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What’s in an asteroid

MIT researchers have developed a way to map an asteroid’s interior structure, or density distribution, by analyzing how the asteroid’s spin changes as it makes a close encounter with more massive objects... Read more »

Sound-powered camera

MIT researchers have developed a battery-­free, wireless underwater camera that is about 100,000 times more energy efficient than other undersea cameras. It takes color photos, even in dark underwater environments, and transmits... Read more »

Product designer finds engineers’ playground in Wisconsin

That passion brought Phillips to MIT, where she discovered product design, and from there to a job as a designer for the nation’s largest supplier of cordless power tools, Milwaukee Tool.  Her... Read more »

Recent books from the MIT community

Houdini’s Fabulous Magic (new edition; first published in 1961)By Walter B. Gibson and the late Morris N. Young ’30VINE LEAVES PRESS, 2023, $17.99 Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American RevolutionBy Eric... Read more »

A gallery of presidents

When Sally Kornbluth becomes MIT’s 18th president on January 1, 2023, she joins a long line of leaders that includes mathematicians, chemists, physicists, engineers, an astronomer, a neurobiologist, two Rad Lab researchers,... Read more »

Mark and Teresa Medearis

After their son Nicky ’22 broke his leg competing for the MIT indoor track team in 2019, Mark and Teresa Medearis, 3,000 miles away in California, were heartened by the outpouring of... Read more »

Turning MIT inside-out

The all-new MIT Museum opened in Kendall Square this fall, welcoming more than 13,000 visitors in its first month. The 56,000-square-foot space next to the T station offers interactive exhibits and hands-on... Read more »

Rerouting

I became increasingly convinced that going to MIT was a necessary part of achieving my dreams. And yet it was not to be. That’s one of the tricky things about long-horizon problems:... Read more »

The Download: metaverse ethics, and spotting AI text

We’re in desperate need of ways to differentiate between human- and AI-written text in order to counter potential misuses of the technology, and researchers are developing tools to do exactly that. But... Read more »

How to spot AI-generated text

Because large language models work by predicting the next word in a sentence, they are more likely to use common words like “the,” “it,” or “is” instead of wonky, rare words. This... Read more »