Uploaded January 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago
Searching for Life, Defending Our World: How Exoplanetary Science Is Powering Planetary Defense
Thursday, November 20
Join MIT Associate Professor Julien de Wit PhD ’14 for a journey across two frontiers of planetary science: the search for life beyond Earth and the quest to safeguard our planet from celestial threats. Thanks to breathtaking visuals from the James Webb Space Telescope and advanced image-processing techniques, you’ll witness the cosmos in ways never before possible—from the atmospheric fingerprints of distant exoplanets to the faintest, bus-sized asteroids hiding in our solar system’s main belt.
These tiny cosmic wanderers hold big secrets: the origins of our planet, the pathways of near-Earth objects, and strategies to refine impact-risk models—like the recent study of asteroid 2024 YR4, which drew global attention.
Discover how two seemingly separate missions—finding life among the stars and protecting life on Earth—are intertwined scientific endeavors, with profound implications for habitability, risk, and planetary stewardship.
Searching for Life, Defending Our World: How Exoplanetary Science Is Powering Planetary Defense
Thursday, November 20
Join MIT Associate Professor Julien de Wit PhD ’14 for a journey across two frontiers of planetary science: the search for life beyond Earth and the quest to safeguard our planet from celestial threats. Thanks to breathtaking visuals from the James Webb Space Telescope and advanced image-processing techniques, you’ll witness the cosmos in ways never before possible—from the atmospheric fingerprints of distant exoplanets to the faintest, bus-sized asteroids hiding in our solar system’s main belt.
These tiny cosmic wanderers hold big secrets: the origins of our planet, the pathways of near-Earth objects, and strategies to refine impact-risk models—like the recent study of asteroid 2024 YR4, which drew global attention.
Discover how two seemingly separate missions—finding life among the stars and protecting life on Earth—are intertwined scientific endeavors, with profound implications for habitability, risk, and planetary stewardship.
![[AD] Tapping Bones to Help People Communicate](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/OnLhk_WPuF0/mqdefault.jpg "[AD] Tapping Bones to Help People Communicate
Read more about how Jordan McRae 05 and his team at Mobilus created an audio device that captures and transmits speech through bone-conduction: https://bit.ly/4cBSjJm
View the video without audio description: https://youtu.be/3gO8uGOFL2M
Jordan McRae ’05 was scuba diving off the coast of Mozambique many years ago when he started having trouble with his regulator. Unable to breathe effectively, he signaled to a fellow diver for help—but his companion didn’t understand and ended up making the situation worse. “I didn’t die, but I was pretty scared,” McRae says.
The experience inspired McRae to seek a technical solution to the problem of communicating in challenging audio environments. Today he is the founder and CEO of Mobilus Labs, a startup commercializing a voice communication platform that works wherever it is hard to hear.
#noisecancellation #boneconduction #manufacturing #industry #massachusettsinstituteoftechnology #alumni #audiodescription
CODE: Y0MTJWSRC5RNMN2N")
