Prof. Julien de Wit speaks with Dan Rea from WBZ’s Nightside News about his team’s work developing new ways to address threats posted by small asteroids to our critical space infrastructure. “We are developing the technology here at MIT to find [asteroids] and then track them and understand if we should be caring about them,” de Wit explains.
Prof. Julien de Wit, Research Scientist Artem Burdanov and Research Scientist Saverio Cambioni join Edgar Herwick III of GBH’s Curiosity Desk to discuss their work with planetary defense and their method for detecting and tracking smaller asteroids that could impact Earth’s critical space infrastructure. “We are swimming in an era that is data rich, and so what we do in our group and at MIT is mine that data to reveal the universe like never before,” says de Wit. “Revealing new populations of asteroids, new populations of planets, and making sense of our universe like we have never done.”
According to the 2026 QS World University Rankings, MIT has been earned a No. 1 global ranking in 12 subject areas, including chemical engineering; chemistry; civil and structural engineering; computer science and information systems; data science and artificial intelligence; electrical and electronic engineering; engineering and technology; linguistics; materials science; mechanical, aeronautical, and manufacturing engineering; mathematics; and physics and astronomy, reports Michael T. Nietzel for Forbes.
Prof. Raymond Pierrehumbert and his colleagues have discovered an exoplanet orbiting a star 34 light-years from Earth that is "covered with a perpetual ocean of magma and enveloped by a noxious and fiercely hot sulfur-rich atmosphere," reports Will Dunham for Reuters. "The era of exoplanet discovery keeps showing us new kinds of worlds, indeed 'strange new worlds,' generally stranger than anything in 'Star Trek,'" says Pierrehumbert. “This offers all sorts of exciting opportunities to put together fundamental physics in very novel ways."
Using new observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers from MIT determined that asteroid 2024 YR4 will not collide with the moon, reports Hannah Devlin for The Guardian. “[Asteroid] 2024 YR4 is exceedingly faint right now, reflecting about as much light as an almond at the distance of the moon,” explain Prof. Julien de Wit and Andy Rivkin PhD '91, who co-led the observations. “Webb is the only observatory that could hope to make these measurements, as it is the only one with the required sensitivity and stability combined with precise moving-target tracking needed to follow and study objects like this.”
A new study by Prof. Sara Seager and her colleagues has found a solar system that contradicts the patterns commonly “seen across the galaxy and in our own solar system,” reports Jacopo Prisco for CNN. The study offers “some of the first evidence for flipping the script on how planets form around the most common stars in our galaxy,” says Seager. “Even in a maturing field, new discoveries can remind us that we still have a long way to go in understanding how planetary systems are built.”
A new report co-authored by Prof. Dava Newman and Lindy Elkins-Tanton '87, SM '87, PhD '02 explores the highest-priority science objectives for the first human missions to Mars, reports Eric Berger for Ars Technica. “We’re searching for life on Mars. The answer to the question ‘are we alone’ is always going to be ‘maybe,’ unless it becomes yes,” explains Newman.
Prof. Kerry Emanuel speaks with CNN reporter Andrew Freedman about the impact of human-caused influences on massive storms, such as Hurricane Melissa. “This is the third Category 5 tropical cyclone in the Atlantic this year, and the other two also went through periods of rapid intensification. Taken together, this season might be said to be consistent with what we have been saying for some time,” Emanuel explains. “The proportion of global tropical cyclones reaching high intensity is increasing, as is the incidence of rapidly intensifying storms.”
Researchers at MIT have uncovered remnants of “proto Earth,” which existed before a Mars-sized meteorite slammed into the Earth billions of years ago, reports Gayoung Lee for Gizmodo. The researchers “found an odd imbalance of potassium isotopes in ancient rock samples,” explains Lee. “Chemical analyses revealed the anomaly couldn’t have emerged from any known geological processes on modern Earth.”
New York Times reporter Annabel Keenan highlights the “Remembering the Future” exhibit at the MIT Museum, a sculptural installation created by Janet Echelman that uses “climate data from the last ice age to the present, as well as projected future environments, to create a geometric design.” Echelman worked with MIT faculty, including Prof. Raffaele Ferrari and Prof. Caitlin Mueller, to bring the project to life. Mueller explains that she developed a “high-fidelity digital twin of the sculpture generated through our computational simulation that you can orbit and pan through to get perspectives that you can’t see physically in the space.”
Using molecular evidence buried in rocks, researchers at MIT suggest that some of the Earth’s first living creatures are ancestors of the modern sea sponge, reports Ashley Fike for Vice. “The discovery suggests the earliest animals were simple, filter-feeding organisms that slowly cleaned the seas while the rest of the evolution was still figuring itself out,” says Fike. “These early sponges likely had no skeletons, nerves, or eyes – just porous bodies that absorbed water and nutrients. Yet they paved the way for everything that came next, from insects to mammals to us.”
A new study by MIT researchers suggests sea sponges may have been the “first animals to inhabit the Earth,” reports Maria Azzura Volpe for Newsweek. “In their work, the researchers linked so-called ‘chemical fossils’ found in ancient rocks to the ancestors of a class of modern-day sea sponges known as demosponges,” explains Volpe. “These chemical fossils—the molecular remnants of once-living organisms that have been buried, transformed, and preserved in sediment over time—were discovered in rocks that date back to more than 541 million years ago, during the Ediacaran Period.”
MIT researchers have uncovered new evidence that suggests some of Earth’s first living creatures are ancestors of the modern sea sponge, reports Andrew Paul for Popular Science. The researchers identified 541 million-year-old chemical fossils embedded in sediment that they believe may indicate that some of Earth’s earliest creatures were the ancient relatives of today’s sea sponges.
Researchers at MIT have found that up to 98% of the energy produced by an earthquake dissipates as heat, reports Stephanie Pappas for Scientific American, who notes that the findings could be used to help create better earthquake forecasts. The researchers “created itty-bitty lab earthquakes by pressing centimeter-sized wafers of a powdered granite and magnetic particle mixture between aluminum pistons until the wafers slipped or snapped,” explains Pappas. “They measured this process of cracking under stress with thermometers and piezoelectric sensors that mimic the seismographs used to measure real earthquakes.”
Researchers at MIT have created “a series of miniature, controlled versions of real earthquakes to see where all that destructive energy actually goes and what it’s doing,” reports Luis Prada for Vice. “The goal of the research is to isolate the key physical processes that underlie every earthquake,” explains Prada. “The hope is that any knowledge gained will help refine earthquake prediction models and possibly even pinpoint which regions are sitting on fault lines ready to pop.”