A new study co-authored by Assistant Prof. Salvatore Vitale shows that the collision of a black hole and neutron star could provide insight into how quickly the universe is expanding. One such merger could allow physicists to calculate the expansion rate “as effectively as combining data from 50 different neutron-star collisions,” reports Meghan Bartels for Space.com.
A study led by MIT research scientist Ulrich Faul finds that diamonds are about 1,000 times more common in the Earth than previously thought, report Ayana Archie and Ralph Ellis for CNN. “The deposits sit some 90 to 150 miles below the Earth's surface, much deeper than current mining machinery allows,” write Archie and Ellis.
Alex Knapp writes for Forbes about Accion Systems, an MIT startup that “manufactures ion thrusters that pack serious oomph even though they're the size and shape of microchips.” Later this summer, the first satellite using the company’s thrusters will take flight, which Accion CEO and MIT alumna Natalya Bailey hails as “a big milestone.”
Prof. Max Tegmark is one of a growing number of tech leaders who have signed a pledge agreeing not to develop lethal autonomous weapons, reports James Vincent in The Verge. “Tegmark said the pledge did what politicians have not: impose hard limits on the development of AI for military use,” writes Vincent.
MIT graduate student Jonny Sun has illustrated a new book by “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda. The book, “Gmorning, Gnight! Little Pep Talks for Me & You,” is a collection of “short, uplifting poems that [Miranda] regularly posts on social media early and late in the day,” writes Kevin Slane for Boston.com.
NASA’s “planet-hunting satellite” TESS is in its final orbit and will soon begin its hunt for exoplanets, writes Bill Retherford for Forbes. The MIT-led NASA mission is looking for transits, which Retherford explains are “eclipse-like events, when a planet passes between its star and TESS.”
MIT hosted the 2018 USA Memory Championship for the first time at Kresge Auditorium. The contestants competed in four events, which required the memorization of a variety of topics, including “the periodic table, who’s in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the life stories of four people,” reports Margeaux Sippell for The Boston Globe.
Gigi Levy Weiss writes for Forbes about the importance of social change in tech education. Highlighting MEET (Middle East Entrepreneurs of Tomorrow), an MIT-supported non-profit that connects and empowers Palestinian and Israeli students, Weiss notes that alumni of the program “have gone on to study, work and lead in the global tech industry, as well as in NGOs and government roles.”
Developed by MIT researchers, ConcertCue, an app that provides real-time program notes during live classical music performances, has received a $50,000 grant from the Knight Foundation’s Prototype Fund, reports Melissa Locker for Fast Company. The foundation awarded 12 grants to “innovative tech organizations and cultural institutions” that use technology to make the arts more accessible in the digital age.
A team led by MIT research scientist Ulrich Faul ‘discovered a gigantic cache of diamonds deep beneath the Earth’s surface,’ writes Avery Thompson for Popular Mechanics. While the diamonds are too deep to be mined, “knowing that they’re there helps us learn more about our own planet and what it’s made of,” Thompson notes.
Researchers have developed a handheld device, inspired by spiders, to allow people to move in zero-gravity, writes Daniel Oberhaus for Motherboard. “I want to be able to move freely in 3D space,” explains Xin Liu, arts curator at the MIT Media Lab Space Exploration Initiative, “so I design the technologies that allow me to do that.”
By using sound waves, MIT researchers have discovered that part of Earth’s stable crust may contain diamonds, reports Abbey Interrante for Newsweek. “This shows that diamond is not perhaps this exotic mineral, but on the [geological] scale of things, it’s relatively common,” says research scientist Ulrich Faul.
In a recent blog post, Microsoft’s president and chief legal officer, Brad Smith, references research by MIT graduate student Joy Buolamwini while calling for government to regulate the use of facial recognition software. Buolamwini’s work “showed error rates of as much as 35% for systems classifying darker skinned women,” reports Dina Bass for Bloomberg.
MIT’s Self-Assembly Lab collaborated with Swiss designer Christoph Guberan on a collection of 4D-printed “functional inflatable lamps, vases, and vessels,” which are now for sale at a New York gallery. “Rather than setting out to create a preconceived set of products, the resulting works were organically formed as an extension of the research process itself,” writes Aileen Kwun for Fast Company.
Carey Goldberg writes for WBUR’s CommonHealth about this year’s USA Memory Championship, which is taking place at MIT. “[M]emory is a skill, it's not an innate capacity," says Robert Ajemian, a research scientist at MIT’s McGovern Institute. "And that's the message that we want to get out, both to the scientific community and to the lay community."