The idea is something of a technicality, but nevertheless an interesting one. In February 2016, an international team of physicists announced the first direct observation of gravitational waves. The waves had been produced by the gigantic collision of a pair of black holes, each about 30 times the mass of the sun—a smash so cataclysmic that it sent ripples through the fabric of spacetime. The discovery was a triumph for the physics community. They had long known that Einstein’s theory of general relativity suggested that ripples in spacetime were possible. These waves squeeze and stretch space by distances smaller than the width of a proton. To spot them, physicists built a network of hugely sensitive detectors that cost of well over a billion dollars. So the discovery of the first waves in 2016 was both a relief and a significant success. Now two physicists say that gravitational waves have been hiding in plain sight all along. Rituparno Goswami at the University of KwaZulu-Natal and George Ellis at the University of Cape Town, both in South Africa, today use some mathematical wizardry to show that tidal forces are gravitational waves. These are the same forces that cause sea levels to rise and fall as the moon moves around the Earth. “Tidal forces are actually a hidden form of gravitational waves,” they say....

As embryos develop, they follow predetermined patterns of tissue folding, so that individuals of the same species end up with nearly identically shaped organs and very similar body shapes. MIT scientists have now discovered a key feature of embryonic tissue that helps explain how this process is carried out so faithfully each time. In a study of fruit flies, they found that the reproducibility of tissue folding is generated by a network of proteins that connect like a fishing net, creating many alternative pathways that tissues can use to fold the right way. “What we found is that there’s a lot of redundancy in the network,” says Adam Martin, an MIT associate professor of biology and the senior author of the study. “The cells are interacting and connecting with each other mechanically, but you don’t see individual cells taking on an all-important role. This means that if one cell gets damaged, other cells can still connect to disparate parts of the tissue.” To uncover these network features, Martin worked with Jorn Dunkel, an MIT associate professor of physical applied mathematics and an author of the paper, to apply an algorithm normally used by astronomers to study the structure of galaxies....

MIT Sloan School of Management announced the MITx MicroMasters Program in Finance in January as a way to appeal to those wanting to enhance their financial skillset, whether recent graduates, early- to mid-stage professionals or others eyeing a career in finance. The remote-learning program was designed as a way to fast-track a master’s degree in finance from MIT Sloan. Two months later, the world stopped. As coronavirus stamped a giant question mark on the entire graduate business education universe, MIT’s new finance program became a casualty. It had been scheduled to start April 1, but it was put on hold as the Sloan School — like every other business school in the United States — grappled with the upheaval of the fast-spreading and little-understood virus. Now, four weeks before the newly scheduled start of the program — which will be a full six months after its intended launch — one major concern has entirely evaporated. MIT Sloan reports today (September 1) that more than 50,000 learners from 175 countries have signed up for courses, a record enrollment for any Sloan program....

A lot of mathematical models of coronavirus spread can be unreliable Recently, a modelling study conducted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) predicted 2.87 lakh coronavirus cases in India per day by the end of winter 2021 in the absence of a COVID-19 vaccine or drug intervention. In a pre-print paper, MIT professors Hazhir Rahmandad and John Sterman, and PhD candidate Tse Yang Lim, noted that the top ten countries by projected daily infection rates at the end of winter 2021 are India with 2.87 lakh infections per day, followed by the US, South Africa, Iran, Indonesia, the UK, Nigeria, Turkey, France, and Germany. The study has come under a fair bit of flak, with the Union health ministry stating that the lacunae of many mathematical models is that they just focus on how the virus would behave and not take into account other parameters. The ministry said instead of spending a lot of time on these models, focusing on containment, surveillance, testing and treatment will give better results....