totally unknowable. It’s basically all mystery…
NASA's Cassini Reveals The Full Glory Of Saturn's Rings (Synopsis)
“This then, I thought, as I looked round about me, is the representation of history. It requires a falsification of perspective. We, the survivors, see everything from above, see everything at once, and still we do not know how it was.” -W.G. Sebald In the 1600s, the earliest telescopes saw that…
Comments of the Week #105: from the movie 'Gravity' to the most astounding fact
“I guess I have a short attention span! I'm interested in new worlds, new universes, new challenges. I always said the only reason to make a film is not for the result but for what you learn for the next one.” -Alfonso Cuarón April has gotten off to a great start here at Starts With A…
Ask Ethan: Why Is Jupiter Hit By So Many Objects In Space? (Synopsis)
"An asteroid or a supervolcano could certainly destroy us, but we also face risks the dinosaurs never saw: An engineered virus, nuclear war, inadvertent creation of a micro black hole, or some as-yet-unknown technology could spell the end of us." -Elon Musk The possibility of getting hit by a…
What is the most astounding fact about the Universe? (Synopsis)
"The older people that one admires seem to be fearless. They go right out into the world. It's astounding. Maybe they can't see or they can't hear, but they walk out into the street and take life as it comes. They're models of courage, in a strange way." -James Hillman The scientific enterprise has…
Galileo Didn't Invent Astronomy, But He DID Invent Mechanical Physics! (Synopsis)
"All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them." -Galileo Galilei Galileo is most famous for his astronomical discoveries, including the moons of Jupiter, the existence of sunspots and the phases of Venus. These discoveries were a strong challenge to…
Why are Earth-orbiting satellites fundamentally unstable? (Synopsis)
"I'm here for several reason, Mr. Pepin, first of all for aid. When something tragic happens in our skies, we do our utmost to extend sympathy. But sympathy without action,that's an empty emotion. Mainly I'm here for the purposes of reentry." "I don't understand." "Adjustment," Harold said, "to…
Mostly Mute Monday: What Do Star Trails Look Like From The ISS? (Synopsis)
"This job is a great scientific adventure. But it's also a great human adventure. Mankind has made giant steps forward. However, what we know is really very, very little compared to what we still have to know." -Fabiola Gianotti On Earth, star trails inevitably appear in any long-exposure…
The Discovery Of A Lifetime: Exclusive Interview With David Reitze, Executive Director Of LIGO (Synopsis)
"When I was in high school, I was certain that being an astronaut was my goal. It was a very important time -- Sally Ride was making her first flight into space and she had a real impact on me. Those 'firsts' kind of stick in your head and really become inspirations for you." Karen Nyberg,…
Comments of the Week #104: from black hole jets to our motion through the Universe
"All the evidence, experimental and even a little theoretical, seems to indicate that it is the energy content which is involved in gravitation, and therefore, since matter and antimatter both represent positive energies, gravitation makes no distinction." -Richard Feynman It was a big last week…
Ask Ethan: does the climax of the movie 'Gravity' violate simple physics? (Synopsis)
"You've got to learn to let go." -Matt Kowalski, Gravity Objects in motion remain in constant motion unless acted upon by an outside force. That's Newton's 1st law of motion, and that's why you'd expect an orbiting satellite and two astronauts orbiting with it to have absolutely no relative…
How fast does Earth move through the Universe? (Synopsis)
“The slow philosophy is not about doing everything in tortoise mode. It’s less about the speed and more about investing the right amount of time and attention in the problem so you solve it.” -Carl Honore Einstein's theories of special and general relativity tell us that there's no Universal,…
A nearby, infant star teaches us how planets begin to form (Synopsis)
"TW Hydrae is quite special. It is the nearest known protoplanetary disc to Earth and it may closely resemble the Solar System when it was only 10 million years old." -David Wilner For hundreds of years since the realization that Earth and the other planets orbited the Sun, humanity had only…
The Milky Way's most recent supernova was hidden... until now! (Synopsis)
“When a star goes supernova, the explosion emits enough light to overshadow an entire solar system, even a galaxy. Such explosions can set off the creation of new stars. In its own way, it was not unlike being born.” -Todd Nelson In 1604, Kepler's supernova went off, the last Milky Way supernova…
What your birthstone means, according to science
"Nobility, without virtue, is a fine setting without a gem." -Jane Porter Since ancient times, gems were believed to bestow various traits and good fortunes upon those two whom they were gifted. In more recent times, we've associated gems with the time of the year someone was born, assigning each…
Beyond human vision, distant galaxy clusters emit spectacular fireworks (Synopsis)
"Every single time you make a merger, somebody is losing his identity. And saying something different is just rubbish." -Carlos Ghosn A galaxy cluster is the largest individual bound structure in the Universe, containing anywhere from dozens to thousands of times the mass of our Milky Way. Yet as…
Comments of Two Weeks #103: From the Universe as a hologram to dark matter in galaxies
“Public discourse has been polluted now for decades by corporate-funded disinformation - not just with climate change but with a host of health, environmental and societal threats. The implications for the planet are grim.” -Michael E. Mann What a couple of weeks it's been, both at Starts With…
Ask Ethan: How Do Black Hole Jets Carve Out Bubbles In Space? (Synopsis)
"When a person starts to talk about their dreams, it's as if something bubbles up from within. Their eyes brighten, their face glows, and you can feel the excitement in their words." -John C. Maxwell One of the most remarkable features of a great number of giant, active galaxies are the presence of…
Why Do The Tiniest Galaxies Have The Most Dark Matter? (Synopsis)
“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.” -Winston Churchill When we look out at the Universe on the largest scales, from large-scale structure to the fluctuations in the CMB to lensed clusters of galaxies and to giant…
Could dark matter not exist at all? (Synopsis)
“For the moment we might very well can them DUNNOS (for Dark Unknown Nonreflective Nondetectable Objects Somewhere).” -Bill Bryson The Sun makes up 99.8% the mass of our Solar System, yet stars account for only about 10-20% of the matter that protons, neutrons and electrons make up. Protons,…
Ceres, the solar system's closest dwarf planet, has its mysteries solved by NASA (Synopsis)
"Although impact processes dominate the surface geology on Ceres, we have identified specific color variations on the surface indicating material alterations that are due to a complex interaction of the impact process and the subsurface composition." -Ralf Jaumann, Dawn scientist NASA's Dawn…
What It Means If CERN Discovers A New Particle
"I'm a fan of supersymmetry, largely because it seems to be the only route by which gravity can be brought into the scheme. It's probably not even enough, but it's a way forward to get gravity involved. If you have supersymmetry, then there are more of these particles. That would be my favourite…
Most Massive Collection Of Giant Stars Ever Revealed By Hubble (Synopsis)
"The night has a thousand eyes, and the day but one; Yet the light of the bright world dies with the dying sun." -Francis William Bourdillon When we look for the brightest, bluest, most massive individual stars, we're restricted to looking nearby, since it's impossible to resolve individual stars…
Ask Ethan: Could Dark Energy Recycle The Universe? (Synopsis)
"Quintessence is a dynamic, time-evolving, and spatially dependent form of energy with negative pressure sufficient to drive the accelerating expansion [...] Whereas the cosmological constant is a very specific form of energy." -Robert Caldwell, inventor of the Big Rip scenario Our Universe began…
Most Planets In The Universe Are Homeless (Synopsis)
“The truth is you can be orphaned again and again and again. The truth is, you will be. And the secret is, this will hurt less and less each time until you can't feel a thing. Trust me on this.” -Chuck Palahniuk The planets we know of -- in our own Solar System and beyond -- all have something in…
The next great global warming hiatus is coming! (Synopsis)
"...as a scientist I was trained you always have to show the negative data, the data that disagrees with you, and then make the case that your case is stronger." -Richard Muller Global temperatures have been on the rise not just for decades, but for as long as we've been measuring temperatures…
10 quantum truths about our Universe (Synopsis)
“In fact, the mere act of opening the box will determine the state of the cat, although in this case there were three determinate states the cat could be in: these being Alive, Dead, and Bloody Furious.” -Terry Pratchett Quantum mechanics has been described as the spookiest of all the…