Tag: mit

MIT’s Chilling Experiment That Could Prove Gravity Is Quantum

MIT researchers have found a bold new way to approach one of science’s biggest mysteries: is gravity truly a quantum force?

By chilling a tiny mirror to near absolute zero using lasers — a method traditionally used in atomic physics — they’ve opened a new experimental window into the intersection of quantum mechanics and gravity. This fusion of cutting-edge cooling and classical tools might finally let scientists observe whether gravity behaves like other quantum forces, a question that has puzzled physicists for decades.

The Gravity Puzzle: Is It Quantum?

One of the most profound open questions in modern physics is: “Is gravity quantum?”

While the other fundamental forces—electromagnetic, weak nuclear, and strong nuclear—have been successfully described by quantum theory, gravity still stands apart. So far, scientists haven’t been able to create a consistent quantum theory of gravity, leaving a major gap in our understanding of the universe.

“Theoretical physicists have proposed many possible scenarios, from gravity being inherently classical to fully quantum, but the debate remains unresolved because we’ve never had a clear way to test gravity’s quantum nature in the lab,” says Dongchel Shin, a PhD candidate in the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering (MechE). “The key to answering this lies in preparing mechanical systems that are massive enough to feel gravity, yet quiet enough — quantum enough — to reveal how gravity interacts with them.”

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MIT is transforming plants into bright, eco-friendly city lights

Turning ordinary houseplants into sustainable, glowing lamps may soon become a reality, thanks to groundbreaking research by scientists at MIT. By embedding specialized nanoparticles into plant leaves, researchers have successfully transformed common plants into rechargeable, plant-based lights, significantly advancing the field of sustainable lighting technology.

A Bright Idea: Plants as Sustainable Lights

Every day, millions of electronic devices, built from plastic and circuit boards, become waste. Scientists have searched for innovative ways to create sustainable alternatives. Recently, researchers have turned to living plants for solutions. Unlike traditional plastic-based devices, plants naturally break down, avoiding long-term environmental harm.

Michael Strano, a chemical engineering professor at MIT, leads a team aiming to make plants function as light-emitting devices. “We wanted to create a light-emitting plant with particles that will absorb light, store some of it, and emit it gradually,” says Strano. This innovative concept could revolutionize how spaces are illuminated, moving away from traditional electrical systems.

How It Works: The Science of Plant Glow

The secret lies within a plant’s leaf structure. Leaves have specialized layers filled with tiny pores called stomata, which control the flow of air and water. Just beneath the leaf surface is a spongy mesophyll layer, rich with space to store nanoparticles.

MIT scientists infused leaves with microscopic particles of strontium aluminate, a phosphorescent compound often used in glow-in-the-dark paints. These nanoparticles, only about 650 nanometers wide, were coated in silica to protect the plants from damage. Infused through stomata pores, these particles settle evenly across the mesophyll layer, forming a thin film.

When illuminated briefly—just ten seconds—with blue LED lights, these nanoparticles absorb and store energy. Once charged, the plants emit a soft, visible glow lasting for nearly an hour. After the first few vibrant minutes, the glow gently fades but can be quickly recharged repeatedly over weeks, offering a sustainable lighting alternative.

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Pope Leo Warns Over AI As MIT Researcher Finds 90% Probability Of ‘Existential Threat’

In his first formal audience as the newly elected pontiff, Pope Leo XIV identified artificial intelligence (AI) as one of the most critical matters facing humanity.

“In our own day,” Pope Leo declared, “the church offers everyone the treasury of its social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice and labor.” He linked this statement to the legacy of his namesake Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, which addressed workers’ rights and the moral dimensions of capitalism.

His remarks continued the direction charted by the late Pope Francis, who warned in his 2024 annual peace message that AI – lacking human values of compassion, mercy, morality and forgiveness – is too perilous to develop unchecked. Francis, who passed away on April 21, had called for an international treaty to regulate AI and insisted that the technology must remain “human-centric,” particularly in applications involving weapon systems or tools of governance.

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Radioactive Oatmeal: The Shocking Story of How MIT, Quaker Oats, and the Government Exploited Children

In 1945, as the world was recovering from the devastation of World War II, a group of scientists at MIT conducted an experiment that would later be revealed as one of the most unethical studies in modern history. At the Fernald State School in Massachusetts, young boys—many of them vulnerable and voiceless—were fed radioactive oatmeal. The goal? To study how their bodies absorbed iron and calcium. But the real story here isn’t just about science. It’s about betrayal, exploitation, and a shocking disregard for human dignity.

This wasn’t some rogue experiment conducted in a hidden lab. It was a calculated effort involving respected institutions: MIT, Quaker Oats, and the U.S. government. Together, they crossed a line that should never have been approached, let alone crossed.

The “Science Club” That Masked a Dark Agenda

Imagine being a young boy, maybe 10 or 12 years old, told you’re part of something special. A science club! You get extra food, perhaps even a sense of belonging. But instead of being celebrated, you’re being used. The scientists behind this experiment weren’t just studying nutrition. They were helping Quaker Oats prove their cereal was healthy. That’s right—a corporate agenda disguised as research.

The boys were given oatmeal laced with radioactive isotopes. These isotopes acted as tracers, allowing scientists to track how iron and calcium moved through their bodies. But here’s the thing: radiation isn’t harmless. Even in small amounts, it can cause long-term damage. And these boys? They had no idea what they were consuming.

Guardians Left in the Dark

The guardians of these boys—parents or caretakers—trusted the system. They believed their children were in good hands. But the truth? They were lied to. Consent forms were vague, if they were given at all. No one explained the risks. No one mentioned the word “radioactive.”

This wasn’t just a failure of ethics. It was a deliberate choice. The researchers knew what they were doing. They knew the public would never approve. So they kept it quiet. They hid behind the guise of science and progress.

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MIT suspends student and bans magazine for article opposing Gaza genocide

Last Friday, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) issued an immediate “interim” suspension of graduate student Prahlad Iyengar for penning an article titled “On Pacifism” in an MIT student magazine, Written Revolution, opposing Israel’s genocide against the people of Gaza. The publication itself has been banned from campus.

Zionist groups and the MIT administration have falsely claimed the article incites violence and have attempted to paint Iyengar as a terrorist. The article, which appeared in the fifth edition of the magazine, which is an American Sociological Association-recognized publication, does nothing of the sort as is obvious from the text of the article itself which is academic in character.

The World Socialist Web Site opposes this flagrant attack on free speech and academic freedom and calls on workers, students and youth to demand the immediate rescinding of all administrative measures against Iyengar.

As Iyengar wrote in a statement opposing the ban, “The administration has also banned Written Revolution outright, meaning students who disseminate or read this publication on campus may face discipline.” Some students reading the magazine were approached by the police. According to a recording of the call made to police, it was to stop the handing out “banned pamphlets.” Students face Orwellian disciplinary actions for distributing or merely reading the article on campus. 

The suspension and ban represent an escalation of the bipartisan campaign led by the Biden administration and Democratic Party against opposition on the campuses to the Gaza genocide. It takes place after over 186,000 people in Gaza have been massacred by Israel, according to an estimate by The Lancet from July. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has warned that everyone in northern Gaza “is at imminent risk of dying,” while there is a massive and unprecedented amount of photographic and video evidence both from the victims and killers themselves on social media documenting the genocide, which could correctly be described as the first live-streamed genocide in history.

Iyengar, a second-year electrical engineering Ph.D. student, was summarily banned from campus under the bogus justification that he presented an immediate risk of violence, with the administration falsely claiming his article supports “terrorism.” This was done solely on the basis of anonymous allegations by Zionist students’ claims that statements in the article “could be interpreted as a call for more violent or destructive forms of protest at MIT.” The rule for interim banning of students is ostensibly aimed only at those who actually present a risk of violence, like those suspected of rape, murder or assault. This is clearly not the case.

Essentially no evidence has been presented beyond a People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine poster being used as an illustration in Iyengar’s article. The administration falsely used this to claim that the article supported terrorism. The banning opens a veritable Pandora’s Box of avenues for censorship, meaning all manner of media from textbooks and dictionaries which have pictures of real or supposed “terrorist” organizations to documentaries and non-fiction books and even news articles in the mainstream press could be banned.

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MIT ASTRONOMERS SAY THEY HAVE DISCOVERED A PLANET CURRENT THEORIES CAN’T EXPLAIN

A team of astronomers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) say they have discovered a distant planet that they can’t explain with current planet evolutionary theories.

The newly discovered WASP-193b is a gas giant 50 percent larger than Jupiter, the largest gas giant in our solar system. However, it is only one-tenth as dense, making it the second-most dense exoplanet ever found.

The researchers behind the seemingly impossible find, which also includes experts from Belgium and Spain, say these types of “puffy Jupiters” have left astronomers baffled for over 15 years since they cannot explain how they formed using the best modern-day planet forecasting tools

“We don’t know where to put this planet in all the formation theories we have right now because it’s an outlier of all of them,” explained study co-lead author Francisco Pozuelos, a senior researcher at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalucia, in Spain. “We cannot explain how this planet was formed based on classical evolution models.”

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Climate Scientist Says It’s ‘Unreasonable’ To Call Climate Change An Existential Threat

An MIT scientist has said that although the global temperature rise owing to a greenhouse effect is real, the increase is small and does not pose any existential threat.

The greenhouse effect is primarily caused by water vapor and clouds, said Richard Lindzen, professor emeritus of atmospheric sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, and nitrous oxide are minor constituents of the greenhouse effect, Mr. Lindzen told EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” in an interview.

“If all other things are kept constant, and you double CO2, you would get a little under one degree of warming,” Mr. Lindzen said. Some climate models estimate the highest warming at three degrees, but “even three degrees isn’t that much,” he added.

“We’re dealing with changes for a doubling of CO2 on the order of between breakfast and lunch,” he said.

According to NASA, the greenhouse effect is “the process through which heat is trapped near Earth’s surface by substances known as ‘greenhouse gases.’ Greenhouse gases consist of carbon dioxide, methane, ozone, nitrous oxide, chlorofluorocarbons, and water vapor.”

Politicians, universities, international organizations, and media have called climate warming an existential threat to humanity.

President Joe Biden said at a press conference in Vietnam in September that, “The only existential threat humanity faces even more frightening than a nuclear war is global warming going above 1.5 degrees in the next … 10 years.”

The Climate Change Working Group at Western Michigan University has warned that the “global temperature has risen at least 1°C since mid-20th century” and said that “climate change is an existential threat to the quality of life on this planet.”

Bruce Aylward, assistant director General at the World Health Organization (WHO), said in November that climate change poses an existential threat to all people, in particular pregnant women and children.

Mr. Lindzen asserted that calling climate change an existential threat comes from propaganda.

Even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—the United Nations body for assessing the scientific basis of climate change, its impacts, and options to mitigate—does not call it an existential threat, Mr. Lindzen said.

In its report, the IPCC talks about a reduction in GDP by 3 percent by 2100 owing to climate change, Mr. Lindzen added. “Assuming the GDP has increased several times by then, that doesn’t sound existential to most people.”

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MIT Makes Probability-Based Computing a Bit Brighter

In a noisy and imprecise world, the definitive 0s and 1s of today’s computers can get in the way of accurate answers to messy real-world problems. So says an emerging field of research pioneering a kind of computing called probabilistic computing. And now a team of researchers at MIT have pioneered a new way of generating probabilistic bits (p-bits) at much higher rates—using photonics to harness random quantum oscillations in empty space.

The deterministic way in which conventional computers operate is not well suited to dealing with the uncertainty and randomness found in many physical processes and complex systems. Probabilistic computing promises to provide a more natural way to solve these kinds of problems by building processors out of components that behave randomly themselves.

The approach is particularly well suited to complicated optimization problems with many possible solutions or to doing machine learning on very large and incomplete datasets where uncertainty is an issue. Probabilistic computing could unlock new insights and findings in meteorology and climate simulations, for instance, or spam detection and counterterrorism software, or next-generation AI.

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Renowned MIT Professor and Drug Safety Analytics Specialist Calls for Immediate Suspension of all mRNA COVID Vaccines

The number of health professionals and experts calling for the immediate suspension of COVID mRNA vaccines is growing, and yet governments still turn a blind eye to one of the most atrocious crimes against humanity.

Late Sunday night, Prof. Retsef Levi from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) warned about the risks associated with experimental mRNA COVID vaccines.

Prof. Levi has been a faculty member at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts since 2006. MIT is one of the top private universities in Cambridge, United States. It is ranked #1 in QS World University Rankings 2023.

“I have more than 30 years of experience as a practitioner and an academic in using data and analytics to assess and manage risk, particularly in the context of health systems health policies, as well as the management of safety and quality of manufacturing of biologic drugs,” said Levi.

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MIT Goes Against the Grain, Releases a Stunning Statement Endorsing Free Speech

Surprise — the Massachusetts Institute of Technology endorses students’ liberty to engage in offensive speech…officially.

In contrast to castigations of “hate speech” and the increasingly common notion that “hate speech isn’t free speech,” MIT is siding with the Constitution.

On December 21st, the Cambridge private land-grant research university released a Free Expression Statement.

From the document:

Free expression is a necessary, though not sufficient, condition of a diverse and inclusive community. We cannot have a truly free community of expression if some perspectives can be heard and others cannot. Learning from a diversity of viewpoints, and from the deliberation, debate, and dissent that accompany them, are essential ingredients of academic excellence.

Free expression promotes creativity by affirming the ability to exchange ideas without constraints. It not only facilitates individual autonomy and self-fulfillment, it provides for participation in collective decision-making and is essential to the search for truth and justice. … Academic freedom promotes scholarly rigor and the testing of ideas by protecting research, publication, and teaching from interference.

That principle means on-campus guests can’t be relegated to a single perspective:

A commitment to free expression includes hearing and hosting speakers, including those whose views or opinions may not be shared by many members of the MIT community and may be harmful to some. This commitment includes the freedom to criticize and peacefully protest speakers to whom one may object, but it does not extend to suppressing or restricting such speakers from expressing their views. Debate and deliberation of controversial ideas are hallmarks of the Institute’s educational and research missions and are essential to the pursuit of truth, knowledge, equity, and justice.

The school makes clear things such as “direct threats, harassment, plagiarism, or other speech that falls outside the boundaries of the First Amendment” won’t be protected. Furthermore, it expects “a collegial and respectful learning and working environment.”

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