Ten years later, LIGO is a black-hole hunting machine
LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA celebrate the anniversary of the first detection of gravitational waves and announce verification of Stephen Hawking’s black hole area theorem.
Professor Emeritus Rainer Weiss, influential physicist who forged new paths to understanding the universe, dies at 92
The longtime MIT professor shared a Nobel Prize for his role in developing the LIGO observatory and detecting gravitational waves.
Viewing the universe through ripples in space
Physicist Salvatore Vitale is looking for new sources of gravitational waves, to reach beyond what we can learn about the universe through light alone.
With a quantum “squeeze,” clocks could keep even more precise time, MIT researchers propose
More stable clocks could measure quantum phenomena, including the presence of dark matter.
Everything, everywhere all at once
Cosmologist and MLK Scholar Morgane König uses gravitational waves to study the universe’s origins, inflation, and present trajectory.
3 Questions: A bigger, better space-ripple detector
The MIT-led Cosmic Explorer project aims to detect gravitational waves from the earliest universe.
Gravitational-wave detectors start next observing run to explore the secrets of the universe
The next run will be the most sensitive search yet for gravitational waves.
Study: Without more data, a black hole’s origins can be “spun” in any direction
Current measurements of black holes are not enough to nail down how the invisible giants form in the universe, researchers say.
MIT researchers use quantum computing to observe entanglement
Researchers at the Center for Theoretical Physics lead work on testing quantum gravity on a quantum processor.
Seven with MIT ties receive awards from the American Physical Society
Professors Arup Chakraborty, Lina Necib, and Ronald Fernando Garcia Ruiz as well as Yuan Cao SM ’16, PhD ’20; Alina Kononov ’14; Elliott H. Lieb ’53; Haocun Yu PhD ’20; and others honored for contributions to physics.
Peter Fisher to step down as head of the Department of Physics
Professor led MIT department for eight years, playing pivotal leadership roles at the Institute and in physics research and community-building.
American Physical Society honors nine with MIT ties for physics research
Faculty, staff, and alumni recognized for outstanding contributions to physics research, education, and policy.
Taming the data deluge
A National Science Foundation-funded team will use artificial intelligence to speed up discoveries in physics, astronomy, and neuroscience.
Neutron star collisions are a “goldmine” of heavy elements, study finds
Mergers between two neutron stars have produced more heavy elements in last 2.5 billion years than mergers between neutron stars and black holes.