George Smoot '66, PhD '70, the 2006 recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics, has died at the age of 80, reports Kasha Patel for The Washington Post. Smoot’s work “helped take an image of the universe in its infancy, providing strong support for the Big Bang theory and new insight into the origins of the cosmos,” writes Patel.
Visiting Scholar Ariel Ekblaw SM '17, PhD '20 speaks with WBUR’s On Point host Meghna Chakrabarti about her academic career, the space industry and her new non-profit company the Aurelia Institute. The company is “dedicated to building humanity’s future in space for the benefit of the earth,” says Chakrabarti. Additionally, the company plans to use “space infrastructure, satellites, and large scale space structures in orbit to do really profound things for day-to-day life on Earth,” adds Ekblaw.
Using the James Webb Telescope, researchers at MIT and elsewhere are studying the potential presence of “an Earth-like atmosphere on an exoplanet for the first time,” reports Jacopo Prisco for CNN. “The planet is part of a planetary system about 40 light-years away from Earth called TRAPPIST-1,” explains Prisco.
Prof. Richard Binzel spoke at the Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) about efforts to create a system that could help deflect deadly asteroids away from Earth, reports Alex Wilkins for New Scientist. “If we had to deal with an actual asteroid threat,” says Binzel, “we would certainly want to know these properties, like the spin or tumbling state [of an asteroid].”
Visiting Scholar Ariel Ekblaw SM '17, PhD '20 co-founded Rendezvous Robotics, a space infrastructure company developing new space technology, reports Aria Almalhodaei for TechCrunch. “The company is commercializing a technology called ‘tesserae,’ flat-packed modular tiles that can launch in dense stacks and magnetically latch to form structures on orbit,” writes Almalhodaei. “With a software command, the tiles are designed to unlatch and rearrange themselves when the mission changes.”
Writing for Nature, Bruce Allen pays tribute to Prof. Emeritus Rainer Weiss, a pioneering physicist who “spearheaded the construction of the LIGO observatory to detect Einstein’s predicted ripples in space-time [and] leaves a legacy of persistence and mentorship.” Allen recalls how, decades earlier, Weiss rejoiced in a moment of discovery with him. “This is why we do science,” Weiss said. “Not for prizes or awards — that’s all nonsense. It’s for the satisfaction when something you’ve struggled with finally works.” Weiss, Allen emphasizes, was “a scientist driven by curiosity, persistence and the joy of understanding how the Universe works.”
Wall Street Journal reporter Jon Mooallem memorializes the life and work of Prof. Emeritus Rainer Weiss, from his time hacking surplus military electronics into sophisticated hi-fi receivers as a teenager to dreaming up the concept for the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). Mooallem notes that Weiss and his LIGO colleagues’ breakthrough in achieving the first-ever detection of gravitational waves “has provided a new way of looking at the universe, of observing, through the charting of gravity waves emitted by moving objects, what was previously unobservable or unknown—a milestone that is frequently compared with Galileo’s invention of the telescope.”
Prof. Rainer Weiss, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist whose research helped “unlock the secrets of the universe,” has died at 92, reports Bryan Marquard for The Boston Globe. “He really is, by a large margin, the most influential person this field has seen. And will see,” said Caltech Prof. Emeritus Kip Thorne. Nergis Mavalvala, dean of the MIT School of Science who conducted her doctoral research with Weiss, shared that Weiss “worked on three different things, and every one of them has changed the way we understand physics and the universe.”
Prof. Emeritus Rainer Weiss, a “renowned experimental physicist” who was “integral in confirming the existence of tiny ripples in spacetime called ‘gravitational waves,’” has died, reports Robert Lea for Space.com. “Remarkably, in confirming the existence of gravitational waves, Weiss both proved Einstein right and wrong at the same time,” writes Lea. “Einstein had been convinced that these ripples in spacetime were so faint that no apparatus on Earth could ever be sensitive enough to detect them, showing just how revolutionary LIGO was.”
Tri-City Herald reporter Annette Cary memorializes the life and legacy of MIT Prof. Emeritus Rainer Weiss, a “renowned experimental physicist and Nobel laureate,” who was “key to [the] world’s first gravitational wave discovery.” At the opening ceremony in June 2022 for the LIGO Exploration Center in Hanford, Washington, Weiss relayed how life is more interesting if you have a deeper understanding of the world around you and “how science does its tricks.”
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.”