Prof. Janet Conrad speaks with NPR's Joe Palca about her work detecting a new particle called the sterile neutrino. To find the particle, Conrad and her colleagues shot a beam of neutrinos into a container of mineral oil and identified an extra signal. Conrad explains, “to have an extra signal you need to somehow introduce an extra neutrino.”
Writing for The New Yorker, Prof. David Kaiser contrasts a new study in Nature, which concludes that “if human will is free, there are physical events… that are intrinsically random, that is, impossible to predict,” with the 19th century writings of Stephen Freeman, who argued that, “human consciousness and our perception of free will must be subject to chains of causation.” The researchers, says Kaiser, “turned Freeman’s formulation on its head.”
Prof. Sara Seager speaks with Nova Wonders about the hope of finding “some sign of life” with the TESS mission. "We'd like to see methane and other gases,” says Seager. “And some of these, on their own or together, would help make the case for life on another planet.”
NASA’s recently launched Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) “will spend the next two years scanning 200,000 stars looking for any exoplanets orbiting them,” explains New Scientist. In about two months, once the satellite is in orbit and its cameras are tested, “there’ll just be a flood of information,” says MIT’s George Ricker, the principal investigator on TESS.
Davide Castelvecchi of Nature explores the “ambitious scientific quarry” that gravitational-wave scientists are after, including what happened in the first few moments after the Big Bang. Castelvecchi, who speaks with MIT physicist Rainer Weiss for this piece, notes that the field has already “delivered discoveries at a staggering rate, outpacing even the rosiest expectations.”
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will enter an unusual, highly elliptical orbit around the Earth to capture images of about 20,000 new exoplanet candidates, writes Robbie Gonzalez of Wired. "We are setting the stage for the future of exoplanet research—not just for the 21st century, but the 22nd century and beyond," says MIT Kavli Institute senior research scientist George Ricker, leader of the TESS mission.
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.”
With NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, set to launch in less than a week, Jay Bennett of Popular Mechanics speaks with TESS Principal Investigator George Ricker of the MIT Kavli Institute. “TESS is really a finder scope,” says Ricker. “The main thing that we're going to be able to do is find a large sample from which the follow-up observations can be carried out in decades, even centuries to come.”
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.
Kagome metal, a new discovery made through research by Assistant Prof. Joseph Checkelsky and graduate student Linda Ye, allows for the transfer of electrical currents “across atomic layers in the crystal” without any energy loss. Aristos Georgiou for Newsweek writes that such material may enable quantum computers "to solve certain problems that even the most powerful classical computers struggle to calculate.”
BBC News reports on the creation of Kagome metal, an “electrically conducting crystal, made from layers of iron and tin atoms,” that could be used in more powerful quantum computers. The shape of the conductor, developed by Assistant Professor Joseph Checkelsky and graduate student Linda Ye, mimics a popular pattern in Japanese basket-weaving.
Meghan Bartels of Newsweek discusses a discovery from the Kavli Institute of the first tidal disruption flare or “jet” that’s been produced due to a supermassive black hole consuming a star in space. “This is telling us the black hole feeding rate is controlling the strength of the jet it produces,” NASA Einstein Postdoc Fellow and lead researcher Dheeraj Pasham said.
Brooks Hays for UPI highlights research led by postdoc Dheeraj Pasham from MIT's Kavli Institute, that has captured the rare occurrence of “radio signals produced by a black hole devouring a star.” “This is the first time we've seen a jet that's controlled by a feeding supermassive black hole,” explained Pasham.
The Economist highlights MIT spinout ClearMotion, which developed a suspension system that utilized bumpy roads to generate electricity. Later, the team realized that their system also created a smoother ride, when ran in reverse. “The effect is to level out a rough road by pushing the wheels down into dips and pulling them up over bumps.”
A study from senior researcher Rolland Pellenq finds that grid-like cities retain more heat than those that are less-linear, due to the “Urban Heat Island” effect. “For new cities, or even neighborhoods, our findings can be used…in designing block layouts that would help optimize temperature,” Pellenq explains to Marlene Cimons of Popular Science.