School of Science

Prof. Yoel Fink speaks with Washington Post reporter Pranshu Verma about the growing field of smart textiles and his work creating fabrics embedded with computational power. Fink and his colleagues “have created fibers with hundreds of silicon microchips to transmit digital signals — essential if clothes are to automatically track things like heart rate or foot swelling. These fibers are small enough to pass through a needle that can be sown into fabric and washed at least 10 times.”

MIT researchers have found a way to amplify the signals from particles in quantum relationships to make them easier to read, reports Juandre for Popular Mechanics. “Their method could lead the way to better measurements of many tiny phenomena, from atomic clocks to the search for elusive dark matter,” writes Juandre.

MIT scientists have used custom software and maple plywood to create “The Cosmic Cliffs Infinite Galaxy Puzzle” based on the newfound images from the James Webb Space Telescope, reports Elissaveta M. Brandon for Fast Company. The 264-count puzzle contains “squiggly pieces that can be reconfigured in endless ways” writes Brandon.

Professor William Oliver, graduate students Bharath Kannan and Tim Menke, Principal Research Scientist Simon Gustavsson, Shereen Shermak MBA ’97, Youngkyu Sung PhD ’22, and former research scientist Jonas Bylander founded Atlantic Quantum, a company that aims to improve the basic hardware behind quantum computing, reports Ariyana Griffin for Forbes. “The focus on Atlantic Quantum is building hardware that improves the ‘coherence’ of quantum computation, which reduces the errors that are the major speed bump for these machines,” writes Griffin.

Prof. Wanying Kang and her colleagues have found that “the way ice covers the surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus suggests that the oceans trapped beneath it may be only a little less salty than Earth’s oceans,” reports By Karmela Padavic-Callaghan for New Scientist. “The researchers found that saltier subsurface oceans correspond to thicker ice on a planet’s poles than over its equator and vice versa for less salty water,” writes Padavic-Callaghan.

CAMP4, a startup founded by Prof. Richard Young, is developing a new class of RNA-based therapies to treat genetic diseases, reports Ryan Cross for The Boston Globe. The “startup’s experimental approach will allow it to dial up the output of genes to treat genetic diseases, with an initial focus on a severe form of epilepsy and life-threatening live diseases,” writes Cross.

Writing for The Boston Globe, Prof. Ernest Moniz, former secretary of energy, makes the case for addressing climate change and energy insecurity collectively. “US decision makers in the public and private sector need to implement data-driven plans that reflect real needs and enable a credible and sustained energy transition to zero-carbon energy in the mid-century time frame,” writes Moniz.

Scientists from MIT and other institutions have detected the longest-lasting and most regular radio signal in the night sky, reports Jamie Carter for Forbes. “Scientists think that the radio signal may be coming from a neutron star—what remains of the collapsed core of a giant star after it’s exploded as a supernova,” explains Carter.

Astronomers from MIT and elsewhere have discovered radio signals in space that they believe to be coming from a neutron star, reports Tim Marcin for Mashable. “Using the CHIME (Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment) radio telescope, astronomers noticed a strange FRB, or radio burst, from a far-off galaxy billions of light-years from Earth.”

Graduate students Mehtaab Sawhney and Ashwin Sah were among the four mathematicians to demonstrate “it’s always possible to build such a hypergraph as long as you have enough nodes,” a 50-year-old proof first proposed by Paul Erdős, reports Leila Sloman for Quanta Magazine.

A team of astronomers have identified a mysterious radio burst from a far-away galaxy, reports Wyatte Grantham-Philips for USA Today. “Imagine a very distant galaxy. And sometimes, some huge explosions happen that emit huge blasts of radio waves,” explains Daniele Michilli, who led the study and is a postdoc in MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. “We don’t know what these explosions are, (but) they are so powerful that we can see them from across the universe.”

Postdoctoral scholar Daniele Michilli and members of the CHIME/FRB Collaboration have discovered radio bursts from a galaxy billions of light-years away, reports Ashley Strickland for CNN. “The research team will continue to use CHIME to monitor the skies for more signals from the radio burst, as well as others with a similar, periodic signal,” writes Strickland, noting the work “could be used to help astronomers learn more about the rate of the universe’s expansion.”

Astronomers at MIT and elsewhere have picked up repeated radio signals from a galaxy billions of light-years away from Earth, reports Ayana Archie for NPR. “Scientists have not been able to pinpoint the exact location of the radio waves yet, but suspect the source could be neutron stars, which are made from collapsed cores of giant stars,” writes Archie.

Prof. Nikta Fakhri and her colleagues have placed hundreds of starfish embryos into salt-water tanks where they arrange themselves into honeycomb-like patterns at the water’s surface, reports Karmela Padavic-Callaghan for New Scientist. “These structures, which had never been seen before, may form because of the embryos’ swimming style and body shape,” explains Padavic-Callaghan.

Reporting for The Boston Globe, Hanna Kreuger highlights a graph documenting the atmospheric conditions of the exoplanet WASP-96b, which NASA included in its first release of images from the James Webb Space Telescope. Describing it as “perhaps the image that showcases Webb’s greatest triumph,” Krueger notes that the graph was created using an equation developed by Prof. Sara Seager. Seager and her team will use the telescope to peer into TRAPPIST-1e, an exoplanet widely considered to be potentially Earth-like and habitable, adds Krueger.