As a child in Tunisia, Lina Necib watched the 1997 film “Contact” and decided to become an astrophysicist. Now at MIT, she studies dark matter’s shadowy clues.
MIT physics professors Tracy Slatyer and Jesse Thaler and mathematics professor Wei Zhang were among 16 selected to receive 2022 Simons Investigator awards in Mathematics, Physics, Astrophysics, and Computer Science.
A new simulation of the evolution of binary stars shows that previously neglected millisecond pulsars could explain the excess gamma-ray radiation seen in our Galaxy’s center.
Escape Velocity: The Road To Space
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By Liam Jamieson and Charu Sudan Kasturi
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By Liam Jamieson and Charu Sudan Kasturi
Mark the time and date. At 9 a.m. EDT today, British billionaire Richard Branson plans to blast off in his Virgin Galactic spaceship on a course for the edge of Earth’s atmosphere. It marks a brave new world for commercial space tourism, ranking among orbital milestones going back to 1957, when the Soviet Union launched its Sputnik 1 satellite to begin the space age.
Nine days from now, on July 20, the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, is set to take off too, on a spacecraft produced by his company Blue Origin. Until now, only the Russian government space agency Roscosmos had taken civilians on paid excursions. But with their closely-timed trips, Branson and Bezos are telling the world they’re ready to bet their lives on the success and safety of their own commercial expeditions. And they’re not alone. Today’s Sunday Magazine takes yo