Space

Numerical simulation of the last instances of a neutron star and black hole merger, as the neutron star is destroyed by the tidal pull of the black hole (at the center of the disk).

Could gravitational waves reveal how fast our universe is expanding?

Signals from rare black hole-neutron star pairs could pinpoint rate at which universe is growing, researchers say.

July 12, 2018

Alexa Aguilar is co-president of MIT’s Graduate Women in Aerospace Engineering (GWAE) group. “It's important to me that women have this kind of support and encouragement because I wouldn’t be here without the support of women,” she says.

Networks in aerospace

Graduate student Alexa Aguilar helps tiny satellites communicate and builds connections in her academic community.

June 22, 2018

NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope orbits the Sun in concert with the Earth, slowly drifting away from Earth.

Nearly 80 exoplanet candidates identified in record time

Search considered successful “dress rehearsal” for exoplanet hunter TESS.

June 20, 2018

NASA’s Curiosity Mars Rover snaps a self-portrait on Vera Rubin Ridge.

3 Questions: Roger Summons on finding organic matter on Mars

Discovery adds to evidence suggesting that Mars was at one time habitable.

June 7, 2018

This test image from one of the four cameras aboard the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) captures a swath of the southern sky along the plane of our galaxy. More than 200,000 stars are visible. The image, which is centered in the constellation Centaurus, includes dark tendrils from the Coal Sack Nebula and the bright emission nebula Ced 122 (upper right).The bright star at bottom cente...

TESS takes initial test image

Exoplanet-seeking satellite developed by MIT swings by moon toward final orbit.

May 18, 2018

An artist concept depicts TESS in front of a lava planet orbiting its host star.

Ushering in the next phase of exoplanet discovery

Professor Sara Seager previews a new era of discovery as a leader of the TESS mission, which is expected to find some 20,000 extrasolar planets.

May 3, 2018

A set of flight camera electronics on one of the TESS cameras, developed by the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research (MKI), will transmit exoplanet data from the camera to a computer aboard the spacecraft that will process it before transmitting it back to scientists on Earth.

TESS readies for takeoff

Satellite developed by MIT aims to discover thousands of nearby exoplanets, including at least 50 Earth-sized ones.

April 12, 2018

A snapshot of a simulation showing a binary black hole formed in the center of a dense star cluster.

Dense stellar clusters may foster black hole megamergers

Black holes in these environments could combine repeatedly to form objects bigger than anything a single star could produce.

April 10, 2018

Researchers have found that a class of molecules called sulfidic anions may have been abundant in Earth’s lakes and rivers.

Brewing up Earth’s earliest life

Large concentrations of sulfites and bisulfites in shallow lakes may have set the stage for Earth’s first biological molecules.

April 8, 2018

MIT Haystack Observatory in Westford, Massachusetts (pictured), and the Onsala Space Observatory in Onsala, Sweden are celebrating 50 years since the first transatlantic geodetic very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) observations.

Celebrating 50 years of transatlantic geodetic radio science

Researchers mark a silver anniversary for a space geodesy technique pioneered at MIT.

April 5, 2018

Left to right: David Niño, senior lecturer in the MIT Gordon Engineering Leadership Program, moderated a discussion with Ellen Ochoa (center), former astronaut and current director of NASA's Johnson Space Center, and MIT Professor Dava Newman, former NASA deputy administrator, about their experiences as leaders with the U.S. space agency.

Lessons in NASA leadership

Johnson Space Center Director Ellen Ochoa and AeroAstro Professor Dava Newman share experiences as leaders of the U.S. space program.

April 5, 2018

A young sun-like star encircled by its planet-forming disk of gas and dust.

Computer searches telescope data for evidence of distant planets

Machine-learning system uses physics principles to augment data from NASA crowdsourcing project.

March 29, 2018

Artist's impression of an inner accretion flow and a jet from a supermassive black hole when it is actively feeding, for example, from a star that it recent tore apart.

Scientists detect radio echoes of a black hole feeding on a star

Signals suggest black hole emits a jet of energy proportional to the stellar material it gobbles up.

March 18, 2018

Artist's rendering of the universe's first, massive, blue stars in gaseous filaments, with the cosmic microwave background (CMB) at the edges. Using radio observations of the distant universe, NSF-funded researchers Judd Bowman of Arizona State University, Alan Rogers of MIT, and others discovered the influence of such early stars on primordial gas. The team inferred the stars' presence from dimmi...

Astronomers detect earliest evidence yet of hydrogen in the universe

Emitted just 180 million years after Big Bang, signal indicates universe was much colder than expected.

February 28, 2018

Rendering of the gas velocity in a thin slice of 100 kiloparsec thickness (in the viewing direction), centered on the second most massive galaxy cluster in the TNG100 calculation. Where the image is black, the gas is hardly moving, while white regions have velocities that exceed 1,000 kilometers per second. The image contrasts the gas motions in cosmic filaments against the fast chaotic motions tr...

Modeling the universe

MIT's Mark Vogelsberger and an international astrophysics team have created a new model pointing to black holes’ role in galaxy formation.

January 31, 2018

MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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