3 Questions: Hsin-Yu Chen on treading lightly when dating the universe

MIT postdoc finds the angle at which we view neutron star collisions could significantly impact age measurements.

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Designing new mirror materials for better gravitational-wave detection

Nicholas Demos, a first-generation college graduate and MathWorks Fellow in MIT’s Kavli Institute, is improving our ability to listen to the cosmos.

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Astronomers discover an Earth-sized “pi planet” with a 3.14-day orbit

The rocky world, with its baking-hot surface, is likely not habitable.

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Astronomers may have found a signature of life on Venus

Evidence indicates phosphine, a gas associated with living organisms, is present in the habitable region of Venus’ atmosphere.

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An unexpected origin story for a lopsided black hole merger

Researchers suggest a novel process to explain the collision of a large black hole and a much smaller one.

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A “bang” in LIGO and Virgo detectors signals most massive gravitational-wave source yet

A binary black hole merger likely produced gravitational waves equal to the energy of eight suns.

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Are we still listening to space?

Despite the planet’s seeming standstill, graduate students continue to use LIGO to identify astrophysical events.

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Lava oceans may not explain the brightness of some hot super-Earths

By making their own lava and cooled glass, scientists find these materials likely aren’t responsible for the unexpected glow of some exoplanets.

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In a first, astronomers watch a black hole’s corona disappear, then reappear

A colliding star may have triggered the drastic transformation.

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Portable system boosts laser precision, at room temperature

“Light squeezer” reduces quantum noise in lasers, could enhance quantum computing and gravitational-wave detection.

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