Loren Grush of The Verge examines the potential findings of NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which “will stare out at the cosmos searching for never-before-seen worlds” for two years, after launching on April 16. “[W]e’ll have a whole catalog of these planets in an order of priority for follow-up,” says Prof. Sara Seager, deputy science director for TESS.
With the launch of NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite near, Elise Takahama of The Boston Globe spoke with Roland Vanderspek, a principal research scientist at MIT’s Kavli Institute, about the mission. “I’m hoping we get some really beautiful images,” said Vanderspek, “and enable good science all around the world.”
Developed by MIT scientists, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) aims to discover thousands of nearby exoplanets including about 50 Earth-sized ones, reports the Press Trust of India. "We're on this scenic tour of the whole sky, and in some ways we have no idea what we will see. It's like we're making a treasure map," says Natalia Guerrero, technical associate at the Kavli Institute.
Writing in The Boston Globe, Elise Takahama describes new research by MIT’s Sukrit Ranjan and colleagues that suggests sulfudic anion molecules provide evidence for the origins of life. Takahama also highlights the varying disciplines in the research team, which joined molecular chemistry experts with planetary scientists. “One of the most exciting things,” says Ranjan, is “how different communities, when they talk to each other, can really make dramatic advances.”
A study by MIT researchers examines molecules present in the early atmosphere to better understand how living things came into existence, reports David Grossman of Popular Mechanics. “Preliminary work by the researchers show that sulfidic anions would likely have quickened the chemical reactions required to convert extremely basic prebiotic molecules into RNA,” explains Grossman.
Set to launch on April 16th, NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), will be used to identify “planets that are close enough to Earth for astronomers to explore them in detail,” writes Alexandra Witze for Nature. “It’s not so much the numbers of planets that we care about, but the fact that they are orbiting nearby stars,” says Prof. Sara Seager, deputy science director for TESS.
NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which is “the brainchild of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,” hopes to “identify at least 50 rocky exoplanets—Earth-size or bigger,” that will eventually be scrutinized by a larger telescope that is launching in 2022, writes Daniel Clery for Science. “This is the finder scope,” explains research scientist and TESS principal investigator George Ricker.
Launching next month, the TESS satellite “is NASA's next mission in the search for exoplanets,”writes Ashley Strickland for CNN. “We expect TESS will discover a number of planets whose atmospheric compositions, which hold potential clues to the presence of life, could be precisely measured by future observers,” said George Ricker of the MIT Kavli Institute, who is a principal investigator on the mission.
This April, NASA will launch the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, which will measure the masses of at least 50 “potentially Earth-like worlds,” writes Irene Klotz for Scientific American. “We’re finding the particular star that actually potentially hosts an exoplanet around it,” said senior research scientist George Ricker, the lead scientist on TESS.
Prof. Sara Seager speaks to Guy Raz of NPR’s TED Radio Hour about the search for habitable planets outside of our solar system. “We know that there are lots of planets in their star's habitable zones that gives us confidence, but we still need a lot more information,” says Prof. Seager.
Los Angeles Times writer Amina Khan examines the planets that surround dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 – highlighting that most planets near earth’s size are likely to be rocky. “It will be really fascinating when we get to dive into the atmosphere of each of these planets and see how different or similar they are," said postdoc Julien de Wit.
A study by Prof. Daniel Rothman shows that there could be enough carbon in the Earth’s oceans by 2100 to trigger a sixth mass extinction, reports Mark Fischetti and Jen Christiansen for Scientific American.
A new study by MIT researchers found that the Clean Air Act has had a larger impact on reducing the mortality rate than originally thought, reports Alan Moses for U.S. News & World Report. The researchers found that, “the decline in organic aerosol may account for more lives saved than the EPA had estimated.”
In an article for The Wall Street Journal, Christopher Matthews highlights a new study by Prof. Kerry Emanuel that shows Texas faces an increased risk of devastating rainfall due to climate change. The study demonstrated how greenhouse gas emissions, “help warm offshore waters—a phenomenon that can magnify the severity of storms and generate more rain, creating bigger floods.”
Prof. Kerry Emanuel released a new paper that analyzes the impact of Hurricane Harvey, writes Bloomberg’s Eric Roston. Emanuel found that “Harvey’s rainfall in Houston was ‘biblical’ in the sense that it likely occurred around once since the Old Testament was written.”