National Science Foundation (NSF)

An artist’s illustration of two colliding neutron stars.

LIGO and Virgo detect neutron star smash-ups

Findings reported just weeks into the network’s latest operating run. (Press release)

May 2, 2019

Salvatore Vitale, assistant professor of physics at MIT and member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration

3 Questions: Salvatore Vitale on LIGO’s latest detections

“We will keep listening for these faint and remote cosmic whispers,” says the physics professor.

May 2, 2019

Artistic rendering of artificial intelligence and deep learning visual recognition systems

For better deep neural network vision, just add feedback (loops)

The DiCarlo lab finds that a recurrent architecture helps both artificial intelligence and our brains to better identify objects.

April 29, 2019

MIT engineers have designed a magnetic microrobot that can help push drug-delivery particles into tumor tissue (left). They also employed swarms of naturally magnetic bacteria to achieve the same effect (right).

Nanoparticles take a fantastic, magnetic voyage

Tiny robots powered by magnetic fields could help drug-delivery nanoparticles reach their targets.

April 26, 2019

An MIT delegation met with 69 offices of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives from 23 states, including staff from the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.

Advocating for federal research funding on Capitol Hill

Students and postdocs from MIT's Science Policy Initiative meet with lawmakers on science-engineering-technology Congressional Visit Days 2019.

April 24, 2019

A team of scientists at MIT and elsewhere has developed a neural network, a form of artificial intelligence (AI), that can read scientific papers and render a plain-English summary in a sentence or two.

Can science writing be automated?

A neural network can read scientific papers and render a plain-English summary.

April 17, 2019

RoCycle can detect if an object is paper, metal, or plastic. CSAIL researchers say that such a system could potentially help enable the convenience of single-stream recycling with lower contamination rates that confirm to China's new recycling standards.

Robots that can sort recycling

CSAIL’s "RoCycle" system uses in-hand sensors to detect if an object is paper, metal or plastic.

April 16, 2019

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is a global network of radio telescopes that work together as one virtual, Earth-sized telescope, with a resolution sharp enough to “see” a black hole’s shadow.

Astronomers capture first image of a black hole

ESO, ALMA, and APEX contribute to paradigm-shifting observations of the gargantuan black hole at the heart of the galaxy Messier 87. (Press release)

April 10, 2019

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) — a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration — was designed to capture images of a black hole. In coordinated press conferences across the globe, EHT researchers revealed that they succeeded, unveiling the first direct visual evidence of the supermassive black hole in the center of Messier 87 and its ...

Working together as a “virtual telescope,” observatories around the world produce first direct images of a black hole

Images reveal supermassive black hole at the heart of the Messier 87 galaxy.

April 10, 2019

MIT researchers used these manganese oxide nanoparticles to catalyze the breakdown of water and the subsequent incorporation of oxygen into useful compounds called epoxides.

Shrinking the carbon footprint of a chemical in everyday objects

New method for synthesizing the epoxides found in plastics, textiles, and pharmaceuticals could be powered by electricity.

April 9, 2019

LIGO laboratory detection site near Hanford in eastern Washington.

3 Questions: Lisa Barsotti on the new and improved LIGO

“If we are very lucky, we might observe something new … or maybe even something totally unexpected.”

April 1, 2019

Illustration of MIT’s new axion detector, in cross-section, designed to simulate an astrophysical magnetar.

Dark matter experiment finds no evidence of axions

In its first run, ABRACADABRA detects no signal of the hypothetical dark matter particle within a specific mass range.

March 29, 2019

Microfilaments made using a new 3D printing method, shown in gray in this illustration, form a structure that cells, shown in color, can adhere to. The shapes formed by the filaments determine the very uniform shapes of cells.

New 3-D printing approach makes cell-scale lattice structures

System could provide fine-scale meshes for growing highly uniform cultures of cells with desired properties.

March 25, 2019

The origami gripper can lift a wide range of objects, from apples and soup cans to wine glasses and drones.

Robot hand is soft and strong

Gripper device inspired by “origami magic ball” can grasp wide array of delicate and heavy objects.

March 15, 2019

The experimental setup used by the researchers to test their magnetic sensor system, using green laser light for confocal microscopy.

Quantum sensing method measures minuscule magnetic fields

MIT researchers find a new way to make nanoscale measurements of fields in more than one dimension.