Hubble, 35 years later: Still changing how we see everything
💥 Hubble’s story is part mistake, part miracle, and all science.
with Ethan Siegel • July 26, 2025
Greetings readers,
I hope you're all enjoying your lives and finding ways to persevere through whatever challenges you may be facing in this day and age. That includes staying cool (or warm, depending on where you live) during this time of temperature extremes, and taking care of both your physical and mental health as you journey through the Universe.
I'm on vacation this week, but I couldn't bear to leave you without fresh nourishment for your intellectual curiosity, so I've refreshed some older articles whose content is, I believe, timeless for anyone wanting to learn more about the inner workings of our Universe. This year, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope celebrates 35 years since its 1990 launch. Although it's not the newest flagship telescope in our arsenal, it continues to do revolutionary science: something worth looking back on. We can run the clock forward or backward in time, and believe it or not, the laws of physics remain unchanged. Well, mostly: We finally found a direct way to measure time-reversal asymmetries in nature, but we only did it back in 2012! We've developed the ability to make objects levitate indefinitely due to a quirk of materials science and quantum physics, and I've got the explainer for you on how that works. Beyond that, it isn't just the particles in our Universe that are quantum in nature, but the fields, too.
And finally, one of the most mind-blowing assertions people have made is that our entire Universe truly arose from nothing. If we're charitable, we can understand why someone would make such a claim, but when you think about where our Universe actually did come from, is that something you'd fairly call "nothing" in your eyes? It's worth thinking about! I'll see you back here next week for all-new stories from the Universe, and as always, thanks for sharing a piece of your journey through space and time with me.
All the best,
Ethan
HUBBA HUBBLE
What we’ve learned after 35 years of NASA’s Hubble
When the Hubble Space Telescope launched on April 24, 1990, there was so much we still didn’t know about the Universe. We had never seen baby galaxies or exoplanets. We didn’t know about dark energy and had a 100% uncertainty in how fast the Universe was expanding. Over the past 35 years, we’ve uncovered and discovered so much. Here’s a look back at how far we’ve come.
MORE THAN MAGIC
The incredible physics of quantum levitation
With the right material at the right temperature and a magnetic track, physics really does allow perpetual motion without energy loss. By leveraging the properties of certain superconducting materials with impurities within them, a properly configured magnetic setup can lead to quantum levitation.
ASK ETHAN
Ask Ethan: Did our Universe really arise from nothing?
The origin of the Universe is one of the most pressing existential questions we can face. Although science can take us back to the earliest moments of the Big Bang, it can also take us back to before the Big Bang, to a very different epoch. Cosmic inflation holds the answers as to where the entire Universe came from. Here’s the earliest story we know.
If you have a burning question about the Universe,
email startswithabang@gmail.com!
QUANTUM FIELD THEORY
The Universe requires quantum fields, not just quantum particles
Realizing that matter and energy are quantized is important, but quantum particles aren’t the full story. The Universe’s quantum weirdness goes even deeper: down to the fields that permeate all of space, with or without particles. Here’s why we need them, too.
MYTH BUSTER
The Universe is not the same forwards and backwards in time
One of the surprising facts about many of the laws of physics is that they’re time-reversal-invariant (T-symmetric), meaning that particles follow the same rules whether you run the clock forward or backward. And most of us expect the laws of physics to be the same. A 2012 experiment showed otherwise. Let’s explore.
Ethan Siegel, Ph.D., is an award-winning theoretical astrophysicist who's been writing Starts With a Bang since 2008. You can follow him on Twitter @StartsWithABang.
Get more Big Think content:
Big Think | Mini Philosophy | Big Think Books | Big Think Business