Prof. Julien de Wit speaks with National Geographic reporter Robin George Andrews about how special infrared filters on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) can be used to find small asteroids and precisely determine their size. “Asteroids get much brighter in the infrared than in the visible as they move away from Earth, and they are thus easier to detect or track with infrared facilities—JWST being the biggest of all,” says de Wit.
MIT astronomers have analyzed the scintillation – or glistening - produced by a fast radio burst (FRB) to help identify the location of the pulses, reports Ashley Strickland for CNN. “We discovered that this FRB exhibits ‘twinkling,’ similar to how stars appear to twinkle in the night sky,” explains postdoc Kenzie Nimmo. “Observing this scintillation indicates that the region where the FRB originated must be incredibly small.”
Graduate student Palak Patel speaks with BBC News reporter Chris Baraniuk about her work designing an “experimental molten regolith electrolysis system, for extracting oxygen and metal from the lunar soil.” Palak explains: “We’re really looking at it from the standpoint of, ‘Let’s try to minimize the number of resupply missions.’”
USA Today reporter Eric Lagatta writes that a new study by MIT researchers finds that X-ray flashes emanating from a supermassive black hole located 270 million light-years from the Milky Way could be caused by a dead stellar remnant, or white dwarf. The researchers believe that the white dwarf could be “spinning precariously on the edge of the black hole, causing the explosions of high-energy light.”
MIT astronomers have detected X-ray flashes erupting from a supermassive black hole that seem to be caused by a nearby white dwarf, reports Will Dunham for Reuters. “It is probably the closest object we've ever observed orbiting around a supermassive black hole,” says graduate student Megan Masterson. “This is extremely close to the black hole's event horizon.”
MIT astronomers have witnessed flashes of X-rays shooting out of a black hole and believe that a dead star, or white dwarf, passing close by the black hole could be causing the eruptions, reports Mark Kaufman for Mashable. “The astronomers ran simulations of what could drive these unusual bursts of energy,” writes Kaufman. “The most plausible outcome is this brazen white dwarf (the spent core of a sun-like star), which is about one-tenth the mass of our sun. It's shedding its dense, outer layer and triggering these pulses of X-rays.”
Space.com reporter Robert Lea writes that using the XMM-Newton X-ray telescope, MIT astronomers have observed bursts of X-rays erupting with increasing frequency from a supermassive black hole, a behavior they think could be caused by a “dead stellar core, or white dwarf, daringly teetering on the edge of the black hole.” Lea explains that “if the source of these strange episodes is a finely balanced white dwarf, the researchers theorize that it could be detected using ripples in space and time called gravitational waves emitted from the system.”
Prof. Anna Frebel spotlights the work of Cecilia Payne, whose research “laid the foundation of stellar astrophysics,” reports Liz Kruesi for National Geographic. “It is such a fundamental piece of understanding for humanity,” says Frebel of the importance of Payne’s work discovering that stars are mainly made up of hydrogen and helium
Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have found “the smallest asteroids ever detected within the main belt, which is a field between Mars and Jupiter where millions of asteroids orbit,” reports Sabrina Lam for The Boston Globe. “With new technology, we can find populations of asteroids that were inaccessible previously,” says Prof. Julien De Wit. “Now we have the capability to be able to study this object further out, predict the orbit with much better accuracy, and decide what to do for potential or possible future impactors.”
Prof. Rob Simcoe speaks with Knowable Magazine reporter Elizabeth Quill about the role of the James Webb Telescope in advancing scientific discoveries. “The tools that we can bring to bear now on studying this epoch of cosmic history are unlike anything we’ve had before,” says Simcoe.
Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), MIT astronomers have spotted “small space rocks – including some just dozens of feet in length, the tiniest ever discovered in our solar system’s main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter,” reports Robin George Andrews for National Geographic. “This work helps to fill in astronomers’ understanding of the asteroid belt, the wreckage left behind from the inner solar system’s formation—and it’s always nice to spy more of those rocky time capsules for future study,” explains Andrews.
Graduate student William Parker SM '22 has discovered that two geomagnetic storms have “affected the orbits of thousands of satellites, resulting in an unprecedented mass migration,” reports Passant Rabie for Gizmodo. “Geomagnetic storms are disturbances in Earth’s magnetosphere—a large bubble of magnetic field around our planet—caused by solar wind,” explains Rabie.
New research by graduate student William Parker SM '22 has found that two geomagnetic storms have led to the mass migrations of thousands of satellites in low Earth orbit, reports Jeff Foust for Space News. “This is a significant impact,” says Parker. “This is critical infrastructure to all of our space operations moving forward, and it will only become more important as time goes on.”
MIT scientists have discovered the smallest asteroids known to exist in the Main Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter, reports Alfredo Carpineti for IFL Science. “The team of researchers behind this new discovery cleverly reused images from the search for exoplanets,” writes Carpineti. “Stacks of images looking at the same distant star field were used with a technique called “shift and stack”, which aims to highlight possible movement in the foreground, like from an asteroid. They were able to find 138 asteroids in the decameter size range.”
MIT researchers have analyzed tiny particles from a distant asteroid and found that a weak magnetic field may have helped form the outer planets in our solar system, reports Sabrina Lam for The Boston Globe. In the future, the researchers hope to use samples from other celestial bodies to identify magnetic fields in our universe. “An exciting thing that’s probably going to happen in the next few decades,” says Prof. Benjamin Weiss, “is that we’re going to start bringing samples back from comets.”