Hot Jupiters are some of the most extreme planets in the galaxy. These scorching worlds are as massive as Jupiter, and they swing wildly close to their star, whirling around in a few days compared to our own gas giant’s leisurely 4,000-day orbit around the sun. Scientists suspect, though, that hot Jupiters weren’t always so hot and in fact may have formed as “cold Jupiters,” in more frigid, distant environs. But how they evolved to be the star-hugging gas giants that astronomers observe today is a big unknown. Now, astronomers at MIT, Penn State University, and elsewhere have discovered a hot ..read more

Thomas Varnish loves his hobbies — knitting, baking, pottery — it’s a long list. His latest interest is analog film photography. A picture with his mother and another with his boyfriend are just a few of Varnish’s favorites. “These moments of human connection are the ones I like,” he says. Varnish’s love of capturing a fleeting moment on film translates to his research when he conducts laser interferometry on plasmas using off-the-shelf cameras. At the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering, the third-year doctoral student studies various facets of astrophysically relevant fundamental p ..read more

MIT faculty members Nancy Kanwisher, Robert Langer, and Sara Seager are among eight researchers worldwide to receive this year’s Kavli Prizes. A partnership among the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research, and the Kavli Foundation, the Kavli Prizes are awarded every two years to “honor scientists for breakthroughs in astrophysics, nanoscience and neuroscience that transform our understanding of the big, the small and the complex.” The laureates in each field will share $1 million. Understanding recognition of faces Nancy Kanwisher, the Walt ..read more

For every kilogram of matter that we can see — from the computer on your desk to distant stars and galaxies — there are 5 kilograms of invisible matter that suffuse our surroundings. This “dark matter” is a mysterious entity that evades all forms of direct observation yet makes its presence felt through its invisible pull on visible objects. Fifty years ago, physicist Stephen Hawking offered one idea for what dark matter might be: a population of black holes, which might have formed very soon after the Big Bang. Such “primordial” black holes would not have been the goliaths that we detect toda ..read more

Sarah Millholland, an assistant professor of physics at MIT and member of the Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, is the 2024 recipient of the Vera Rubin Early Career Award for her wide-ranging contributions to the formation and dynamics of extrasolar planetary systems. The American Astronomical Society’s Division on Dynamical Astronomy (DDA) recognized Millholland for her demonstration “that super-Earth planets within a planetary system typically have similar masses, that the statistics of compact multi-planet systems are consistent with a smooth inclination d ..read more

Astronomers at MIT, NASA, and elsewhere have a new way to measure how fast a black hole spins, by using the wobbly aftermath from its stellar feasting. The method takes advantage of a black hole tidal disruption event — a blazingly bright moment when a black hole exerts tides on a passing star and rips it to shreds. As the star is disrupted by the black hole’s immense tidal forces, half of the star is blown away, while the other half is flung around the black hole, generating an intensely hot accretion disk of rotating stellar material. The MIT-led team has shown that ..read more

Astronomers at MIT, the University of Liège, and elsewhere have discovered a new planet orbiting a small cold star, a mere 55 light years away. The nearby planet is similar to Earth in its size and rocky composition, though that’s where the similarities end. Because this new world is likely missing an atmosphere. In a paper appearing today in Nature Astronomy, the researchers confirm the detection of SPECULOOS-3b, an Earth-sized, likely airless planet that the team discovered using a network of telescopes as part of the SPECULOOS (Search for Planets EClipsing ULtra-cOOl Stars) project. The new ..read more

MIT researchers, including several undergraduate students, have discovered three of the oldest stars in the universe, and they happen to live in our own galactic neighborhood. The team spotted the stars in the Milky Way’s “halo” — the cloud of stars that envelopes the entire main galactic disk. Based on the team’s analysis, the three stars formed between 12 and 13 billion years ago, the time when the very first galaxies were taking shape. The researchers have coined the stars “SASS,” for Small Accreted Stellar System stars, as they believe each star once belonged to its own small, pr ..read more

MIT astronomers have observed the elusive starlight surrounding some of the earliest quasars in the universe. The distant signals, which trace back more than 13 billion years to the universe’s infancy, are revealing clues to how the very first black holes and galaxies evolved. Quasars are the blazing centers of active galaxies, which host an insatiable supermassive black hole at their core. Most galaxies host a central black hole that may occasionally feast on gas and stellar debris, generating a brief burst of light in the form of a glowing ring as material swirls in toward the black hole. Qu ..read more

New research from the group of MIT Professor Brett McGuire has revealed the presence of a previously unknown molecule in space. The team's open-access paper, “Rotational Spectrum and First Interstellar Detection of 2-Methoxyethanol Using ALMA Observations of NGC 6334I,” appears in April 12 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Zachary T.P. Fried, a graduate student in the McGuire group and the lead author of the publication, worked to assemble a puzzle comprised of pieces collected from across the globe, extending beyond MIT to France, Florida, Virginia, and Copenhagen, to achieve this e ..read more