Earliest life may have arisen in ponds, not oceans
Study finds shallow bodies of water were probably more suitable for Earth’s first life forms.
Department
Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences
Lighting up exoplanets
The Heising-Simons Foundation selects Clara Sousa-Silva and Benjamin Rackham for 51 Pegasi b Fellowships at MIT.
Machine learning identifies links between world’s oceans
Maike Sonnewald adapts a method that identifies areas of the global ocean with similar physics, revealing global dynamical regimes.
MIT celebrates 50th anniversary of historic moon landing
Symposium featuring former astronauts and other Apollo mission luminaries examines the program’s legacy.
Tectonics in the tropics trigger Earth’s ice ages, study finds
Major tectonic collisions near the equator have caused three ice ages in the last 540 million years.
Taking the world by storm
Jordan Benjamin, a double major in physics and atmospheric science, studies the weather inside and out of the classroom.
QS World University Rankings rates MIT No. 1 in 11 subjects for 2019
Institute ranks within the top 2 in 17 of 48 subject areas.
Climate change makes summer weather stormier yet more stagnant
Study finds rising temperatures feed more energy to thunderstorms, less to general circulation.
3Q: Machine learning and climate modeling
As machine learning expands into climate modeling, EAPS Associate Professor Paul O’Gorman answers what that looks like and why it's important now.
From the Marines to MIT
Brent Minchew has flown presidents and foreign dignitaries on Marine One. Today he studies how ice sheets evolve and respond to changing climate.
New technique pinpoints milestones in the evolution of bacteria
Results show bacterial genomes provide “shadow history” of animal evolution.
Study: Much of the surface ocean will shift in color by end of 21st century
Climate-driven changes in phytoplankton communities will intensify the blue and green regions of the world’s oceans.
MIT’s REXIS and Bennu’s watery surface
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx sample-return spacecraft, carrying MIT instrument, arrived at asteroid in December; now begins the science to select a sampling location.
MIT continues progress toward practical fusion energy
In series of talks, researchers describe major effort to address climate change through carbon-free power.
3Q: On the significance of Ultima Thule
New Horizons Mission Team members Alissa Earle and Richard Binzel discuss the revelations the icy world provides about the formation of our solar system.