Starts With A Bang podcast
Episodes
Starts With A Bang #27: The Biggest Question
29 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Starts With A Bang #26: Traveling Backwards In Time
01 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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 you...
Starts With A Bang #25 - Why Do We Need Quantum Gravity?
28 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Our current best theories describing the Universe, general relativity for gravity, quantum field theory for electromagnetism and the nuclear forces, d...
Starts With A Bang #24: The James Webb Space Telescope
29 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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 qu...
Starts With A Bang #23 - Experiencing A Total Solar Eclipse For The First Time
30 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Starts With A Bang #22 - The Science Of Solar Eclipses
27 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Starts With A Bang #21: The Quantum Rule That Makes Existence Possible
25 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
At a fundamental level, everything we know of in this Universe is made of the same few fundamental particles: quarks, gluons, electrons and photons, w...
Starts With A Bang #20: Fate Of The Universe
28 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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,...
Starts With A Bang #19: Is Time Travel Possible?
28 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Starts With A Bang #18: Why isn't Pluto a planet anymore?
26 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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 Neptu...
Starts With A Bang #17 - When Was The First Star Born?
26 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Starts With A Bang #16: How fast is the Universe expanding?
29 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The discovery almost 100 years ago that the Universe was expanding was a revolution for science, for cosmology and for our conception of existence. Hu...
Starts With A Bang #15: Is our Universe the inside of a black hole?
25 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
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 a...
Starts With A Bang #14: Are Parallel Universes Real?
01 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Ever since we first uncovered the quantum nature of our Universe, humanity has struggled to interpret it. Is there a wavefunction that collapses? Is i...
Starts With A Bang #13: How Many Galaxies Are In The Universe?
23 Oct 2016
Contributed by Lukas
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 observabl...
Starts With A Bang #12: Exoplanets, beyond our Solar System and Proxima b
25 Sep 2016
Contributed by Lukas
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 plane...
Starts With A Bang #11: Was The Big Bang The Beginning Of The Universe?
28 Aug 2016
Contributed by Lukas
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 withou...
Starts With A Bang #10: The Last Star In The Universe
27 Jul 2016
Contributed by Lukas
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. Wh...
Starts With A Bang #9: Interstellar Travel
29 Jun 2016
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Starts With A Bang #8: What is Dark Energy?
13 May 2016
Contributed by Lukas
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 it...
Starts With A Bang #7: Our Solar System's Planet Nine
22 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Could there be a ninth planet in our Solar System, farther out than Neptune? Recent evidence points to a tantalizing possibliity, and searches are und...
Starts With A Bang #6: The most distant galaxy in the Universe
03 Apr 2016
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Starts With A Bang #5: Gravitational Waves and LIGO
27 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
In February of 2016, less than six months after first becoming operational, LIGO (the laser interferometer gravitational wave observatory) announced t...
Starts With A Bang #4: The story of Pluto and Charon
02 Feb 2016
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Starts With A Bang #3: Why is there more matter than antimatter?
30 Dec 2015
Contributed by Lukas
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. Ye...
Starts With A Bang #2 - Size Of The Universe
30 Nov 2015
Contributed by Lukas
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? E...
Starts With A Bang #1 -- Water (and life?) on Mars
30 Oct 2015
Contributed by Lukas
In the first inaugural Starts With A Bang podcast, astrophysicist Ethan Siegel discusses the latest evidence for water on Mars, what it means for Eart...