SCIENCE
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Ask Ethan: When do stars turn the most mass into energy? | by Ethan Siegel | Starts With A Bang! | May, 2025
This Wolf–Rayet star is known as WR 31a, located about 30,000 light-years away in the constellation of Carina. The outer…
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The evidence for biosignatures on K2–18b is flimsy, at best | by Ethan Siegel | Starts With A Bang! | Apr, 2025
While there are a great number of exoplanets out there that may house life, including exoplanets that are very different…
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Ask Ethan: What right do we have to colonize other worlds? | by Ethan Siegel | Starts With A Bang! | Apr, 2025
This illustration shows a human colony within a dome on an otherwise uninhabited planet. Humans have often dreamed of colonizing…
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Science’s value, unlike NASA, cannot be destroyed by politics | by Ethan Siegel | Starts With A Bang! | Apr, 2025
In July of 1969, humanity took our first steps on the surface of another world: the Moon. This was the…
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Ask Ethan: Couldn’t COVID-19 have originated in a Chinese Lab? | by Ethan Siegel | Starts With A Bang! | Apr, 2025
The SARS virus (orange) has a crown-like structure, meaning that it’s part of the coronavirus family of diseases. The novel…
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Why nuclear reactions on an exoplanet won’t imply alien life | by Ethan Siegel | Starts With A Bang! | Apr, 2025
From the main mine that humans made in the Oklo region, one of the natural reactors is accessible via an…
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Will the Sun make a planetary nebula when it dies? | by Ethan Siegel | Starts With A Bang! | Apr, 2025
From their earliest beginnings to their final extent before fading away, Sun-like stars will grow from their present size to…
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Ask Ethan: Why are maps of the cosmos always oval-shaped? | by Ethan Siegel | Starts With A Bang! | Apr, 2025
These two projections show the primordial sky in microwave light as seen by ESA’s Planck mission. At left, a hemispherical…
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10 reality-bending facts about the scientific Multiverse | by Ethan Siegel | Starts With A Bang! | Apr, 2025
If each time a quantum decision were made, our timeline split to allow for two (and only two) possible outcomes,…
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Ask Ethan: What does it mean to live in a quantum universe? | by Ethan Siegel | Starts With A Bang! | Apr, 2025
By creating two entangled photons from a pre-existing system and separating them by great distances, we can ‘teleport’ information about…
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