Physics

MIT graduate engineering, business, science programs ranked highly by U.S. News for 2019

Graduate engineering program is No. 1 in the nation; MIT Sloan is No. 5.

March 20, 2018

An illustration depicting a kagome metal — an electrically conducting crystal, made from layers of iron and tin atoms, with each atomic layer arranged in the repeating pattern of a kagome lattice.

Physicists discover new quantum electronic material

With an atomic structure resembling a Japanese basketweaving pattern, “kagome metal” exhibits exotic, quantum behavior.

March 19, 2018

Artist's impression of an inner accretion flow and a jet from a supermassive black hole when it is actively feeding, for example, from a star that it recent tore apart.

Scientists detect radio echoes of a black hole feeding on a star

Signals suggest black hole emits a jet of energy proportional to the stellar material it gobbles up.

March 18, 2018

Jani Adcock and Drew Bent named Knight-Hennessy Scholars

Seniors will join class of 49 scholars in new fellowship program.

March 1, 2018

Photo of MIT's Building 10 at an angle with trees in front

MIT rates No. 1 in 12 subjects in 2018 QS World University Rankings

MIT ranked within top 5 in 19 out of 48 subject areas.

February 28, 2018

Vector-boson scattering processes are characterized by two high-energetic jets in the forward regions of the detector. The Figure shows a significant excess of events in the distribution of the mass of the two tagging jets in yellow, labelled as EW WW.

MIT physicists observe electroweak production of same-sign W boson pairs

With the aid of the Compact Muon Solenid detector at the Large Hadron Collider, a Laboratory for Nuclear Science-led group seeks to further understand the building blocks of matter.

February 27, 2018

Scientists at MIT, Harvard University, and elsewhere have now demonstrated that photons can be made to interact — an accomplishment that could open a path toward using photons in quantum computing, if not in light sabers.

Physicists create new form of light

Newly observed optical state could enable quantum computing with photons.

February 15, 2018

Eight MIT researchers win 2018 Sloan Research Fellowships

Faculty from six MIT departments among 126 selected from across the U.S. and Canada.

February 15, 2018

Butterfly Network, a startup co-founded by MIT alumnus Nevada Sanchez ’10, SM ’11, has developed a low-cost, handheld scanner that generates clinical-quality ultrasounds on a smartphone. Ultrasounds are uploaded to the cloud, where any expert with permission can give second opinions or help analyze images.

Giving everyone a window into the human body

Startup’s low-cost, portable scanner generates clinical-quality ultrasounds on a smartphone.

February 6, 2018

International participants in J-WEL’s October 2017 inaugural J-WEL Week learn about educational innovations at MIT during the Learning Everywhere Project Showcase.

J-WEL grant award announcement and call for proposals in education innovation

Funding is available to MIT faculty to support educational innovations in pre-K-12, Higher Education, and Workplace Learning.

February 1, 2018

Rendering of the gas velocity in a thin slice of 100 kiloparsec thickness (in the viewing direction), centered on the second most massive galaxy cluster in the TNG100 calculation. Where the image is black, the gas is hardly moving, while white regions have velocities that exceed 1,000 kilometers per second. The image contrasts the gas motions in cosmic filaments against the fast chaotic motions tr...

Modeling the universe

MIT's Mark Vogelsberger and an international astrophysics team have created a new model pointing to black holes’ role in galaxy formation.

January 31, 2018

First row (l-r): Stephen Bell, Timothy Cronin, Nikta Fakhri, Robert Griffin. Second row (l-r): Jacqueline Hewitt, William Minicozzi, Aaron Pixton, Gabriela Schlau-Cohen. Third row (l-r): Alexander Shalek, Scott Sheffield, Susan Solomon, Stefani Spranger.

Twelve School of Science faculty members appointed to named professorships

January 19, 2018

MIT researchers, looking for ways to turn heat into electricity, find efficient possibilities in certain topological materials.

Turning heat into electricity

Study finds topological materials could boost the efficiency of thermoelectric devices.

January 16, 2018

Five new planets have been discovered outside our solar system, all orbiting a sun-like star located within the constellation Aquarius, nearly 620 light years from Earth. The alien worlds are considered super-Earths, sizing in at two to three times larger than our own blue planet.

Citizen scientists discover five tightly packed exoplanets

The planetary system’s dense configuration gives clues to its formation

January 11, 2018

A drawing illustrates the unusual topological landscape around a pair of features known as exceptional points (red dots), showing the emergence of a Fermi arc (pink line at center), and exotic polarization contours that form a Mobius-strip-like texture (top and bottom strips).

New exotic phenomena seen in photonic crystals

Researchers observe, for the first time, topological effects unique to an “open” system.