A study by MIT scientists uncovered the culprit in the deep-sea mystery of what was reducing the ocean’s carbon-trapping capacity: dense microbe ‘cities’ living inside marine snow (slowly sinking particles of fish poop and other debris), reports Scientific American reporter Damien Pine. “Ultimately everything that’s happening at these microscales—that’s really what’s terraforming our planet,” explains Prof. Andrew Babbin.
New York Times reporter Melissa Kirsch spotlights a study by MIT scientists that explores how the “sound of rain causes some seeds to germinate faster.”
Prof. Susan Solomon joins Rachel Feltman on Scientific American’s Science Quickly podcast to discuss her experience researching the cause and solution for the Antarctic ozone hole in the 1980s. “Amazingly, we can show, with 95 percent confidence, now the Antarctic ozone hole is beginning to heal,” says Solomon, who published a paper on that topic last year. “That was a real incredible moment for me…I was there in 1986, and in 2026 I saw this paper appear that actually shows that we can be confident we’re seeing recovery.”
Researchers at MIT have found that plants can sense the sound of rain before the water reaches them. “The sound of rain spurs rice seeds to sprout up to 40 percent faster than they would otherwise,” writes K.R. Callaway for Scientific American. “The results mark the first direct evidence that plants sense the sound of the world around them and respond to it.”
A new study from MIT researchers shows that plants can ‘hear’ rain coming. “Plants have external sensing resulting from cellular structures called statoliths, which shift and settle at the bottom of plant cells, while assisting the organisms in detecting changes in stability and position,” reports Rob Taub for NewsNation.
Senior Research Scientist C. Adam Schlosser, deputy director of the MIT Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy, speaks with Joshua Miller of The Boston Globe’s Camberville & Beyond newsletter about weather, climate and how warming temperatures could impact the Northeastern US. Schlosser explains that: “warmer air can carry more moisture, more vapor. So, imagine again a future for the Northeast where everything is risen by a few degrees. It's not just the daytime temperatures, but the nighttime temperatures. The amount of vapor in the air has a big impact on nighttime temperatures, and on hot, humid nights, your body's ability to cool is diminished.”
A study by researchers at MIT has found that high levels of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere is impacting the satellite orbits that typically force objects back to Earth, leading to an increased amount of space junk, reports Sachi Kitajima Mulkey for The New York Times. “[W]e’re losing this cleaning force that we rely on” says William Parker PhD '25.
A study by MIT researchers examining the carbon emissions of self-driving cars found that “the power required to run one billion driverless vehicles driving for one hour per day could consume as much energy as all existing data centers in the world,” reports Claire Brown for The New York Times. Graduate student Soumya Sudhakar explains that another big unknown is how autonomous vehicles could change the way people travel, adding to the uncertainty over the overall long-term emissions outlook for self-driving cars.
Prof. Sara Beery spoke at TED Radio Hour about her work developing Inquire, an AI tool aimed at supercharging ecosystem conservation that is trained on millions of photos captured by citizen scientists, reports GBH. “Under the hood, what we’re doing is we’re developing AI models that can learn and understand similarities between images and scientific language,” explains Beery.
CNN spotlights how MIT researchers have developed a new ultrasonic device that can extract clean drinking water from moisture in the atmosphere. “This method is much faster, we’re talking minutes instead of hours, compared to the old way,“ CNN explains. The new device “could be a game-changer in desert conditions, and for communities around the world that don’t have reliable access to drinking water.”
Researchers at MIT have developed a new “system that uses a vibrating ceramic ring to produce clean drinking water from humid air in several minutes,” reports Matthew Burgos for DesignBoom. Burgos explains that with the system developed by MIT researchers, "clean water-making can take a few minutes versus the tens of minutes or hours required by thermal designs. In their system, the engineers use ultrasonic waves to shake the water out of the material that can absorb moisture from the air.”
Noman Bashir, a fellow with MIT’s Climate and Sustainability Consortium, speaks with Smithsonian Magazine reporter Amber X. Chen about the impact of AI data centers on the country’s electric grid and infrastructure. Bashir notes “that the industry’s environmental impacts can also be seen farther up the supply chain,” writes Chen. “The GPUs that power A.I. data centers are made with rare earth elements, the extraction of which Bashir notes is resource intensive and can cause environmental degradation.”
Prof. Caitlin Mueller has been named Innovator of the Year by Architectural Record for her work advancing a “vision for building design and construction that unites these disciplines with computation to create structure that are sustainable, high performing, and delightful,” reports Architectural Record. “Her group develops computational design and digital fabrication methods that integrate efficiency, performance, material circularity, and architectural expression,” Architectural Record notes. “This work spans robotic assembly of optimized trusses, fabrication of low-cost earthen and concrete systems, and algorithmic strategies for reusing salvaged wood and reassembled concrete parts.”
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.”
Prof. Xuanhe Zhao and his research group have been named one of the winners of the 2025 Gizmodo Science Fair for their work “creating an atmospheric water harvesting device that could improve access to potable water in the most remote, arid regions of the world,” reports Ellyn Lapointe for Gizmodo. “We are truly proud and excited about this work—and about the potential to help people most in need of safe drinking water,” Zhao said.