About Us
Founded in 1944, the American Committee for the Weizmann Institute of Science develops philanthropic support for the Weizmann Institute in Israel, and advances its mission of science for the benefit of humanity.
Dec 12, 2016...
This artist’s illustration depicts a sun-like star being “spaghettified” by a supermassive black hole, which has the mass of 100 million times that of Earth’s sun. A new study found that this death by black hole was the fate of the ultra-bright supernova ASASSN-15lh.Credit: ESA/Hubble, ESO, M. Kornmesser
An incredibly luminous outburst that astronomers had previously classified as possibly the brightest supernova ever actually might have been caused by the explosive death of a star torn apart by a giant black hole, a new study finds.
Jul 26, 2010... The lakes of southern Titan are shrinking.The level of Ontario Lacus, the largest lake in the southern hemisphere of this Saturnian moon, has fallen by some 15 feet over the last four years, causing its shore to recede by as much as 6 miles in some places. Other lakes nearby have similarly receded, according to radar measurements made by the Cassini spacecraft.However, if prolonged spells of 90-degree temperatures have you yearning for a refreshing icy dip, there are still plenty of bathing opportunities on Titan.Of course the lakes there are made of liquid methane — and the 90 degrees of temperature are on the Kelvin scale, near enough to absolute zero to challenge even the most cosmically adept polar bear. The atmosphere is nitrogen and methane.Titan is the only body in the solar system other than Earth that has been found to harbor liquid on its surface, leading many planetary scientists and aspiring astrobiologists to speculate that the same organic chemical processes that led to life on Earth are occurring in a frozen slush of hydrocarbons on Titan.The discovery that Titan’s lakes are evaporating, at least in the Southern Hemisphere, where summer just ended, suggests that there are active weather and geological cycles on Titan analogous to those on Earth. But on Titan the liquid driving those cycles is not water but methane, explained Oded Aharonson, a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology. [Aharonson is now a professor in the Weizmann Institute of Science’s Department of Environmental Sciences and Energy Research.]
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/could-the-next-einstein-be-a-surfer-dude/
Mar 01, 2008... This article can be viewed by downloading the PDF.
Jun 20, 2019... ‘This is the first time anyone has been able to control the spatial orientation of chiral molecules with light,’ says Ilya Averbukh from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. His theory group teamed up with Valery Milner’s experimental team from the University of British Columbia, Canada, to build a laser setup called an optical centrifuge that can spin chiral molecules depending on their handedness.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/scientists-find-signs-of-missing-god-particle/
Dec 14, 2011...
Weizmann Institute of Science astrophysicists have been prominent inthe experiments that have shown "promising signs" of the existence ofthe Higgs boson – the "God particle" – that provides a framework for allof the subatomic particles in nature and has been sought for decades.
Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and the CERN researchcenter in Switzerland said in an excited announcement on Tuesday that itfound some evidence in its experiments of the existence of theelementary particle.
Apr 06, 2016...
Photo Courtesy of The Gregory School
Editor’s Note: Gregory School junior and Chant reporter Tianyi Zhu is participating in The Gregory School’s physics trip to Israel and sending updates:
Our whole team is now on the plane to LA, ready to takeoff. We’ll then fly directly from LA to Tel Aviv. The flight is about fourteen hours. Our safe for the competition was disassembled into separate components and put into two carry-on suitcases.
https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/study-reveals-clue-to-glass-mystery/
Aug 16, 2018...
The fictive temperature, which pertains to the material’s structure, can dramatically affect the toughness of metallic glass. Above, notched samples of metallic glasses of different fictive temperatures (increasing from left to right) change from brittle to ductile, as indicated by the yellow-marked region ahead of the notch.
Addressing a centuries-old question, researchers have uncovered a key element to how glasses transition into very resilient states. This breakthrough could allow for more reliable ways to use glasses — metallic glasses in particular — in a wide range of applications.
Mar 01, 2014... Smaller, lighter, faster to build, easier to launch and one-tenth the cost of today’s big space telescopes: That is the idea behind a unique collaboration between Weizmann Institute scientists and researchers in California, Israeli, and American industry, and NASA. The proposed project, says Institute astrophysicist Prof. Eli Waxman, could lead to a new era of research based on a number of small, special-purpose telescopes that will expand the boundaries of astrophysical research. Among other things, they might enable us to understand how black holes grow, or solve such mysteries as the sources of high-energy cosmic radiation.
Jul 29, 2015...
Moving large items requires many ants to work together
Scientists in Israel have discovered how ants co-operate to move big chunks of food back to their nests.
A large team of ants does the heavy lifting but they lack direction, while a small number of "scouts" intervene and steer for short periods.
They appear to have a mathematically perfect balance between individuality and conformism, the researchers said.
Feb 22, 2012...
Among Prof. David Milstein's various research projects, the one considered to be most important helped scientists understand the bonds between carbon and hydrogen.
Prof. David Milstein of the Weizmann Institute is the 5772 Israel Prize laureate for chemistry and physics, Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar announced Sunday.
Milstein won the prize for his innovative research that finds new ways to create compounds using materials containing metals. His studies have environmental ramifications because they can help develop cleaner industrial processes.
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