National Science Foundation (NSF)

MIT researchers have discovered space matter that has been ‘missing’ since the 1990s using Fast Radio Bursts, individual flashes of radio waves traveling through space and coming from the distant universe, reports WCVB 5’s Cindy Fitzgibbon. “The takeaway of the study is that by discovering the distribution of the missing matter around galaxies, we have found evidence for strong activities in galaxies,” says graduate student Haochen Wang, a co-author on the study. “In other words, galaxies are busier and messier than we thought.” 

Prof. Salvatore Vitale and graduate student Cailin Plunkett join John Batchelor and David Livingston, hosts of the Hotel Mars podcast, to discuss their discovery that 14% of black holes were created from the merger of two smaller ones, and their goal to use gravitational wave detectors to uncover the origins of the black hole in the Milky Way. “In ten years [with added gravitational wave technology and observatories], we’ll go from seeing the first gravitational wave ever to seeing them irrespective of where they happen in the universe—which would of course, be fantastic,” says Vitale.  

MIT researchers have developed a new, breathable hydrogel material that is “packed with microscopic air tunnels inspired by the way human lungs move oxygen” and allows heat and sweat to escape, reports Luis Prada for VICE. “The material proved to be about 10 times more breathable than conventional hydrogels and retained about 95 percent of its airflow even after being stretched 10,000 times,” explains Prada. 

MIT researchers have developed a low temperature process to extract battery-grade lithium from spodumene, the most common type of mineral containing lithium, using a reusable liquid reagent, writes Electronic Design’s Lee Goldberg. “The new process uses a liquid reagent to dissolve the rock into the useful forms of its constituent parts — not just battery-ready lithium salts, but also smelter-grade alumina and cement-ready silica,” writes Goldberg. “After the minerals are extracted, the solvent and reagent can be recovered and used again so that waste levels approach zero.”  

Cambridge Day’s Chloe Taft spotlights the 25th anniversary of The Fab Lab, digital fabrication network started at MIT, and its annual conference, FAB26, held this week throughout Cambridge. “We’re going to show things like rapid prototyping, making vehicles [at FAB26],” says Prof. Neil Gershenfeld. “[T]here’s examples of using the tools in the lab to make aquaponic and hydroponic systems for food, to make antennas and radios for data networks, to make shelter. You really can make almost anything today.” 

Researchers from MIT and Toyota Research Institute developed SceneSmith, a system that allows robots to practice everyday tasks and action plans in over 1,300 AI generated environments before entering a real home or workplace, writes Fox News’ Kurt Knutsson. “SceneSmith's ability to combine realistic design with usable physics gives the project its strongest advantage,” notes Knutsson.  

Graduate student Peter Zhi Xuan Li speaks to Tech Briefs’ Andrew Corselli about his team’s work developing a new chip that allows small, autonomous robots and other battery-limited devices to construct detailed 3D maps of their environments using a fraction of the power required by other systems. “Today, a robot uses separate, incompatible internal representations for different jobs: one for mapping, another for tracking its own motion, another for rendering what it sees, and every conversion adds memory footprint and energy,” says Li. “Our goal is a single shared representation.” 

By studying ‘smears’ in fast radio bursts, fleeting flashes of radiation, MIT researchers discovered diffuse clouds of baryonic gas may contain the missing ordinary matter in the universe, writes Gizmodo’s Gayoung Lee. “These diffuse clouds may be flung outside galaxies through black hole jets,” Lee explains. 

After analyzing data from the LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA gravitational wave detectors, MIT researchers have found that 14% of black holes may be second-generation, formed by the merger of two smaller black holes, writes Gayoung Lee for Gizmodo. The scientists “created an analytic model to capture the kind of wobble that would have emerged from second-generation black holes. Around 14% of merging black holes followed this pattern, and the second-generation black holes identified had a very specific range of masses, at around 20 solar masses or 40 solar masses and above,” Lee explains.  

A study by MIT researchers has found evidence that the first signs of ozone depletion appeared in 1957 in the upper tropical stratosphere, driven by carbon tetrachloride, an industrial chemical introduced in the 1930s and widely used as a dry-cleaning and degreasing agent, writes Gizmodo reporter Ellyn Lapointe. “This finding underscores the importance of long-term atmospheric monitoring so that we can fully understand how it responds to chemical pollution,” Lapointe notes.

Writing for IEEE Spectrum, reporter Matthew S. Smith highlights Fractal, a new operating system hand-coded by CSAIL researchers to provide a clear view of security vulnerabilities. “We paved the way with techniques such as custom kernel patches and kernel extensions,” says graduate student Joseph Ravichandran. “The dream was always to have a completely custom operating system which would make these hacks unnecessary.”

MIT engineers have developed a new low-temperature process for extracting battery-grade lithium from hard rock, while also reducing waste, reports Gayoung Lee for Gizmodo. “Mining is essential to technology and therefore to society, yet it is perceived negatively by much of the public as a destructive, polluting industry, in some cases with good reason,” explains Prof. Yet-Ming Chiang. “We hope to help change that perception by showing that there are cleaner, more sustainable ways to do it.”

MIT researchers have developed a new method for precisely moving columns of individual atoms within a material, which could give rise to exotic quantum properties and shed light on quantum behavior, reports Tim Wogan for Physics World. “I’m excited because of the scalability of this that allows us to look at the interactions between the defects rather than just creating a defect itself,” explains Prof. Frances Ross. 

Researchers from MIT have created a new model that can predict wave behavior on different planets, reports Kristen French for Nautilus. “On Earth, waves form as wind drags across bodies of water, pushing unevenly on their surfaces. As the waves lengthen, and the distance between crests grows, the waves are increasingly driven by the force of gravity rather than by surface tension,” French writes. “On faraway planets, the size of the waves would depend not only on the strength of gravity and the speed and direction of the wind, but the density of the atmosphere, the viscosity of the liquid in the oceans and lakes, as well as the depth of the bed. All these factors were fed into the PlanetWaves model.” 

MIT scientists have developed a new model, dubbed "PlanetWaves," that predicts wave behavior on different planets, showing that the "smallest gust of wind on Titan could generate huge, roiling waves across seas of hydrocarbons," reports Andrew Paul for Popular Science. “PlanetWaves is far more than a novel simulator,” writes Paul. “Calculating fluid behaviors on distant planets and moons could help inform engineers building new spacecraft and probes.”