School of Science

Chronicle visits MIT to learn more about how the Institute “nurtures groundbreaking efforts, reminding us that creativity and science thrive together, inspiring future advancements in engineering, medicine, and beyond.” Prof. Julien de Wit and Research Scientist Artem Burdanov discuss their planetary defense efforts aimed at identifying small asteroids that could pose a threat to Earth, and Prof. Canan Dağdeviren demonstrates her work developing ultrasound devices to detect the earliest stages of breast cancer. “Big ideas have a way of breaking out of conventional boundaries," says Chronicle host Anthony Everett, "just part of what makes MIT one giant laboratory of groundbreaking ideas."

Berly McCoy and Sushmita Pathak of NPR’s Short Wave spotlight research by postdoctoral associate Funing Li and his team on tornado occurrence. The researchers used “historical data to model and simulate the interaction between land and the atmosphere,” explains McCoy. 

Aaron Leanhardt PhD '03 speaks with ABC News about his work developing the “torpedo bat,” a new baseball bat design that “moves the barrel – or the thickest part – closer than usual to the batter’s hand, putting more wood in the area where the hitter is most likely to hit the ball.” Leanhardt explains: “The world of data analytics, physics, math, etc., can have such a positive impact on the game of baseball and generate so much excitement.”  

Wall Street Journal reporter Jared Diamond spotlights how Aaron Leanhardt PhD ’03 went from an MIT graduate student who was part of a research team that “cooled sodium gas to the lowest temperature ever recorded in human history” to inventor of the torpedo baseball bat, “perhaps the most significant development in bat technology in decades.” Leanhardt’s new baseball bat design is aimed at helping “batters make more contact at a time when strikeouts are at an all-time high,” Diamond explains. “The result is a product that better resembles a bowling pin than a traditional bat, redistributing the weight to the area where players most often make contact with the ball.”

Scientific American reporter Nic Flemming spotlights research by Prof. Ömer Yilmaz and his team, which explores the impact of fasting on intestinal stem cells. “Both caloric restriction and fasting improved intestinal stem-cell activity and health, but the mechanisms involved are very different,” says Yilmaz. 

Using his background in physics, Aaron Leanhardt PhD '03 redesigned the modern baseball bat to “improve the frequency and quality of contact, based on where the batters most frequently hit the ball,” reports Alex Speier for The Boston Globe. 

USA Today reporter Steve Gardner spotlights the “torpedo bat” – a baseball bat developed by Aaron Leanhardt PhD '03. The new design moves “more of the wood toward the sweet spot of the bat, where players try to make contact and where the bat will produce optimal results,” explains Gardner. 

Prof. David Pritchard speaks with NBC News reporter David K. Li about his former student Aaron Leanhardt PhD '03 and his work developing the “torpedo” baseball bat. “It just takes some outsiders, like Aaron, who has a Ph.D. from MIT and really understands physics and knows what's going on, to be the sort of guy who drives something under the radar and see if it works," says Pritchard. 

Aaron Leanhardt PhD '03 has designed a new baseball bat, dubbed the torpedo bat, in which wood is moved “lower down the barrel after the label, and shapes the end a little like a bowling pin,” reports the Associated Press. “At the end of the day it’s about the batter not the bat,” says Leanhardt. “It’s about the hitter and their hitting coaches. I’m happy to always help those guys get a little bit better but ultimately it’s up to them to put good swings and grind it out every day. So, credit to those guys.”

Aaron Leanhardt PhD '03 has developed a new baseball bat that has “moved the fattest part from the end to the area where most contact is made,” reports Steve Henson for The Los Angeles Times.

Aaron Leanhardt PhD '03 speaks with The Athletic reporter Brendan Kuty about his work developing a new “torpedo-like” baseball bat. The bats “are custom-made to player preferences and are designed so that the densest part of the bat is where that particular hitter most often makes contact with the baseball,” writes Kuty. Says Leanhardt of the bat’s design: “It’s just about making the bat as heavy and as fat as possible in the area where you’re trying to do damage on the baseball.” 

MIT researchers have observed “Hofstadter’s butterfly” – the quantum theory that proposes “under the right conditions, tiny electrons in a quantum system could produce an energy spectrum composed of fractals” that would resemble a butterfly, reports Gayoung Lee for Scientific American. The discovery, “emerged from the complex quantum dance of electrons sandwiched between two microscopic layers of graphene,” explains Lee. The results “were unexpected [as] the researchers involved weren’t even trying to hatch Hofstadter’s butterfly from its quantum chrysalis.” 

A new study by researchers at MIT and elsewhere explores “children’s exploitation of language ‘loopholes’ — instances in which kids technically do what adults ask of them but completely violate the true intent of the request,” reports Charlotte Hu for Scientific American. “Sometimes you don’t want to cooperate, but it might feel risky to outright refuse,” explains former postdoc Sophie Bridgers. “We started to be curious about the strategies [kids] used to handle this tension.” 

MIT has been named among the top-performing intuitions in the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2024, reports The Economic Times. MIT ranks “first in 12 subjects, maintaining its stronghold in fields like engineering, technology, and computer science,” explains Economic Times. 

Prof. Sara Seager, postdoctoral fellow Iaroslav Iakubivskyi and Claire Isabel Webb PhD '20 have designed Phainoterra, an imaginary planet “with a habitable sulfuric acid-based biochemistry” using “extensive scientific research and cross-checking against known physical precepts,” reports Leslie Katz for Forbes. The creation of Phainoterra is a part of “Proxima Kosmos, a new project that unites scientists, including one from NASA, with designers and sci-fi writers to create a speculative solar system consistent with the laws of astronomy and physics.”