In the Media

Prof. Dennis Whyte joins Hakeem Oluseyi, host of GBH’s “Particles of Thought,” to “explore fusion's wildest applications” in space. “There are private companies now looking at ways to exploit fusion for space travel,” says Whyte. “There are also, simultaneously, companies which are looking at using the technology of fusion—particularly the plasma and magnetic technology, which were primarily developed from fusion to get significant improvements in propulsion technology as well.” 

“Structured around key stages in psychological development — childhood, adolescence, love, work, [and] death,” Prof. Sherry Turkle’s latest book, “Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines,” “argues strongly that our new ‘posthuman conversational partners’ [AI chatbots] are inadequate companions for life’s journey,” writes reporter Becky Hogge for the Financial Times. “The more we recognize our vulnerability to the virtual, the more we’ll be able to commit to the real,” explains Turkle. We need to “reinvent sociality.”  

Prof. Koroush Shirvan speaks to The New York Times’ Brad Plumer and Rebecca F. Elliott about the safety of companies increasing power levels in existing nuclear reactors. “We know a lot about the safety performance of these plants; the confidence is high there,” says Shirvan. Plumer and Elliot write that Shrivan added “some plants in the past have run into operational difficulties after upgrades. If, for instance, the higher power levels subjects equipment to more wear and tear, plants may have to be shut down more frequently for maintenance,” write Plumer and Elliott.  

Prof. Eric So joins Bloomberg’s “Businessweek Daily” to discuss his debut book “The Collision: What AI does to us,” which explores the intersection of AI and human cognition. “I think of AI as being a force multiplier, something that can really make us productive, but too often people are focused on just really the capability enhancements of AI without thinking about the other side of the ledger which is: ‘what is it taking from us in that exchange,’” says So. “It matters how we go about using the tool.”  

In a piece republished by Scientific American, reporter Manon Bischoff highlights MIT researchers proving in 2024, that “many newer games in the Super Mario series are mathematically maximally complex and therefore contain unsolvable problems.” “We don’t know how to prove that a game is fun,” says Prof. Erik Demaine, a co-author of the research. “But we can prove that it’s hard and that maybe gives some insight into why it’s fun.”  

Prof. Justin Reich speaks to The Boston Globe’s John Hilliard about the implementation of AI in the Boston Public Schools. “There’s a risk of not engaging with AI and being left behind. But there’s also a risk that this is going to be harmful,” says Reich. “There’s no evidence which clearly says that one of these pathways is better than the other.” 

Forbes’ Rashi Shrivastava highlights MIT spinout Liquid AI, which is building “liquid neural networks that process data more efficiently and don’t need expensive chips stored in data centers.” Shrivastava writes, “Liquid AI’s models are small enough that they can run directly on laptops and phones. There’s no cost to host them.”  

MIT researchers have found that the gravitational pull of a red dwarf star is “siphoning material” from a brown dwarf star 300 to 500 light-years from Earth, writes reporter Will Dunham for Reuters. “This is the first observed example of this phenomenon,” says graduate student Aaron Householder. “The two objects are so close together that the entire orbit would fit inside the sun.” 

Joe Romm ‘82, PhD ‘87, “a physicist by training who became one of the most influential voices in the debate over climate change and how to stop it, using his blog to provide deep-dive insights and sharp-elbowed critiques,” died on Sept. 14, reports Clay Risen for The New York Times. “There’s nobody else like Joe Romm,” says Michael Mann, Romm’s colleague at the Penn Center. “There’s nobody else who brought all of these interlocking talents and proclivities together in the way that he did. That gave him such a unique voice, and it’s a voice that we sorely could use today.” 

MIT startup Alsym Energy, cofounded by Prof. Kripa Varanasi, has developed an alternative to lithium-ion batteries using sodium ions, writes Morgan Clendaniel for Fast Company. “The battery is nonflammable and nontoxic, allowing it to be placed in more sensitive areas and saving money on cooling systems that often have to be co-installed with large lithium batteries,” explains Clendaniel.  

MIT researchers have discovered “a red dwarf [star] slowly and steadily consuming its orbital object, a brown dwarf [star],” in a process that could continue for millions of years, writes reporter Mary Randolph for the Scientific American. The discovery was “a happy accident,” says graduate student Aaron Householder. “We’re excited to see if we can find a star eating a planet or maybe even two planets eating each other—different types of combinations of these objects.”  

VulcanForms, a 3-D printing manufacturer that produces “complicated metal parts for a variety of industries, at speed and at scale,” founded by Martin C. Feldmann ’14 and Prof. John Hart, is expected to double its workforce within the next year, reports Jon Chesto for The Boston Globe. “We were born out of MIT, we’ve kind of got our DNA here,” says Kevin Kassekert, chief executive of VulcanForms. “Massachusetts is a place where you can attract the best talent in the world.” 

Forbes’ Amit Sinha spotlights nearly 50 years of the RSA algorithm, “one of the most important practical implementations of public-key cryptography,” developed by Prof. Ronald Rivest and his colleagues Profs. Adi Shamir and Len Adleman. RSA turned public-key cryptography “into a practical method for secure communication between parties who had never met and shared no prior secret,” notes Sinha. “It also made digital signatures practical, enabling identity verification and authentication across open networks.” 

MIT astronomers have discovered a “star slowly and steadily consuming material from another low-mass object,” writes Catherine Stoddard for Fox News. “At the rate which the star is feeding, it’ll take likely hundreds of thousands, or maybe even billions of years for it to completely consume its nearby neighbor,” notes Stoddard.  

Prof. R. Scott Kemp speaks to The New York Times’ Selam Gebrekidan about the U.S. planning to build a nuclear reactor on the moon by 2030. Kemp “said accidents were more probable on the moon,” writes Gebrekidan. “With little containment, even smaller accidents would produce much more radioactive fallout. There is no wind on the moon but, with less gravity, debris can travel far after an explosion.”