Spill The News

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MIT has again been named the world’s top university by the QS World University Rankings, which were announced today. This is the 15th year in a row MIT has received this distinction. The full 2027 edition of the rankings — published by…

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The silicon that forms the foundation of most computer chips has fundamental limits to how much power it can manage, which constrains the speed and energy-efficiency of wireless communication systems. A promising solution is to build…

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In 2026, the hype for artificial intelligence agents is louder than ever before. These semi-autonomous programs can “think” and execute well-defined tasks in areas like customer service and software development, typically using language…

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For many graduate students, waking up at noon after a 4 a.m. bedtime is a sign of a night well spent. For a group of MIT students, it was simply the start of their workday — timed not to the sun, but to the aurora. Their goal was simple:…

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About 2 billion people — just under a quarter of the world’s population — lack regular access to clean drinking water. And roughly 800,000 people annually die from illnesses associated with unsanitary water. Drinking water access is a…

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The Haystack 37m Telescope has been a landmark in radio astronomy and radar studies of the solar system since its first light in 1964. Over the following four decades, it supported NASA's Apollo landings on the moon, made planetary radar…

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MIT's Universal Learning is a new initiative from MIT Open Learning designed to prepare learners everywhere to tackle complex global challenges through boundary-crossing thinking. Universal Learning offerings combine subject matter…

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Jack Carson, a second-year undergraduate at MIT majoring in electrical engineering and computer science, has been named a 2026 Udall Scholar, one of up to 65 undergraduates nationally to receive the prestigious $7,500 award. The Udall…

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MIT Research Scientist Afreen Siddiqi ’99, SM ’01, PhD ’06; MIT professors Kathleen Thelen and Vinod Vaikuntanathan SM ’05, PhD ’09; as well as Kate Manne PhD ’11 are among 223 scientists, artists, and scholars awarded 2026 fellowships…

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Due to the explosive growth of artificial intelligence, it is estimated that data centers will consume up to 12 percent of total U.S. electricity by 2028 , according to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Improving data center…

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Confidence is persuasive. In artificial intelligence systems, it is often misleading. Today's most capable reasoning models share a trait with the loudest voice in the room: They deliver every answer with the same unshakable certainty,…

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MIT Comparative Media Studies/Writing Professor T.L. Taylor has been named a 2026-27 fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University (CASBS), a highly selective residential program that convenes…

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Training a large artificial intelligence model is expensive, not just in dollars, but in time, energy, and computational resources. Traditionally, obtaining a smaller, faster model either requires training a massive one first and then…