Astrophysicists Create “Time Machine” Simulations To Observe the Lifecycle of Ancestor Galaxy Cities
Many processes in astrophysics take a very long time, making their evolution tricky to study. For example, a star like our sun has a lifespan…
Kavli Institute
MIT’s Low-Cost Fabrication Method for Thin Mirrors and Silicon Wafers Could Be a Game-Changer
A novel photolithography technique could be a manufacturing game-changer for optical applications. Technologies that depend on lightweight, high-precision optical systems, like space telescopes, X-ray mirrors,…
HERA Telescope: Early Findings Promise Deeper Understanding of the Cosmic Dawn
Scientists including MIT’s Jacqueline Hewitt and Nicholas Kern share long-awaited results, getting closer to the universe’s first stars. All through history, humans have created and…
Axions Could Be the Fossil of the Universe Astrophysicists Have Been Waiting For
Finding the hypothetical particle axion could mean finding out for the first time what happened in the Universe a second after the Big Bang, suggests…
Mystery About How Particles Behave Outside a Black Hole Photon Sphere Solved With String Theory
A paper by the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU) Director Ooguri Hirosi and Project Researcher Matthew Dodelson on…
CHiPS: MIT Astronomers Discover New Galaxy Clusters Hiding in Plain Sight
Lesson learned from the CHiPS survey must inform future cluster searches, researchers say. MIT astronomers have discovered new and unusual galactic neighborhoods that previous studies…
How the Tiniest Particles in Our Universe Saved Us From Complete Annihilation
Recently discovered ripples of spacetime called gravitational waves could contain evidence to prove the theory that life survived the Big Bang because of a phase…
Origin of Solar-Mass Black Holes and the Connection to Dark Matter
What is the origin of black holes and how is that question connected with another mystery, the nature of dark matter? Dark matter comprises the…
Study of Supergiant Star Betelgeuse Unveils the Cause of Its Pulsations – Not at All Close to Exploding
Recalibrated Betelgeuse’s mass, radius, and distance. Betelgeuse is normally one of the brightest, most recognizable stars of the winter sky, marking the left shoulder of…
Four New Exoplanets Orbiting a Nearby Sun-Like Star Discovered by TESS
MIT-led NASA mission finds a multi-planetary system that could be an “ideal laboratory” to study planetary formation and evolution. MIT researchers have discovered four new…
All Dark Matter in the Universe Could Be Primordial Black Holes – Formed From the Collapse of Baby Universes Soon After the Big Bang
The Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU) is home to many interdisciplinary projects which benefit from the synergy of…
Looking for Axion Dark Matter Particles Near Neutron Stars With Radio Telescopes
In the 1970s, physicists uncovered a problem with the Standard Model of particle physics—the theory that describes three of the four fundamental forces of nature…
A Hint of New Physics Observed in Polarized Radiation From the Early Universe
Using Planck data from the cosmic microwave background radiation, an international team of researchers has observed a hint of new physics. The team developed a…
Our Galaxy’s Brightest Gamma-Ray Binary System May Be Powered by a Magnetar Star
A team of researchers led by members of the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU) has analyzed previously collected…
Solving a Cosmological Ghost Particle Mystery: Theory That Neutrinos Shape the Universe Validated
The effect that nearly massless, subatomic particles called neutrinos have on the formation of galaxies has long been a cosmological mystery—one that physicists have sought…
Subtleties in Magnetic Fields Detected by Ultrathin Graphene Sensors
As with actors and opera singers, when measuring magnetic fields it helps to have range. Cornell researchers used an ultrathin graphene “sandwich” to create a…
Researchers Find the Origin and Maximum Mass of Massive Black Holes Observed by Gravitational Wave Detectors
Through simulations of a dying star, a team of theoretical physics researchers have found the evolutionary origin and the maximum mass of black holes which…
Gravity Mysteries – We May Have Had Fundamental Nature of the Universe Wrong This Whole Time
Symmetry has been one of the guiding principles in physicists’ search for fundamental laws of nature. What does it mean that laws of nature have…
