Physics

According to new research by MIT physicists, a laser able to capture neutrinos, abundant yet intangible particles in the universe, is likely impossible to build, writes New Scientist’s Karmela Padavic-Callaghan. “The key to the neutrino laser proposal was a memory effect: when an atom in the BEC (Bose-Einstein condensate) emitted a neutrino, it would be more likely to continue emitting more neutrinos in the same direction, thus pushing them into a beam, because the quantum state that all the ultracold atoms share would retain a trace of that first emission,” Padavic-Callaghan explains. “[Prof. Wolfgang] Ketterle and his colleagues showed that this memory, although present, would be about 10,000 billion times too brief to affect the neutrinos as intended.” 

Postdoctoral Associate Rohan Naidu joins John Batchelor and David Livingston, hosts of the “Hotel Mars” podcast, to discuss his research discovering black hole stars from little red dots using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. “When we first discovered the little red dots, we assumed that red means dust, and so the idea was that the little red dots are the kind of black holes that we see in our backyard,” says Naidu. “But now we have this paradigm shift where we are realizing that red does not mean dust. Red could mean that you have this black hole star kind of object where all the blue light is being soaked up in this dense star-like cocoon.” 

Prof. Erin Kara speaks to NPR’s Ari Daniel about how the fastest star ever observed in the galaxy, located next to the Sagittarius A* black hole, experiences how space and time are distorted by the black hole. “This is a really exciting result," says Kara. "It kind of sets the stage in the next decade to make these kind of unprecedented measurements of black holes.” 

Prof. Max Tegmark joins Steve Clemons, host of Al Jazeerah’s, “The Bottom Line,” to discuss regulating AI. “Normally with technology we have a problem we want to solve: cure cancer, be able to get faster from point A to point B, and then we develop technology to meet those needs, to solve those problems—and that’s how we should deal with AI also,” says Tegmark. “We should look at what we would like to have accomplished in our society and then companies can sell products that solve those problems without causing a bunch of harm.” 

Popular Science’s Andrew Paul spotlights how MIT astronomers have identified a black hole star (MoM-BH*-1), a gigantic, dense gas cloud fueled by a central black hole, discovered in an image of a large red dot on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). “The groundbreaking realization and newest addition to the cosmic catalogue wouldn’t have been possible without the JWST, whose smallest discoveries have massive ramifications,” writes Paul. “Even something as tiny as a 100-million-year-old red dot.” 

Using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), MIT researchers have discovered a black hole star, MoM-BH*‑1, the earliest example of a black hole in the universe, writes Mashable’s Elisha Sauers. “We argue that Black Hole Stars may be powering all of JWST's Little Red Dots that are found almost everywhere in the early Universe,” says Postdoctoral Associate Rohan Naidu. “Which is to say, this channel of making massive black holes must be very common, to the point where every massive black hole (like the Milky Way's) may have gone through this phase.” 

Postdoctoral Associate Rohan Naidu speaks to The Guardian’s Ian Sample about his team’s research discovering a black hole star, a cosmic object the size of the entire solar system. “They [black hole stars] may govern when stars are able to form and when they cease forming, setting the course for everything that follows from star formation: the birth of planets, the rise of life, the emergence of species that may one day piece together this entire history,” says Naidu.  

Forbes’ “50 Over 50” list spotlights four MIT faculty leading innovation in science and technology: Prof. Paula Hammond, dean of the MIT School of Engineering; Prof. Dina Katabi; Prof. Nergis Mavalvala, dean of the MIT School of Science; and Aude Oliva, director of MIT-IBM Computing Research Lab. The 50 “science and technology standouts on this list are advancing how we use AI, fight osteoporosis and deploy clean energy.”  

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.  

In an article for The Hill, contributor Juan Williams celebrates the homecoming of his nephew, MIT alumnus and NASA astronaut Christopher Williams PhD ‘12, who travelled 102 miles over the course of eight months on the International Space Station. “Inside the space station he [Christopher] and fellow astronauts measured how eyes change in zero gravity,” writes Juan. “They checked on how the human brain orients its sense of direction in space. They also tracked bone density and DNA changes to gauge the impact a long space journey has on the human body.” 

In a video for PBS Nova, alumna Elba Alonso-Monsalve PhD ‘26 explains the definition of primordial black holes (PBHs), and how dark matter may be formed from them. “Think like the mass of an asteroid but packed into the volume of a single atom, and these [PBHs] would be floating around our universe, maybe even our own solar system,” says Alonso-Monsalve. “There could be enough of these PBHs lurking around to make up all of the dark matter, and they would be tiny enough to be hard to spot.” 

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. 

GBH Curiosity Desk host Edgar B. Herwick III comes to MIT for a scoop of science, daring Prof. Pablo Jarillo-Herrero to embark on a twisty challenge: describing his work in the field of twistronics in the amount of time it takes to eat a soft serve outside the Eastern Edge Food Hall. “We were just curious,” says Jarillo-Herrero of the inspiration for his work. “We have never been able to change the angle between materials. Whenever you explore or look at something where you’ve never been able to do it, interesting things are going to happen.” 

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.