Jolt Magazine | April 11, 2021

News

The discovery of four new exoplanets gives insight into how scientists search for habitable or previously inhabited exoplanets.

An artist’s rendering of five planets orbiting TOI-1233, four of which were discovered using the Transiting Exoplanet Satellite Survey (TESS), an MIT-led NASA mission. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech The discovery of four new exoplanets gives insight into how scientists search for habitable or previously inhabited exoplanets. Exoplanets are just like the planets in our very own solar system, but with one key difference: They orbit around other stars instead of the Sun. Because exoplanets orbit bright stars, they are very difficult to detect with telescopes, so the discovery of an exoplanet is a very big deal. MIT researchers recently discovered four new...

Columns Stargazing

Spring Skies: Martian Fever

Karen Masters

April 11, 2021October 14, 2021

Let Karen Masters, Associate Professor of Astronomy and Physics at Haverford, lead you on a stargazing journey through Spring 2021.

Photo by Sky Xe, via Wikimedia Commons. If you plan to go stargazing just once this spring, you should find the planet Mars. You cannot have missed how missions to Mars have been in the news recently, with three missions arriving at the planet in mid-February. The orbits of Mars and Earth line up every two years, creating a window of favorable conditions to send spacecrafts. During the last window which opened in July 2020, three separate spacecraft were launched: the “Hope” spacecraft from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), China’s Tianwen-1 spacecraft, and a mission from NASA which includes both...

News

You’ve Got Mail, And It’s From Spinach

Cat Kim

April 11, 2021October 14, 2021

The idea of plant-to-human communication may seem far-fetched, but not for a certain team of chemical engineers. With the power of nanobionics, Dr. Michael Strano’s chemical engineering lab at MIT implemented a process in which the ordinary spinach plant can detect toxic nitroaromatic compounds found in explosives and relay such detections wirelessly — in the form of an email.

Spinach plant. Photo by Jyotishmita Bhagawati, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. The idea of plant-to-human communication may seem far-fetched, but not for a certain team of chemical engineers. With the power of nanobionics, Dr. Michael Strano’s chemical engineering lab at MIT implemented a process in which the ordinary spinach plant can detect toxic nitroaromatic compounds found in explosives and relay such detections wirelessly — in the form of an email. Plant nanobionics, according to Dr. Strano, aims to “introduce [structures] into the plant to give it non-native functions.” Strano’s lab previously created carbon nanotubes — cylindrical molecules made of...

News

A New SPARC of Hope for Fusion Energy

Celeste Cubbage

April 11, 2021October 14, 2021

A new spark of hope has recently emerged in the field of clean energy technology: the SPARC fusion reactor. Scientists and technicians affiliated with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have been collaborating on this new fusion energy reactor, which has more promising projections than previous reactors.

Model of SPARC under design by MIT and Commonwealth Fusion Systems. Rendering by T. Henderson, CFS/MIT-PSFC, via Wikimedia Commons A new spark of hope has recently emerged in the field of clean energy technology: the SPARC fusion reactor. Scientists and technicians affiliated with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have been collaborating on this new fusion energy reactor, which has more promising projections than previous reactors. Fusion energy provides a carbon-free, abundant power source that is safer than nuclear power with virtually no long-life radioactive waste. Matter becomes plasma by being heated in...

Four New Exoplanets Discovered

Spring Skies: Martian Fever

You’ve Got Mail, And It’s From Spinach

A New SPARC of Hope for Fusion Energy

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