Some 200 light years away, a white dwarf is circling a larger star, pulling material into a swirling disk. Polarized X-rays emitted by the system have given astronomers a first look at its highly energetic innermost region, which was inaccessible to most telescopes until now.
A new, lightweight polymer film is virtually impenetrable to gas molecules. With such a coating, “you could protect infrastructure such as bridges, buildings, rail lines — basically anything outside exposed to the elements,” Michael Strano says.
Physicists observed key evidence of unconventional superconductivity in a special form of graphene. The findings may guide the design of superconductors that work at room temperature, “which is sort of the Holy Grail of the entire field,” Pablo Jarillo-Herrero says.
As president and CEO of the Arkansas & Missouri Railroad, Caren Kraska ’77 helps Americans appreciate the role of trains in the modern economy. Now an Arkansas community leader, she says: “You take that MIT approach with you.”
Biological engineers have found several possible targets for a new vaccine against tuberculosis — the world’s deadliest infectious disease, killing more than 1 million people annually. “There’s still a huge TB burden globally,” Bryan Bryson says.
In a world without MIT, radar wouldn’t have been available to help win World War II. We might not have email, CT scans, time-release drugs, photolithography, or GPS. And we’d lose over 30,000 companies, employing millions of people. Can you imagine?
Since its founding, MIT has been key to helping American science and innovation lead the world. Discoveries that begin here generate jobs and power the economy — and what we create today builds a better tomorrow for all of us.