NBC Mach’s Denise Chow discusses the upcoming hurricane season with Prof. Kerry Emanuel. “The sea level is going up, and it's almost certainly going to continue to go up,” explains Emanuel. “Even if the storms themselves don’t change, the surges are riding on an elevated sea level, and that makes them more dangerous.”
NASA’s planet-hunting satellite TESS has “snapped its first test shot — an incredibly clear, star-studded image centered on the Southern constellation of Centaurus,” writes Bruce Dorminey for Forbes. “We are truly excited about how well the TESS cameras are working,” said George Ricker, the mission’s principal investigator and a senior research scientist at MIT’s Kavli Institute.
In an article for Salon, Associate Prof. Noelle Eckley Selin and postdoc Sae Yun Kwon discuss their latest research, which examined emissions in China. They write that although mercury pollution is often associated with fish consumption, “China’s future emissions trajectory can have a measurable influence on the country’s rice methylmercury” levels, as well.
NASA’s recently launched Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) “will spend the next two years scanning 200,000 stars looking for any exoplanets orbiting them,” explains New Scientist. In about two months, once the satellite is in orbit and its cameras are tested, “there’ll just be a flood of information,” says MIT’s George Ricker, the principal investigator on TESS.
Using several comparative models, a new study led by MIT researchers reveals that China’s pledge to peak its carbon emissions by 2030 could cut down on as many as 160,000 premature deaths. “Politically, the research confirms why Chinese officials have their own internal reasons to cut CO2 even though the U.S. is abandoning Paris and disengaging internationally on climate,” writes Ben Geman for Axios.
A new study finds that a 4% reduction in China's carbon emissions by 2030 could save a total of $464.5 billion in healthcare costs, writes Chase Purdy for Quartz. “We have all these policy goals for a transition toward a more sustainable society,” says Associate Prof. Noelle Selin. “Mitigating air pollution, a leading cause of death, is one of them, and avoiding dangerous climate change is another.”
NASA has successfully launched its “planet-hunting” Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, more than a decade after MIT scientists first proposed the idea of a mission like TESS, reports Ashley Stickland for CNN. “NASA believes that TESS will build on Kepler’s momentum and open the study of exoplanets in unprecedented ways,” writes Strickland.
After launching into space on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, “NASA's newest planet-hunter, the TESS space telescope, will observe roughly 85 percent of the sky to find planets orbiting bright, nearby stars,” writes Jay Bennett of Popular Mechanics. "Never underestimate how ingenious nature actually is," said MIT’s George Ricker, who is the principal investigator on TESS.
The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will enter an unusual, highly elliptical orbit around the Earth to capture images of about 20,000 new exoplanet candidates, writes Robbie Gonzalez of Wired. "We are setting the stage for the future of exoplanet research—not just for the 21st century, but the 22nd century and beyond," says MIT Kavli Institute senior research scientist George Ricker, leader of the TESS mission.
Loren Grush of The Verge examines the potential findings of NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which “will stare out at the cosmos searching for never-before-seen worlds” for two years, after launching on April 16. “[W]e’ll have a whole catalog of these planets in an order of priority for follow-up,” says Prof. Sara Seager, deputy science director for TESS.
With the launch of NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite near, Elise Takahama of The Boston Globe spoke with Roland Vanderspek, a principal research scientist at MIT’s Kavli Institute, about the mission. “I’m hoping we get some really beautiful images,” said Vanderspek, “and enable good science all around the world.”
Developed by MIT scientists, the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) aims to discover thousands of nearby exoplanets including about 50 Earth-sized ones, reports the Press Trust of India. "We're on this scenic tour of the whole sky, and in some ways we have no idea what we will see. It's like we're making a treasure map," says Natalia Guerrero, technical associate at the Kavli Institute.
Writing in The Boston Globe, Elise Takahama describes new research by MIT’s Sukrit Ranjan and colleagues that suggests sulfudic anion molecules provide evidence for the origins of life. Takahama also highlights the varying disciplines in the research team, which joined molecular chemistry experts with planetary scientists. “One of the most exciting things,” says Ranjan, is “how different communities, when they talk to each other, can really make dramatic advances.”
A study by MIT researchers examines molecules present in the early atmosphere to better understand how living things came into existence, reports David Grossman of Popular Mechanics. “Preliminary work by the researchers show that sulfidic anions would likely have quickened the chemical reactions required to convert extremely basic prebiotic molecules into RNA,” explains Grossman.
Set to launch on April 16th, NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), will be used to identify “planets that are close enough to Earth for astronomers to explore them in detail,” writes Alexandra Witze for Nature. “It’s not so much the numbers of planets that we care about, but the fact that they are orbiting nearby stars,” says Prof. Sara Seager, deputy science director for TESS.