Unlocking the hidden power of boiling — for energy, space, and beyond
Most people take boiling water for granted. For Associate Professor Matteo Bucci, uncovering the physics behind boiling has been a decade-long journey filled with unexpected challenges and new insights. The seemingly simple phenomenon is extremely hard to study in complex
Helping students bring about decarbonization, from benchtop to global energy marketplace
MIT students are adept at producing research and innovations at the cutting edge of their fields. But addressing a problem as large as climate change requires understanding the world’s energy landscape, as well as the ways energy technologies evolve over
Surface-based sonar system could rapidly map the ocean floor at high resolution
On June 18, 2023, the Titan submersible was about an hour-and-a-half into its two-hour descent to the Titanic wreckage at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean when it lost contact with its support ship. This cease in communication set off
MIT spinout Commonwealth Fusion Systems unveils plans for the world’s first fusion power plant
America is one step closer to tapping into a new and potentially limitless clean energy source today, with the announcement from MIT spinout Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) that it plans to build the world’s first grid-scale fusion power plant in
Aurora mapping across North America
As seen across North America at sometimes surprisingly low latitudes, brilliant auroral displays provide evidence of solar activity in the night sky. More is going on than the familiar visible light shows during these events, though: When aurora appear, the
New climate chemistry model finds “non-negligible” impacts of potential hydrogen fuel leakage
As the world looks for ways to stop climate change, much discussion focuses on using hydrogen instead of fossil fuels, which emit climate-warming greenhouse gases (GHGs) when they’re burned. The idea is appealing. Burning hydrogen doesn’t emit GHGs to the
In a unique research collaboration, students make the case for less e-waste
Brought together as part of the Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing (SERC) initiative within the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, a community of students known as SERC Scholars is collaborating to examine the most urgent problems humans face in
Enabling a circular economy in the built environment
The amount of waste generated by the construction sector underscores an urgent need for embracing circularity — a sustainable model that aims to minimize waste and maximize material efficiency through recovery and reuse — in the built environment: 600 million tons
Transforming fusion from a scientific curiosity into a powerful clean energy source
If you’re looking for hard problems, building a nuclear fusion power plant is a pretty good place to start. Fusion — the process that powers the sun — has proven to be a difficult thing to recreate here on Earth
So you want to build a solar or wind farm? Here’s how to decide where.
Deciding where to build new solar or wind installations is often left up to individual developers or utilities, with limited overall coordination. But a new study shows that regional-level planning using fine-grained weather data, information about energy use, and energy system