Kavli Institute

MIT researchers have discovered “a red dwarf [star] slowly and steadily consuming its orbital object, a brown dwarf [star],” in a process that could continue for millions of years, writes reporter Mary Randolph for the Scientific American. The discovery was “a happy accident,” says graduate student Aaron Householder. “We’re excited to see if we can find a star eating a planet or maybe even two planets eating each other—different types of combinations of these objects.”  

Cailin Plunkett speaks to the Scientific American’s Mary Randolph about her research discovering that 14% of black holes may be hierarchical mergers, made from the merger of two smaller black holes. “At minimum, we’re finding evidence that there are these highly spinning and weirdly tilted black holes in the dataset, and the most straightforward way to interpret that, the Occam’s razor answer, is that these black holes probably came from previous mergers,” says Plunkett.  

Postdoctoral Associate Rohan Naidu joins John Batchelor and David Livingston, hosts of the “Hotel Mars” podcast, to discuss his research discovering black hole stars from little red dots using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. “When we first discovered the little red dots, we assumed that red means dust, and so the idea was that the little red dots are the kind of black holes that we see in our backyard,” says Naidu. “But now we have this paradigm shift where we are realizing that red does not mean dust. Red could mean that you have this black hole star kind of object where all the blue light is being soaked up in this dense star-like cocoon.” 

MIT students and community members spoke with 7 News Boston about their experiences viewing Wednesday’s partial solar eclipse, using the Unistellar eVscope Two, a smart telescope provided by the MIT Astrogazers, an outreach group largely made up of MIT graduate students. “To be able to see this celestial event in a way that’s so approachable, and the way that everybody in the community can enjoy it, especially when you have the right gear, is a really special opportunity,” says Joe Diaz, program manager and STEAM educator at the MIT Media Lab. 

As the moon began to obscure portions of the sun during a partial solar eclipse, the MIT Astrogazers, an outreach group of MIT graduate students, brought telescopes to Kendall Square and offered passersby the opportunity to view the celestial showcase, reports Jay Willett for WBZ News Radio. “This is a Unistellar eVscope Two, so it can take the image that falls on that sensor, and project it to an iPad, another tablet, a smartphone, or even the eyepiece itself,” explained alumnus and Astrogazer, David DePalma ‘26. Graduate student Sydney Jenkins shared: “We’re trying to show everyone what the eclipse looks like, but safely.” 

Popular Science’s Andrew Paul spotlights how MIT astronomers have identified a black hole star (MoM-BH*-1), a gigantic, dense gas cloud fueled by a central black hole, discovered in an image of a large red dot on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). “The groundbreaking realization and newest addition to the cosmic catalogue wouldn’t have been possible without the JWST, whose smallest discoveries have massive ramifications,” writes Paul. “Even something as tiny as a 100-million-year-old red dot.” 

Using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), MIT researchers have discovered a black hole star, MoM-BH*‑1, the earliest example of a black hole in the universe, writes Mashable’s Elisha Sauers. “We argue that Black Hole Stars may be powering all of JWST's Little Red Dots that are found almost everywhere in the early Universe,” says Postdoctoral Associate Rohan Naidu. “Which is to say, this channel of making massive black holes must be very common, to the point where every massive black hole (like the Milky Way's) may have gone through this phase.” 

Postdoctoral Associate Rohan Naidu speaks to The Guardian’s Ian Sample about his team’s research discovering a black hole star, a cosmic object the size of the entire solar system. “They [black hole stars] may govern when stars are able to form and when they cease forming, setting the course for everything that follows from star formation: the birth of planets, the rise of life, the emergence of species that may one day piece together this entire history,” says Naidu.  

MIT researchers have discovered space matter that has been ‘missing’ since the 1990s using Fast Radio Bursts, individual flashes of radio waves traveling through space and coming from the distant universe, reports WCVB 5’s Cindy Fitzgibbon. “The takeaway of the study is that by discovering the distribution of the missing matter around galaxies, we have found evidence for strong activities in galaxies,” says graduate student Haochen Wang, a co-author on the study. “In other words, galaxies are busier and messier than we thought.” 

Prof. Salvatore Vitale and graduate student Cailin Plunkett join John Batchelor and David Livingston, hosts of the Hotel Mars podcast, to discuss their discovery that 14% of black holes were created from the merger of two smaller ones, and their goal to use gravitational wave detectors to uncover the origins of the black hole in the Milky Way. “In ten years [with added gravitational wave technology and observatories], we’ll go from seeing the first gravitational wave ever to seeing them irrespective of where they happen in the universe—which would of course, be fantastic,” says Vitale.  

By studying ‘smears’ in fast radio bursts, fleeting flashes of radiation, MIT researchers discovered diffuse clouds of baryonic gas may contain the missing ordinary matter in the universe, writes Gizmodo’s Gayoung Lee. “These diffuse clouds may be flung outside galaxies through black hole jets,” Lee explains. 

After analyzing data from the LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA gravitational wave detectors, MIT researchers have found that 14% of black holes may be second-generation, formed by the merger of two smaller black holes, writes Gayoung Lee for Gizmodo. The scientists “created an analytic model to capture the kind of wobble that would have emerged from second-generation black holes. Around 14% of merging black holes followed this pattern, and the second-generation black holes identified had a very specific range of masses, at around 20 solar masses or 40 solar masses and above,” Lee explains.  

Prof. Salvatore Vitale and graduate student Jack Heinzel speak with Scientific American reporter K.R. Callaway about the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) Collaboration’s latest catalog of gravitational wave detections, which “more than doubles the number of gravitational-wave candidate events—and reveals unexpected complexities of merging black holes.” Says Heinzel: “We’re learning a lot of things that are qualitative and phenomenological from the catalog. Starting to see all these different structures emerge is pretty fascinating.”

Prof. Nergis Mavalvala, dean of the MIT School of Science, and Prof. Salvatore Vitale join Edgar B. Herwick III of GBH’s Curiosity Desk to discuss the science behind the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) and how close we are to unraveling the secrets of the early universe. LIGO has provided the ability to “observe the universe in ways that have never been done before,” says Mavalvala. 

Prof. Anna-Christina Eilers and postdoctoral associate Rohan Naidu speak with Scientific American reporter Rebecca Boyle about the discovery and study of Little Red Dots, mysterious, red spots that showed up in images from the James Webb Space Telescope.  The dots, which astronomers dated to 600 million years after the big bang, “are in every single image the telescope takes,” says Naidu. “We have to find out about them if we want to tell a complete story about the early universe."