CNBC reporter Charlie Wood features tProf. Connor Coley's work developing a new system that could be used to help automate molecule manufacturing. “It tries to understand, based on those patterns, what kind of transformations should work for new molecules it’s never seen before,” says Coley.
Graduate student David Berardo has demonstrated how science enthusiasts can measure the speed of light at home using a bar of chocolate and the microwave, reports Caroline Delbert for Popular Mechanics. After microwaving the chocolate for about 20 seconds, “what you’ll see is a specific pattern of melting that shows the wavelength of the microwaves that power your oven.”
STAT reporter Elizabeth Cooney spotlights a new working paper by Profs. Martin Bazant and John Bush that explores the risk of airborne transmission of Covid-19. “Depending on ventilation, mask use, air filtration, and other variables, any indoor space may carry either low or high risk of transmission,” Bazant explains.
CBS Boston reporter Juli McDonald spotlights how NASA's ORISIS-Rex spacecraft carried a key imagine instrument, designed and built by students from MIT and Harvard, on its mission to sample the surface of the asteroid Bennu. Prof. Richard Binzel, co-investigator for the mission, explains that, the device was developed to “measure the asteroid in X-ray light, which is part of the process of figuring out what the asteroid is made out of.”
When NASA’s OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft touched down on the asteroid Bennu, onboard was the REgolith X-Ray Imaging Spectrometer (REXIS), a device built by students from MIT and Harvard, write Breanne Kovatch and Andrew Stanton for The Boston Globe. “We as scientists feel the drive of curiosity and the thrill of exploration and it’s humbling and satisfying to think that we can share that sense of exploration with the world,” explains Prof. Richard Binzel, a co-investigator for the mission.
A study co-authored by senior lecturer Richard Price explores the physics behind a spiraling football pass, reports Kenneth Chang for The New York Times. “I went on to apply some pretty simple mathematics and do what physicists do," says Price. “Which is to try and throw away all of the irrelevant details and get the heart of something.”
Institute Professor Emeritus Mario Molina, who former Vice President Al Gore called a “trailblazing pioneer of the climate movement,” has died at age 77, reports John Schwartz for The New York Times. Molina shared a “Nobel Prize for work showing the damage that chemicals used in hair spray and refrigerators wreak on the ozone layer, which led to one of the most successful international efforts to combat environmental risk.”
Guardian reporter Fiona Harvey memorializes the life and work of Institute Professor Emeritus Mario Molina, known for his research uncovering the impact of CFCs on the ozone layer. Harvey notes that Molina’s work, “will also help to avert ruin from that other dire emergency, the climate crisis.”
Wall Street Journal Jason Gay spotlights a new study co-authored by Senior Lecturer Richard Price that explores the physics behind the spiraling flight of a thrown football. “Physicists get interested in stuff that bores other people,” Price explains. “When you combine torque with the gyroscopic effect of the angular momentum, the two work together, so that in an average sense, the spin axis is very close to tangent to the path.”
Institute Professor Emeritus Mario Molina, known for his work demonstrating the risk of CFCs to the ozone layer, has died at age 77, reports Emily Langer for The Washington Post. Langer notes that Molina was also “a prominent voice in debates about how best to combat climate change.”
Writing for The Boston Globe, Prof. Eric Lander, president and founding director of the Broad Institute, argues that the U.S. needs to take steps to ensure that "science benefits society and society trusts science…In the 2020s, the decision-making must include a much wider range of people, who will need to be prepared to grapple thoughtfully with hard choices.”
CBS Boston spotlights how Andrea Ghez ’87 has been awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics for her work discovering a supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. “It really represents the basic research - you don’t always know how it is going to affect our lives here on Earth, but it is pushing the frontier of our knowledge forward," says Ghez, "both from the point of view of pure physics (understanding what a black hole is), and then also their astrophysical world in the formation and evolution of galaxies.”
Andrea Ghez ’87 has been selected as one of the winners of this year’s Nobel Prize in Physics for her work advancing our understanding of black holes. "Black holes, because they are so hard to understand, is what makes them so appealing,'' says Ghez. “I really think of science as a big, giant puzzle.”
Scientific American reporter Robin Lloyd spotlights how MIT researchers have developed a new app that “allows users to adjust parameters such as mask usage, ventilation, and room size to estimate the indoor transmission risk for SARS-CoV-2 among a given number of people in various types of spaces.”
Scientific American reporter Daniel Garisto spotlights how a team of MIT researchers has uncovered hints of anomalous activity in heavy isotopes. “We’re not claiming to have discovered anything like a new particle,” says Prof. Vladan Vuletić. “Most likely, we are measuring new nuclear physics, but there is the possibility of something else going on.”