9 D Universe

Astronomers with the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX) have used data from the project to make the largest, most accurate 3D map yet of the light emitted by excited hydrogen in the early universe, 9 billion to 11 billion years ago. This specific form of light, called Lyman alpha, [...]

The heads of university physics departments in the UK have published an open letter expressing their “deep concern” about funding changes announced late last year by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the umbrella organisation for the UK’s research councils. Addressed to science minister Patrick Vallance, the letter says the cuts are [...]

The Earth’s magnetic poles have reversed 540 times over the past 170 million years. Usually, these reversals are relatively speedy in geological terms, taking around 10,000 years to complete. Now, however, scientists in the US, France and Japan have found evidence of much slower reversals deep in Earth’s geophysical past. [...]

Fusion adopter Debbie Callahan is chief strategy officer at Focused Energy. (Courtesy: Focused Energy) With the world’s energy demands increasing, and our impact on the climate becoming ever clearer, the search is on for greener, cleaner energy production. That’s why research into fusion energy is undergoing something of a renaissance. Construction of [...]

This winter in Bristol has been even gloomier than usual – so I was really looking forward to the Bristol Light Festival 2026. We went on the last evening of the event (28 February) and we were blessed with dry weather and warmish temperatures. The festival featured 10 illuminated installations that [...]

In 1942 physicists in Chicago, led by Enrico Fermi, famously produced the world’s first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. But it was to be another nine years before electricity was generated from fission for the first time. That landmark event occurred in 1951 when the Experimental Breeder Reactor-I in southern Idaho [...]

Vol. 7079. The Sun and the Heliosphere Three-dimensional mapping of coronal magnetic field and plasma parameters in a solar flare by Tatyana Kaltman, Sijie Yu, Gregory D. Fleishman, Daniel F. Ryan 2026, A&A, 707, A158 The study presents reconstructed 3D maps of the magnetic field strength, Alfvén speed, and plasma beta in [...]

Congratulations on winning the 2025 JPhys Materials Early Career Award. What does this mean for you at this stage of your career? I am really grateful to the Editorial Board of JPhys Materials for this award and for highlighting our work. This is a key recognition for the whole team [...]

This webinar explores how smart shielding is transforming the design of Leksell Gamma Knife radiosurgery environments, shifting from bunker‑like spaces to open, patient‑centric treatment rooms. Drawing from dose‑rate maps, room‑dimension considerations and modern shielding innovations, we’ll demonstrate how treatment rooms can safely incorporate features such as windows and natural light, [...]

Yale junior Donglin Wu leads a new study showing that some of the biggest stars in the universe shed some of the smallest dust particles. It's fitting that Wu's first major scientific journal article as lead author focuses on stardust—tiny solid grains that form from stellar winds, drift into interstellar [...]

Author(s): David EhrensteinAn oil droplet within a watery fluid becomes nonspherical at certain temperatures—reversibly transforming from a hexagon to a six-pointed star.[Physics 19, 29] Published Fri Feb 27, 2026 [...]

Some of the universe's most extreme explosions leave behind almost no trace. The original explosion is unseen, but our observations can capture the long-lived echo it leaves behind as the shock front plows into its surrounding environment. In new research accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal, we have discovered [...]

Reactions ranged from disappointment to enthusiasm On Feb. 18, MIT faculty gathered in Huntington Hall (10-250) for the first faculty meeting of 2026, where they discussed the recent proposal released by the Task Force on the Undergraduate Academic Program (TFUAP). The set of recommendations, made public on Feb. 5, outlines sweeping [...]

Author(s): Sophia ChenA group of physicists are developing a quantum computer that’s entirely open source, from hardware to software[Physics 19, 24] Published Thu Feb 26, 2026 [...]

Author(s): Ryan WilkinsonContrary to previous suggestions, hydrodynamic interactions impede the clustering of tiny biological and artificial swimmers.[Physics 19, s25] Published Wed Feb 25, 2026 [...]

Vol. 7073. Cosmology (including clusters of galaxies) STRAWBERRY: Finding haloes in the gravitational potential by Tamara R. G. Richardson, Jens Stücker, Raul E. Angulo 2026, A&A, 707, A117 Numerical simulations of structure formation in a cosmological context provide an ideal testbed for studying galaxy formation and evolution. Typically, underlying dark matter density [...]

For the first time, a much younger version of the sun has been caught red-handed blowing bubbles in the galaxy by astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The bubble—called an "astrosphere"—completely surrounds the juvenile star. Winds from the star's surface are blowing up the bubble and filling it with hot [...]

Our solar system hosts almost 900 known moons; more than 400 orbit the eight planets while the remaining orbit dwarf planets, asteroids, and Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs). Of these, only a handful are targets for astrobiology and could potentially support life as we know it, including Jupiter's moons Europa and Ganymede, [...]

Annual award honors early-career researchers for creativity, innovation, and research accomplishments. Eight MIT faculty and 22 additional MIT alumni are among 126 early-career researchers honored with 2026 Sloan Research Fellowships by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The fellowships honor exceptional researchers at U.S. and Canadian educational institutions, whose creativity, innovation, and research accomplishments [...]

New research by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and the National Science Foundation's National Center for Atmospheric Research (NSF-NCAR) has developed a new tool providing a first step toward the ability to forecast space weather weeks in advance, instead of just hours. This advance warning could allow agencies and industries to [...]

Researchers at the University of Hawaiʻi have uncovered new clues about how energy moves through the sun's outer atmosphere, using one of nature's rarest events as their window: total solar eclipses. Drawing on more than a decade of eclipse observations, a team led by Shadia Habbal at the Institute for [...]

This Student Spotlight interweaves two diverse perspectives on both physics and the broader MIT experience Trigger warning: mention of suicide   Hello! The Student Spotlight column is back — with an alumni twist this time. Instead of just one student, we’re putting two Course 8s in conversation with each other. Patrick Mang ’98 is [...]

Vol. 7066. Interstellar and circumstellar matter Interaction of the central jet with the surrounding gas in the protostellar outflow from IRAS 04166+2706 by M. Tafalla, D. Johnstone, J. Santiago-García, Q. Zhang, H. Shang, C.-F. Lee 2026, A&A, 706, A248 How protostellar jets structure and interact with their surroundings is a major challenge [...]

Vol. 7064. Extragalactic astronomy Search and analysis of giant radio galaxies with associated nuclei (SAGAN). VI. When jets meet filaments -- Environmental imprints on the growth of giant radio galaxies by Mousumi Mahato, Elmo Tempel, Shishir Sankhyayan, Pratik Dabhade, Kshitij Chavan 2026, A&A, 706, A310 Galaxy formation relies on a number of [...]

The discovery of the LHS 1903 planetary system, located 116 light-years away, has challenged traditional models of planetary development by revealing an “inside-out” configuration where a rocky “super-Earth” orbits further out than its gaseous neighbors. Unlike our solar system, where rocky planets are clustered near the sun and gas giants [...]

Vol. 7065. Galactic structure, stellar clusters and populations The superclouds of the local Milky Way by Lilly A. Kormann, João Alves, Michelangelo Pantaleoni González, Cameren Swiggum, Torsten A. Enßlin, Gordian Edenhofer 2026, A&A, 706, A161 Superclouds are the largest structures identified so far in the interstellar medium. With typical sizes of a [...]

For the first time, the new scope allowed physicists to observe terahertz “jiggles” in a superconducting fluid. You can tell a lot about a material based on the type of light you shine at it: Optical light illuminates a material’s surface, while X-rays reveal its internal structures and infrared captures a [...]

The light from MoM-z14 galaxy has been traveling through space for about 13.5 billion years. Rohan Naidu, Pappalardo Fellowships in Physics, astrophysics, NASA Hubble Fellow https://gizmodo.com/the-age-of-the-most-distant-galaxy-ever-seen-barely-makes-any-sense-2000715503 The post The Age of the Most Distant Galaxy Ever Seen Barely Makes Any Sense appeared first on MIT Physics. [...]

Vol. 70610. Planets, planetary systems, and small bodies Pre-perihelion evolution of the NiI/FeI abundance ratio in the coma of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS: From extreme to normal by Damien Hutsemékers, Jean Manfroid, Emmanuël Jehin, et al. 2026, A&A, 706, A43 Discovered on July 1, 2025, and with prediscovery observations in June, 3I/Atlas [...]

By leveraging excess heat instead of electricity, microscopic silicon structures could enable more energy-efficient thermal sensing and signal processing. MIT researchers have designed silicon structures that can perform calculations in an electronic device using excess heat instead of electricity. These tiny structures could someday enable more energy-efficient computation. In this computing [...]

Vol. 7054. Extragalactic astronomy Investigating the growth of little red dot descendants at z [...]

Nuno Loureiro, a professor of nuclear science and engineering and of physics at MIT, has died. He was 47.In a letter to the MIT community, President Sally Kornbluth wrote, “With great sadness, I write to share the tragic news that Professor Nuno Loureiro, director of the Plasma Science and Fusion [...]

Some 200 light years from Earth, the core of a dead star is circling a larger star in a macabre cosmic dance. The dead star is a type of white dwarf that exerts a powerful magnetic field as it pulls material from the larger star into a swirling, accreting disk. [...]

MIT researchers recently studied a region of space called the Taurus Molecular Cloud-1 (TMC-1) and discovered more than 100 different molecules floating in the gas there — more than in any other known interstellar cloud. They used powerful radio telescopes capable of detecting very faint signals across a wide range [...]

Alan Robert Whitney ’66, SM ’67, PhD ’74, a longtime research scientist at the MIT Haystack Observatory who also served its associate director and interim director, died on Sept. 28 at age 81.Whitney was a key contributor to the accomplishments and reputation of Haystack Observatory, having led the development of [...]

For centuries, humans have sought to study the stars and celestial bodies, whether through observations made by naked eye or by telescopes on the ground and in space that can view the universe across nearly the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Each view unlocks new information about the denizens of space — [...]

The following article is adapted from a joint press release issued today by MIT and the Giant Magellan Telescope.MIT is lending its support to the Giant Magellan Telescope, joining the international consortium to advance the $2.6 billion observatory in Chile. The Institute’s participation, enabled by a transformational gift from philanthropists Phillip [...]

The last gasp of a primordial black hole may be the source of the highest-energy “ghost particle” detected to date, a new MIT study proposes.In a paper appearing today in Physical Review Letters, MIT physicists put forth a strong theoretical case that a recently observed, highly energetic neutrino may have [...]