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When you twist an Oreo cookie open to get to the creamy center, you’re mimicking a basic rheological test. (Rheology is the study of how a non-Newtonian material flows when twisted, pressed, or otherwise strained.) MIT engineers have now subjected the famous sandwich cookie to rigorous materials testing in order to answer a vexing question: why does the cookie’s cream stick to only one wafer when twisted apart? “There’s the fascinating problem of trying to get the cream to distribute evenly between the two wafers, which turns out to be really hard,” says Max Fan, an undergraduate in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering....

In order to reach their full potential, today’s quantum computer prototypes have to meet specific criteria: First, they have to be made bigger, which means they need to consist of a considerably higher number of quantum bits. Second, they have to be capable of processing errors. “We still fail in running complex computations because environmental noise and errors cause the system to get out of control,” says quantum physicist Rainer Blatt in Innsbruck....

Lithium-ion batteries have become ubiquitous, finding a place in our smartphones, laptops, power tools, and electric vehicles. But as we look for better solutions with higher energy density, scientists have been turning to solid-state lithium metal batteries. Li metal batteries potentially have much higher energy density than their Li-ion counterparts. They are seen as the future of batteries, powering vehicles and grids on massive scales. However, technical issues keep solid-state lithium metal batteries from making their way into demanding applications....

Wasps deserve to be just as highly valued as other insects, like bees, due to their roles as predators, pollinators, and more, according to a new review paper led by University College London and University of East Anglia researchers. The study, published in Biological Reviews, compiles evidence from over 500 academic papers to review how roughly 33,000 species of stinging (aculeate) wasps contribute to their ecosystems, and how this can benefit the economy, human health, and society....

“That was your warmup. Now we’re really in the thick of it.” Daniel Korsun ’20 is reflecting on his four years of undergraduate preparation and research at MIT as he enters “the thick” of graduate study at the Institute’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC). The nuclear science and engineering student’s “warmup” included enough fusion research on the SPARC tokamak to establish him as part of the PSFC community. “I already have this network of peers and professors and staff,” he notes with enthusiasm....

NASA’s Kepler mission scientists have discovered a new planetary system that is home to the smallest planet yet found around a star similar to our sun. The planets are located in a system called Kepler-37, about 210 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra. The smallest planet, Kepler-37b, is slightly larger than our moon, measuring about one-third the size of Earth. It is smaller than Mercury, which made its detection a challenge....

Is a switch on or off? Is a statement true or false? Is an answer yes or no? The differentiation between the two possibilities is the smallest piece of information that a computer can save. Bits (a word comprised of ‘binary’ and ‘digit’), as the smallest electronic storage unit, are the basic building blocks for all information stored on our hard drives. They are presented as a sequence of two different symbols like 0 and 1, the so-called binary code....

Using one of the world’s most powerful laser facilities, a team led by University of Chicago scientists experimentally confirmed one of the most popular theories for cosmic magnetic field generation: the turbulent dynamo. By creating a hot turbulent plasma the size of a penny, that lasts a few billionths of a second, the researchers recorded how the turbulent motions can amplify a weak magnetic field to the strengths of those observed in our sun, distant stars, and galaxies....

A recent study published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports reveals that potters throughout the Wari Empire were crafting their own ceramics instead of using “official” pottery imported from the capital. These locally-made ceramics featured decorations mimicking the traditional Wari style. To uncover this information, researchers analyzed the chemical composition of the pottery using laser beam technology. “In this study, we looked at the idea of cosmopolitanism, of incorporating different cultures and practices into a society,” says M....

Look around any wetland today and you’re likely to see 3-foot-tall egrets or 4-foot-tall herons wading in the shallows in stealthy search of fish, insects or crustaceans. But 70 million years ago, along the Rio Grande River in Texas, a more impressive and scarier creature stalked the marshes: the 12-foot-tall pterosaur known as Quetzalcoatlus. With a 37- to 40-foot wingspan, it was the largest flying animal that ever lived on Earth....

The leopard seal (Hydrurga leptonyx), one of Antarctica’s apex predators, kills penguins and smaller seals in a violent yet efficient manner. However, it seems that that’s not the only thing that H. leptonyx eats. A new study reports that H. leptonyx uses suction feeding to eat large amounts of krill, which is akin to how whales eat krill as well. The scientists reported their findings in the journal Polar Biology....

Rocks on Mars may contain numerous types of non-biological deposits that look similar to the kinds of fossils likely to be found if the planet ever supported life, a study says. Telling these false fossils apart from what could be evidence of ancient life on the surface of Mars – which was temporarily habitable four billion years ago – is key to the success of current and future missions, researchers say....

Many robotic designs take nature as their muse: sticking to walls like geckos, swimming through water like tuna, sprinting across terrain like cheetahs. Such designs borrow properties from nature, using engineered materials and hardware to mimic animals’ behavior. Now, scientists at MIT and the University of Pennsylvania are taking more than inspiration from nature — they’re taking ingredients. The group has genetically engineered muscle cells to flex in response to light, and is using the light-sensitive tissue to build highly articulated robots....

Three years ago, MIT spinout Zaiput Flow Technologies launched a novel continuous-flow liquid-liquid separator that makes those processes faster, easier, and more efficient. Today, nine pharmaceutical giants and a growing number of academic labs and small companies use the separator. Having proved its efficacy on Earth, the separator is now being tested as a tool for manufacturing drugs and synthesizing chemicals in outer space. In 2015, Zaiput won a Galactic Grant from the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space that allows companies to test technologies on the International Space Station (ISS)....

A unique type of tiny antibody produced by llamas could provide a new frontline treatment against COVID-19 that can be taken by patients as a simple nasal spray. Research led by scientists at the Rosalind Franklin Institute has shown that nanobodies – a smaller, simple form of antibody generated by llamas and camels – can effectively target the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. They found that short chains of the molecules, which can be produced in large quantities in the laboratory, significantly reduced signs of the COVID-19 disease when administered to infected animal models....

Carbon is the fourth-most-abundant element in the universe and is fundamental to life as we know it. It is unrivaled in its ability to form stable structures, both alone and with other elements. A material’s properties are determined by how its atoms are bonded and the structural arrangements that these bonds create. For carbon-based materials, the type of bonding makes the difference between the hardness of diamond, which has three-dimensional “sp3” bonds, and the softness of graphite, which has two-dimensional “sp2” bonds, for example....

In extragalactic astronomy, a Lyman-alpha blob (LAB) is a huge concentration of gas emitting the Lyman-alpha emission line, a spectral line of hydrogen, or more generally of one-electron ions, in the Lyman series. Lyman-alpha blobs are some of the largest known individual objects in the observable universe. Some of these gaseous structures are more than 400,000 light-years across and have only been found in the high-redshift universe, which is due to the ultraviolet nature of the Lyman-alpha emission line....

MIT Media Lab researchers have developed a machine-learning model that takes computers a step closer to interpreting our emotions as naturally as humans do. In the growing field of “affective computing,” robots and computers are being developed to analyze facial expressions, interpret our emotions, and respond accordingly. Applications include, for instance, monitoring an individual’s health and well-being, gauging student interest in classrooms, helping diagnose signs of certain diseases, and developing helpful robot companions....

One of the defining goals of historical linguistics is to map the ancestry of modern languages as far back as it will go — perhaps, some linguists hope, to a single common ancestor that would constitute the trunk of the metaphorical tree. But while many thrilling connections have been suggested based on systemic comparisons of data from most of the world’s languages, much of the work, which goes back as early as the 1800s, has been prone to error....

Mars rover drivers (and probably Fremen too). When your vehicle is well over 50 million kilometers away from the nearest tow company, getting your wheels stuck in sand can be a mission-critical problem. Such a predicament ended the Spirit rover’s mission in 2009. Yet Perseverance is currently winding her way through the maze of towering sand dunes that characterize the Séítah region of Jezero crater (“Séítah” means “amidst the sand” in the Navajo language, a well-fitting name)....