Hidden Brain podcaster Shankar Vedantam speaks with NGO leader and Maldives native, Hassan Maniku, who is working with researchers from the MIT Self-Assembly Lab to find a natural process to quickly build islands to combat the growing effects of rising sea levels on coastal communities. “People in the Maldives know they can’t stop the ocean from rising, they have to adapt to that reality and over the last several years, that is exactly what they have started to do,” says Vedantam.
Forbes contributor Bruce Dorminey writes that a new study by MIT scientists finds that the surfaces of carbonaceous asteroids may be much more rocky than previously thought. “This news is important for planetary science because we need to sample asteroids to answer fundamental questions such as how the solar system formed and how life came to be on Earth, says postdoctoral fellow Saverio Cambioni.
Newsweek reporter Robert Lea writes that astronomers from MIT and elsewhere have found evidence of a large planetary collision that stripped the atmosphere from a planet. “While astronomers have long believed these kinds of collisions are common throughout the Universe, this is the first time that they have spotted evidence of one that stripped an atmosphere in such a way around a distant star,” writes Lea.
Researchers from MIT and other institutions have uncovered evidence that early dinosaurs may have lived in social herds, reports Kate Baggaley for Popular Science. “People have known for a long time that the more advanced dinosaurs, the ones that lived in the late Jurassic and Cretaceous, especially the large sauropods…moved and lived in herds,” explains research scientist Jahandar Ramezani. “But the question has always been, when did this behavior start?”
A new study co-authored by MIT researchers presents the first evidence that a distant planet had its atmosphere partially blown away by a large impact, reports Charles Choi for Space.com. "I think a really critical implication is that the gas that is released in the aftermath of a giant impact can last for a long time, and it can affect the way the system evolves long-term," explains graduate student and lead author Tajana Schneiderman.
Forbes contributor Adi Gaskell writes that a study by MIT researchers finds “women tend to be under-represented in managerial roles in large part because their leadership skills are undervalued.” Gaskell writes that: “the MIT findings should provide a fresh incentive for organizations to look afresh at their assessment and promotion practices to ensure they're not only fair to all employees, but are most effective in rewarding those with the most ability.”
Forbes contributor David Bressan writes that a new study co-authored by MIT researchers finds that images taken by the Perseverance rover show that Mars’ Jezero crater was once a lake. “The fine-grained clay and carbonate layers deposited in the fossil lake are capped by a diamict, a sedimentary rock consisting of a mix of large and small boulders,” writes Bressan. “Scientists think the boulders were picked up tens of miles upstream and deposited into the former lakebed by episodic flash floods, suggesting a catastrophic climate change in Mars' distant past.”
Prof. Tanja Bosak and Prof. Benjamin Weiss speak with Popular Science reporter Kate Baggaley about how their analysis of images captured by NASA’s Perseverance rover found that the Jezero crater was once a lake and river delta. “The geological history of the Jezero crater could help scientists understand how the Red Planet changed from being wet and possibly habitable into a harsh desert world,” writes Baggaley. “Definitely we hit the jackpot here,” says Weiss,
Gizmodo reporter Andrew Liszewski writes that MIT researchers “used a high-resolution video camera with excellent low-light performance (the amount of sensor noise has to be as minimal as possible) to capture enough footage of a blank well that special processing techniques were able to not only see the shadow’s movements, but extrapolate who was creating them.”
Researchers from MIT and other institutions analyzed images captured by NASA’s Perseverance rover and found that Mars’ Jezero crater was a lake 3.7 billion years ago, reports Ashley Strickland for CNN. “The new information shows the importance of sending rovers to explore the surface of Mars,” writes Strickland. “Previous images captured by orbiters had shown that this outcrop resembled the kind of fan-shaped river deltas we have on Earth. Perseverance's images show definitive proof of the river delta's existence.”
Scientific American reporter Sophie Bushwick writes that MIT researchers have developed a new system that can interpret shadows that are invisible to the human eye. “The system can automatically analyze footage of a blank wall in any room in real time, determining the number of people and their actions,” writes Bushwick.
Writing for The Washington Post, Prof. Kevin Esvelt argues that research aimed at creating pandemic-causing viruses should be considered a matter of international security. “Natural pandemics may be inevitable. Synthetic ones, constructed with full knowledge of society’s vulnerabilities, are not,” writes Esvelt. “Let’s not learn to make pandemics until we can reliably defend against them.”
Axios reporter Marisa Fernandez writes that researchers from MIT and Wilson Labs will be analyzing data from seven organ procurement organizations as part of an effort to better understand the American organ procurement system. "Working with this data is a first step towards making better decisions about how to save more lives through organ procurement and transplantation,” says Prof. Marzyeh Ghassemi. “We have an opportunity to use machine learning to understand potential issues and lead improvements in transparency and equity.”
Researchers at MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center and Commonwealth Fusion Systems speak with The New Yorker’s Rivka Galchen about the history of fusion research and the recent test of their large high-temperature superconducting electromagnet. “I feel we proved the science. I feel we can make a difference,” says MIT alumna Joy Dunn, head of manufacturing at CFS. “When people ask me, ‘Why fusion? Why not other renewables,’ my thinking is: This is a solution at the scale of the problem.”
Professor Susan Solomon, geophysicist Joseph Farman, and Environmental Protection Agency official Stephen Andersen were recently honored with this year’s Future of Life award for their “significant role in our triumph over the depletion of the ozone layer,” reports Kelsey Piper for Vox.