Dina Katabi and Sara Seager win MacArthur ‘genius grants’
Two MIT professors are among 24 recipients nationwide of this year’s unrestricted $625,000 prizes from the MacArthur Foundation.
Department
Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences
Inflatable antennae could give CubeSats greater reach
Design inflates with a powder that turns into gas.
MIT team flies high to measure mercury emissions
Assistant Professor Noelle Selin and students participate in project to better understand air pollution’s climate and health impacts
Newly discovered flux in the Earth may solve missing-mantle mystery
Research points to large reservoirs of material deep in the mantle that may help to explain Earth’s origins.
Detecting DNA in space
Researchers, in a step toward analyzing Mars for signs of life, find that gene-sequencing chip can survive space radiation.
Bigger storms ahead
With global warming, a study finds, tropical cyclones may become more frequent and intense.
An answer to a lunar mystery: Why is the moon’s gravity so uneven?
Simulations based on GRAIL data show how gravitational anomalies developed early in lunar history.
Cleaner energy, warmer climate?
MIT researchers explore the possible consequences of expanding biofuels.
Finding a gecko in the crowd
A combination of crowdsourcing and computer vision could identify individuals within endangered populations.
Islands in the rain
Researchers use volcanic islands to measure how rainfall sets the pace of landscape formation.
NASA selects MIT-led TESS project for 2017 mission
$200 million project will launch telescopes to perform full-sky search for transiting exoplanets.
A ‘green’ Sahara was far less dusty than today
Research points to an abrupt and widespread climate shift in the Sahara 5,000 years ago.
Researchers awarded $3.7 million for research on sustainable development of Kuwait’s built environment
Grant sponsored through the Kuwait-MIT Center for Natural Resources and the Environment
Huge and widespread volcanic eruptions triggered the end-Triassic extinction
Some 200 million years ago, an increase in atmospheric CO2 caused acidification of the oceans and global warming that killed off 76 percent of marine and terrestrial species on Earth.