Space

Prof. Dennis Whyte joins Hakeem Oluseyi, host of GBH’s “Particles of Thought,” to “explore fusion's wildest applications” in space. “There are private companies now looking at ways to exploit fusion for space travel,” says Whyte. “There are also, simultaneously, companies which are looking at using the technology of fusion—particularly the plasma and magnetic technology, which were primarily developed from fusion to get significant improvements in propulsion technology as well.” 

MIT researchers have found that the gravitational pull of a red dwarf star is “siphoning material” from a brown dwarf star 300 to 500 light-years from Earth, writes reporter Will Dunham for Reuters. “This is the first observed example of this phenomenon,” says graduate student Aaron Householder. “The two objects are so close together that the entire orbit would fit inside the sun.” 

MIT astronomers have discovered a “star slowly and steadily consuming material from another low-mass object,” writes Catherine Stoddard for Fox News. “At the rate which the star is feeding, it’ll take likely hundreds of thousands, or maybe even billions of years for it to completely consume its nearby neighbor,” notes Stoddard.  

MIT researchers have discovered “a red dwarf [star] slowly and steadily consuming its orbital object, a brown dwarf [star],” in a process that could continue for millions of years, writes reporter Mary Randolph for the Scientific American. The discovery was “a happy accident,” says graduate student Aaron Householder. “We’re excited to see if we can find a star eating a planet or maybe even two planets eating each other—different types of combinations of these objects.”  

Prof. R. Scott Kemp speaks to The New York Times’ Selam Gebrekidan about the U.S. planning to build a nuclear reactor on the moon by 2030. Kemp “said accidents were more probable on the moon,” writes Gebrekidan. “With little containment, even smaller accidents would produce much more radioactive fallout. There is no wind on the moon but, with less gravity, debris can travel far after an explosion.”  

Star Trek’s original USS enterprise will be unveiled at MIT Future Fest this week, writes WBUR’s Nik DeCosta-Klipa for “Boston’s Morning Newsletter.” “The 33-inch model, which was used in the opening of each episode, has never been publicly displayed before on the East Coast. In fact, it was thought to be lost for decades before it popped up on eBay in 2023,” notes DeCosta-Klipa.  

The 33-inch original model of the ‘Starship Enterprise,’ from the 1960s “Star Trek” series, will be on display at the MIT Museum from Sept. 30 to March 28, writes reporter Mark Feeney for The Boston Globe. “We are thrilled to have the opportunity to show this unique model,” says MIT Museum Director Michael John Gorman. The model “is not merely a prop; it’s a time capsule of human aspiration.”  

Prof. Tracy Slatyer speaks to CNN’s Jacopo Prisco about the possibility that a LUX-ZEPLIN device, containing 7 active metric tons of liquid xenon at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota, detected dark matter below Earth’s surface. “If this really is a dark matter signal, this could be a key that unlocks a great deal of information about new physics, as well as giving us a new way to measure the behavior of dark matter in the neighborhood of the Earth and possibly more broadly through the cosmos,” says Slatyer.  

Cailin Plunkett speaks to the Scientific American’s Mary Randolph about her research discovering that 14% of black holes may be hierarchical mergers, made from the merger of two smaller black holes. “At minimum, we’re finding evidence that there are these highly spinning and weirdly tilted black holes in the dataset, and the most straightforward way to interpret that, the Occam’s razor answer, is that these black holes probably came from previous mergers,” says Plunkett.  

In a video, Visiting Scholar Ariel Ekblaw speaks to NBC News about floating, magnetic tiles that could be used to build structures in space. “We could self-assemble these [tiles] on the Moon,” says Ekblaw. “We could make habitats for the Artemis program. Once we have this idea of modular space tiles, there’s so many different things that we can do with self-assembly.”  

MIT researchers have discovered that peptides can remain stable and form into, reports Earth.com’s Eric Ralls. “First, we were astounded that peptides remain stable at all in concentrated sulfuric acid, for many weeks on end,” says Prof. Mei Hong, an author on the study. “Even more remarkable was that they adopt specific three-dimensional structures instead of random shapes.” 

MIT researchers have discovered that peptides “not only survive in highly concentrated sulfuric acid but take on stable 3D conformations too,” writes Chemical & Engineering News’ Fionna Samuels. “The project started with a new collaboration between [Prof. Sara] Seager and the MIT chemist [Prof.] Mei Hong,” notes Samuels. “In the years since finding phosphine signals in Venusian clouds, Seager had been working her way through the building blocks of life—nucleic acids, amino acids, and lipids—to see if any survived concentrated acid exposure.”  

MIT researchers have developed a design tool to highlight the environmental factors that can reduce anxiety, homesickness and boredom during long-duration stays in space, writes Earth.com’s Luis Arrais. “Much like how in our homes the arrangement of our furniture, the size of our rooms, the people we live with, even the shelves we use to store our belongings all contribute to our sense of wellbeing,” says graduate student Mich Lin. 

Prof. Erin Kara speaks to NPR’s Ari Daniel about how the fastest star ever observed in the galaxy, located next to the Sagittarius A* black hole, experiences how space and time are distorted by the black hole. “This is a really exciting result," says Kara. "It kind of sets the stage in the next decade to make these kind of unprecedented measurements of black holes.” 

Research Scientist Giovanni Lavezzi speaks to Scientific American’s Jonathan O’Callaghan about managing the number of satellites in Earth’s orbit. “So far [the amount] seems manageable” through active coordination, says Lavezzi. “The problem is how much can we push.”