MIT News

• Galileo revisited: How ribbons roll September 7, 2010
  Galileo Galilei’s experiments on the motions of falling and rolling objects, described in his 1638 book, “Two New Sciences,” are considered by many to be the beginning of modern science. Now researchers at MIT have conducted a variation on his experiments that has produced unexpected results.Galileo used rigid materials — metal balls and a wooden ram […]
• More hurricanes in greener seas? September 7, 2010
  More hurricanes may form in greener waters, where sunlight tends to be absorbed at shallower depths, than in clear seas, according to new research that draws a link between ocean color and the formation and movement of tropical cyclones. It’s no secret that hurricanes depend on a recipe of moist air, warm water and converging winds. But in a paper due to b […]
• Solar cell, heal thyself September 6, 2010
  Plants are good at doing what scientists and engineers have been struggling to do for decades: converting sunlight into stored energy, and doing so reliably day after day, year after year. Now some MIT scientists have succeeded in mimicking a key aspect of that process.One of the problems with harvesting sunlight is that the sun’s rays can be highly destru […]
• Better health through social networking September 2, 2010
  Scientists have long thought that social networks featuring many distant connections, or “long ties” — where individuals know a lot of people, but not well — produce large-scale changes most quickly. But in a new study, Damon Centola, an assistant professor of system dynamics and economic sociology at the MIT Sloan School of Management, has reached a […]
• Toward greener chemistry September 1, 2010
  Phosphorus, a mineral element found in rocks and bone, is a critical ingredient in fertilizers, pesticides, detergents and other industrial and household chemicals. Once phosphorus is mined from rocks, getting it into these products is hazardous and expensive, and chemists have been trying to streamline the process for decades.MIT chemistry professor Christo […]