Boston Globe reporter Caroline Enos spotlights the contributions of MIT researchers to the Mars 2020 mission, in particular the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment or MOXIE. “MOXIE could have a big impact on future missions if it is successful,” Enos explains.
Haystack’s Michael Hecht, the principal investigator for the Mars MOXIE experiment, speaks with Max G. Levy of Smithsonian about the challenges involved in developing MOXIE’s oxygen-producing technology. “We want to show we can run [MOXIE] in the daytime, and the nighttime, in the winter, and in the summer, and when it’s dusty out," says Hecht, "in all of the different environments."
Forbes contributor Bruce Dominey writes that a study by MIT researchers finds global ice ages may have been triggered by a rapid decrease in the amount of solar radiation reaching Earth. “Past Snowball glaciations are more likely to have been triggered by changes in effective solar radiation than by changes in the carbon cycle,” writes Dominey.
Prof. Tanja Bosak speaks with Verge reporter Loren Grush about the significance of the Mars 2020 mission and the Perseverance rover’s quest to bring back samples of Martian material to Earth. “This is really a unique — really a once-in-a-lifetime — opportunity to get samples from a known location on Mars,” says Bosak.
Verge reporter Justine Calma writes that states in the Midwest and Great Lakes region could see $4.7 billion in health benefits by maintaining current renewable energy standards. “This research shows that renewables pay for themselves through health benefits alone,” explains Emil Dimanchev, senior research associate at MIT’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research.
A new study by MIT researchers examining the impact of energy policies that reduce fine particulates in the air finds that there are “substantial health benefits in Rust Belt states when utilities are required to supply escalating amounts of renewable power,” reports Ben Geman for Axios.
The Economist explores how the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), an MIT-led NASA mission, has identified a number of new exoplanets and, in the process, helped astronomers and scientists unearth new details about our universe. This latest discovery, according to The Economist, “will help answer some of the biggest questions in the rapidly growing science of exoplanetology.”
Profs. Daniel Rothman and Daniela Rus contributed to a Boston Globe piece exploring what the next big moonshot challenge should be. Rothman noted that, “We need to understand how the Earth system responds to environmental change,” while Rus expressed a desire to explore interspecies communication and the development of intelligent clothing.
A study by Prof. Dan Rothman finds that increasing greenhouse gas emission rates could trigger a mass extinction in the ocean, reports Priya Shukla for Forbes. Shukla writes that Rothman found if a certain carbon threshold “is breached, it would take tens of thousands of years for the oceans to return to their original unperturbable state.”
A study by Prof. Daniel Rothman finds that if carbon emissions exceed a critical threshold, it could lead to a mass extinction, reports Martin Finucane for The Boston Globe. "We should limit carbon dioxide emissions,” says Rothman. “The carbon cycle is a non-linear system, and if you perturb it, surprising things may happen.”
Boston Globe reporter Martin Finucane writes that a team of scientists, including MIT researchers, has uncovered evidence of a large mass, which could be the metallic core of an asteroid, under a crater on the dark side of the moon. “The results of this study provide new information on the violent history of our nearest celestial neighbor,” explains Prof. Maria Zuber, MIT’s vice president for research.
A new study co-authored by MIT researchers finds that factories in China have been emitting a compound banned under the Montreal Protocol that destroys the Earth’s ozone layer, reports Yen Nee Lee for CNBC. The researchers found that “China accounted for 40% to 60% of the global increase in trichlorofluoromethane, or CFC-11, emissions between 2014 and 2017.”
Axios reporter Andrew Freeman writes that a new study co-authored by MIT researchers finds that factories in northern China have been using the banned CFC-11 compound, which eats away at the Earth’s ozone layer. Prof. Ronald Prinn explains that CFC-11 stays in the atmosphere for 52 years and even “with no emissions, it still lingers on and on and on.”
A new study by MIT researchers provides evidence that life on Earth may have begun in shallow bodies of water, reports Martin Finucane for The Boston Globe. The researchers found that ponds “could have held high concentrations of a key ingredient, nitrogen, while that would have been less likely in the ocean,” Finucane explains.
Boston Globe reporter Martin Finucane writes about how TESS has discovered an Earth-sized planet orbiting a star 52 light years from Earth. “The new planet HD, 21749c, orbits the star HD 21749. It circles the star in 7.8 days,” Finucane explains. “The planet is probably rocky and uninhabitable, with temperatures on the surface of up to 800 degrees.”