Physics World reporter Michael Banks chronicles the life and work of MIT Prof. Emeritus and gravitational wave pioneer Rainer Weiss. “Weiss came up with the idea of detecting gravitational waves by measuring changes in distance as tiny as 10–18 m via an interferometer several kilometers long,” writes Banks. “His proposal eventually led to the formation of the twin Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), which first detected such waves in 2015.”
Writing for Nature, Prof. Danielle Wood makes the case that both public and commercial satellite missions are needed to understand and protect the environment. “Although commercial companies have much to offer, the public sector must still lead the design, operation and management of satellites, and remain committed to tracking changes on Earth comprehensively, openly and transparently,” Wood writes.
Professor Emeritus Rainer Weiss, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who was honored for his work "developing a device that uses gravity to detect intergalactic events, like black holes colliding, and who helped confirm two central hypotheses about the universe,” has died at 92, reports Dylan Loeb McClain for The New York Times. In an earlier interview, Weiss reflected upon the wonder unlocked by LIGO: “With gravitational waves, you have a new way to look at [the] universe. You can see all that nature has in store. So now comes the question: What do you want to find out?”
After observing the collision between a supernova and a black hole, researchers at MIT and elsewhere are rethinking our understanding of the life and death of stars, reports Jeanine Santucci for USA Today. "One of the only reasons that we were able to make this discovery and understand how scientifically interesting it was was through the combination of researchers in machine learning and in astrophysics," says postdoctoral scholar Alex Gagliano.
With the help of a newly designed machine learning algorithm, researchers at MIT and elsewhere have spotted a “never-before-seen type of supernova that involves a nearby black hole,” reports Andrew Paul for Popular Science. “We’re now entering an era where we can automatically catch these rare events as they happen, not just after the fact,” said postdoctoral scholar Alex Gagliano. “That means we can finally start connecting the dots between how a star lives and how it dies, and that’s incredibly exciting.”
Using an AI algorithm, researchers at MIT and elsewhere have been able to identify a previously unobserved explosion in the universe that they consider a “new flavor of supernova,” reports Kasha Patel for The Washington Post. “We think that statistically we’re overdue for a supernova in our own galaxy,” says postdoctoral scholar Alex Gagliano. “There are many people that are trying to establish early warning systems so that as soon as our telescopes pick up on something unusual, we can all aim our telescopes in that location.”
Researchers at MIT have proposed that liquids, such as ionic fluids, are “what’s important for extraterrestrial habitability, and not just water,” reports Gayoung Lee for Gizmodo. If confirmed, this research would “dramatically expand what’s considered the ‘habitable zone’ among known exoplanets,” writes Lee. “By current standards, the habitable zone is defined as the band within planetary systems in which liquid water can remain stable on the surface. When it comes to life, we’re understandably biased towards water; all life as we know it depends on it.”
Graduate student Megan Masterson speaks with CBS Eye on the World hosts John Batchelor and David Livingston about her research on tidal disruption events. “These events were first theorized in the 1970s, first discovered in the 1990s with x-ray wavelengths,” explains Masterson. “But today, what James Webb is doing is allowing us to detect these events in the infrared band. And so, what we’re seeing here are previously dormant black holes that were kind of lying at the center for their galaxies doing pretty much nothing suddenly become active.”
Prof. Kerri Cahoy takes Bloomberg Wall Street Week host David Westin on an out-of-this-world journey into how a college internship inspired her research on space and satellites, why she loves the challenge of satellite engineering, and what she sees in store for the future of the field. “There is a lot of joy and pride and skill building and challenge in the field,” says Cahoy. “That’s one of the reasons why I love it."
Guy Consolmagno '74, SM '75, director of the Vatican Observatory, speaks with Rebecca Mead of The New Yorker about his journey from suburban Detroit to MIT to his current role as the Pope’s Astronomer, and the intersection between science and religion. “If people think you have to be a weird kind of scientist to be religious, or a weird kind of religious to be a scientist, then we’ve missed the point,” says Consolmagno. “The point is that our faith—our ordinary faith—fits perfectly with our ordinary, but wonderful, delightful science.”
Prof. Julien de Wit speaks with CNN reporter Ashley Strickland about asteroid 2024 YR4 and the importance of monitoring and studying asteroids to help keep Earth safe.
Ten years after scientists detected gravitational waves for the first time using the LIGO detectors, Rachel Feltman of Scientific American's “Science Quickly” podcast visits the MIT LIGO Lab to speak with Prof. Matt Evans about the future of gravitational wave research and why Cosmic Explorer, the next generation gravitational wave observatory, will help unearth secrets of the early universe. “We get to look back towards the beginning of the universe, in some sense, with gravitational waves as we look at these sources that are farther and farther away,” says Evans. “With Cosmic Explorer we’ll have not just one or two but hundreds of thousands of sources from the distant universe. So it’s a really exciting way to explore the universe as a whole by looking at this stellar graveyard.”
Mashable reporter Elisha Sauers spotlights some of the exoplanets identified thus far in 2025, including BD+05 4868 Ab, a rocky exoplanet discovered by MIT astronomers that has a “comet-like tail stretching more than 5.5 million miles.” BD+05 4868 Ab is “about the size of Mercury and orbits its star every 30.5 hours,” Sauers explains. “At roughly 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, the planet appears to be shedding material — about one Mount Everest’s worth per orbit — that becomes its tail.”
Using the Hubble Space Telescope, Prof. Julien de Wit and his colleagues have “detected microflares coming from the TRAPPIST-1 star every hour or so that last for several minutes,” reports Alex Wilkins for New Scientist. “These tiny bursts of radiation appear to interfere with our ability to observe the light that passes through the planets’ atmospheres – if they exist – thwarting the main method of detecting what chemicals might be in any atmospheres,” explains Wilkins.
Gizmodo reporter Isaac Schultz writes that MIT astronomers have uncovered the most distant galaxy ever detected, dubbed MoM-z14, using the James Webb Space Telescope. Schultz notes that MoM-z14 “isn’t just some dim smudge, either—it’s unexpectedly luminous, echoing a growing theme in JWST’s discoveries. MoM-z14 now joins a strange new class of young galaxies that shine far more brightly than anyone expected.”