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See the best night sky images from Capture the Dark 2025

DarkSky International just held their 2025 photo contest, receiving over 2200 submissions.

Escape from the world's horrors with out-of-this-world images from the winners.

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Did life begin when the Universe was room temperature?

#AskEthan

Here on Earth, our planet has the right temperature for liquid water, enabling life.

In the very young Universe, space was that same temperature.

Could life have existed back then?

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Does the Universe expand faster than the speed of light?

The Universe is expanding, and ever more distant objects appear to recede faster and faster.

At some point, they exceed the speed of light.

And yet, relativity is just fine with that.

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Einstein’s famous “change the facts” quote is an insidious lie

Einstein never said, "If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts."

The loss of a shared reality, including about basic facts, makes building a functional society impossible.

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At 36 billion solar masses, is the heaviest black hole too massive?

Yes, gravitational lensing has helped us find a 36 billion solar mass black hole an impressive ~5 billion light-years away.

It's *almost* too massive, and that means something profound.

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The fastest, cheapest particle physics path to a Higgs factory

Think the Future Circular Collider is too big and expensive?

Think a new linear accelerator isn't worth it?

The fastest, cheapest path to a Higgs factory is LEP3, and it's under $5B.

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Starts With A Bang podcast #120 – Exoplanet biosignatures

Remember exoplanet K2-18b?

Dr. Luis Welbanks and Dr. Matt Nixon did, and have a lot to say about what a positive detection of an inhabited world beyond Earth will actually look like.

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Are parallel universes and the multiverse real?

#AskEthan

Parallel universes and the multiverse are fun, but highly speculative, ideas.

Can anything we do ever "prove" that they're actually real?

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The ultimate energy limit that lasers will never surpass

You might think that you could just increase the energy of a laser higher and higher, with no limit at all.

But at some critical point, particle physics gets in the way, and you can go no higher.

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What a nuclear reactor on the Moon really means for NASA’s future

NASA wants to build a nuclear reactor on the Moon.

Not to promote science, but to divert resources away from it.

All while staking out key territory for purely nationalistic reasons.

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NASA’s Habitable Worlds Observatory: the future (or end) of NASA science

Hundreds of scientist, coming from all over, gathered to plan and support NASA's Habitable Worlds Observatory.

They still support it 100%, but will the US government?

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Extreme black hole system OJ 287 just got more interesting

The most massive pair of black holes ever discovered is OJ 287: at 18 billion and 150 million solar masses.

They're on an inspiraling death march, but first, WTF is this radio ribbon?

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Why do scientists avoid the possibility of God?

#AskEthan

When scientists talk about everything, even the beginning of the Universe, "divine intervention" never makes it into the discussion.

Even though it's possible, it's not of scientific interest.

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Laniakea, our home supercluster, is already being torn apart

Dark energy isn't just driving distant parts of the Universe away from one another, it's actively tearing apart today's superclusters, including our own: Laniakea.

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Why "vibe physics" is the ultimate example of AI slop

Know anyone who's been collaborating with an LLM to develop their novel theory of physics?

Turns out the only thing they're developing is a novel species of crackpot.

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5 big unanswered questions about the origin of life

It's 2025, and Earth is still the only example we have of a planet inhabited by life.

Here are 5 big questions we're seeking to answer about how it came to be, as well as finding life elsewhere.

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5 science facts that come from simply watching the Moon

The Earth is round, the Moon's orbit is elliptical, the Moon's surface has high crater walls, and Earth reflects sunlight onto other bodies.

Simply watching the Moon teaches us all this and more.