Prof. Danna Freedman speaks with Callie Crossley of GBH about the inspiration for her research and being named a 2022 MacArthur grant fellow. “What was really an under designed idea was taking molecules and using them for quantum information science,” says Freedman. “There is a lot of data, but less intention and realizing this wide open space and this possibility was really tremendous to me because having a new opportunity to design inorganic molecules is very exciting.”
Increased usage of wind energy has led to health benefits, but does not affect all communities equally, reports Saul Elbein for The Hill. The researchers found that in order to increase the benefits of wind energy, “the electricity industry would have to spin down the most polluting plants at times of high wind-supply — rather than their most expensive ones,” writes Elbein.
Physicists from MIT and elsewhere have created a small “wormhole” effect between two quantum systems on the same processor and were able to send a signal through it, reports Charlotte Hu for Popular Science. This new model is a “way to study the fundamental problems of the universe in a laboratory setting,” writes Hu.
Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have created a holographic wormhole using Google’s Sycamore quantum computer, reports Sarah Wells for Vice. “The researchers created an entangled state (a quantum mechanical phenomena where distant particles can still communicate with each other) between two halves of a quantum computer and sent a message in between,” writes Wells. “This message was scrambled as it entered the system and, through entanglement, unscrambled on the other side.”
CNN’s Ashley Strickland highlights a study by MIT researchers finding that a mysterious flash of light was caused by a black hole jet pointing directly at Earth. The researchers determined that the flash of light was “100 times more powerful than the most powerful gamma-ray burst afterglow,” explains research scientist Dheeraj “DJ” Pasham.
A team of researchers, including scientists from MIT, “simulated a pair of black holes in a quantum computer and sent a message between them through a shortcut in space-time called a wormhole,” reports Dennis Overbye for The New York Times. The development is another “step in the effort to understand the relation between gravity, which shapes the universe, and quantum mechanics, which governs the subatomic realm of particles,” writes Overbye.
Astronomers from MIT and other institutions have found that the source of a big flash of light observed in February 2021 was a black hole jet pointing directly towards Earth, reports Will Dunham for Reuters. "At its peak, the source appeared brighter than 1,000 trillion suns," explains research scientist Dheeraj “DJ” Pasham.
Boston Globe reporter Travis Andersen writes that researchers from MIT and other institutions have found that a huge bright flash in the sky initially observed earlier this year was a black hole jet pointing straight towards Earth. “Researchers believe the jet is a product of a black hole that suddenly began consuming a nearby star, releasing a large amount of energy in the process,” writes Andersen. “The flash was detected at some 8.5 billion lights years away, or more than halfway across the universe.”
New Scientist reporter Philip Ball spotlights Prof. Pablo Jarillo-Herrero and his team for their work in superconductivity. “We should expect some surprises,” writes Ball. “Jarillo-Herrero’s initial discovery of superconductivity in these systems came completely out of the blue. And despite the progress made in the years since, he insists that ‘we have barely scratched the surface of the many hundreds of possible more systems we can build, with very different constituents, geometries and complexity.’”
A mysterious bright light detected in February has been identified as a black hole consuming a nearby star by researchers at MIT and elsewhere, reports Isaac Schultz for Gizmodo. “This particular event was 100 times more powerful than the most powerful gamma-ray burst afterglow,” says research scientist Dheeraj “DJ” Pasham. “It was something extraordinary.”
Researchers from MIT and elsewhere have found that the source of a mysterious flash of light was a black hole jet pointed at Earth, reports Aristos Georgiou for Newsweek. “The study suggests that the jet was produced when this distant black hole began devouring a nearby star that had strayed too close,” writes Georgiou. “As the black hole fed on the material of the star, it ejected a stream of particles traveling at close to the speed of light in the form of a jet, which appears to be pointed directly at our planet.”
Researchers at MIT have developed new gene-editing technology that can move large sequences of DNA into the human genome, reports Ryan Cross for The Boston Globe. “The molecular tool gives scientists a new way to completely replace broken genes, paving the way to potential cures for diseases such as cystic fibrosis,” writes Cross.
Scientists from around the world, including researchers at MIT, have found evidence of past chemical reactions between liquid water and carbon-compounds on Mars, reports Laura Baisas for Popular Science. “We believe we have found these kinds of liquid water environments and organic compounds together. That’s sort of the limit to how we can describe what we call habitability,” explains postdoc Eva Linghan Scheller.
A team of scientists, including researchers from MIT, have found that Martian rocks uncovered by NASA’s Perseverance contain “signs of a watery past and are loaded with the kind of organic molecules that are the foundations for life as we know it,” reports Joel Achenbach for The Washington Post. “On balance, we are actually super lucky that there are igneous rocks in the crater, and that we happened to land right on them, since they are ideal for determining ages and studying the past history of Mars’ magnetic field,” says Prof. Benjamin Weiss.
NASA’s Perseverance rover has uncovered evidence of habitable conditions that once existed on Mars, reports Becky Ferreira for Vice. “In that kind of environment, we’re seeing very, very strange chemistry which is not common on Earth at all, but seems to be more common on Mars because we’ve seen these kinds of materials in almost all the missions now,” says postdoctoral fellow Eva Scheller.