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.
Jun 16, 2017...
Credit: NASA/SwRI /MSSS/Gerald Eichstädt/Seán Doran
More than 400 years after Galileo turned his telescope toward the planet Jupiter, the clouds and mist covering this giant of our Solar System are beginning to disperse. Since 1973, no fewer than six spacecraft have flown by Jupiter. But the Juno probe, launched in 2011 and in orbit around the planet since July 2016, is the first one equipped with systems that are able to reveal the secrets of Jupiter’s inner structure beneath the thick clouds.
Nov 10, 2017...
Frankenstein’s moon, Mark Garlick/Science Photo Library
It came in like a wrecking ball. Neptune has one of the weirdest collections of moons in our solar system, and it’s Triton’s fault. The planet’s largest moon probably smashed into the calm moon system that was there before it arrived, knocking everything out of sync.
Planetary scientists have long suspected that the huge moon Triton is an interloper from outside the Neptune system. Now they have calculated what the other moons may have looked like before the intrusion.
Aug 12, 2019... REHOVOT, ISRAEL—August 12, 2019—Weighing in at just about 160 kg (around 353 lbs), a new type of scientific satellite is planned to be built in Israel over the next four years, with a projected launch date of 2023. The satellite, known as ULTRASAT, will carry a telescope designed to observe the universe as it has never been seen before: it will operate in a range of light that is normally invisible to us – ultraviolet, or UV – and have a very large field of view.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/weather-on-the-outer-planets-only-goes-so-deep/
May 17, 2013... In the middle is the Great Dark Spot, accompanied by bright, white clouds that undergo rapid changes in appearance. To the south of the Great Dark Spot is the bright feature that Voyager scientists nicknamed "Scooter." Still farther south is the feature called "Dark Spot 2," which has a bright core. As each feature moves eastward at a different velocity, they are rarely aligned this way. Wind velocities near the equator are westward, reaching 1,300 km/h, while those at higher latitudes are eastward, peaking at 900 km/h. Image from the Voyager 2 flyby of Neptune in August 1989 (NASA)
Jan 05, 2017... Symphony of Particles: Dr. Shkima Bressler on What Makes Up the Universe
Oct 16, 2017...
This artist’s impression shows two tiny but very dense neutron stars at the point at which they merge and explode as a kilonova. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada/M. Kornmesser
REHOVOT, ISRAEL—October 16, 2017—An international research team, including physicists from the Weizmann Institute of Science, has for the first time succeeded in observing a merger of two colliding neutron stars. The merger was simultaneously picked up by three detectors built for this purpose: the two belonging to the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or LIGO, in the United States, and the Virgo detector in Italy. The observation may help determine how such heavy elements as uranium, iodine, and gold were formed, as well as enhance our understanding of some of the most violent events in the history of the universe.
Mar 02, 2020...
When a massive star reaches the end of its life, it can explode as a supernova. But there’s a unique type of supernova that’s much brighter that we’re just starting to understand – and which may prove useful in measuring the universe.
Known as superluminous supernovae, these events are typically 10 to 100 times brighter than a regular supernova but much more rare. We’ve spotted about 100 so far, but many aspects of these events remain elusive.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/blowing-in-the-stellar-wind/
May 21, 2014... REHOVOT, ISRAEL—May 21, 2014—When a supernova – the explosion of a giant star – was discovered last year, astrophysicists, with the help of telescopes around the globe, rushed to observe the fireworks. With its dramatic dying flares, this star – a rare type more than 10 times the mass of our sun – can tell us something about the life of these fascinating cosmic bodies, as well as helping paint the picture of how all the heavier elements in the universe are formed.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/xenon1t-team-sets-limits/
May 30, 2018...
Inside the XENON1T water shield
Dr. Ran Budnik and his team at the Weizmann Institute of Science joined 165 researchers from 27 research institutes around the world working on the XENON1T experiment. This experiment is the most sensitive by far to search for dark matter, and the results they reported this week set a stringent limit on the possible mass of particles that could make up the elusive dark matter. Following these results, based on research that utilized a tank containing over a ton of liquid xenon and on data collected for almost a year, the scientists are planning an even larger, more-sensitive experiment – XENONnT – for 2019.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/feature-stories/science-tips-december-2011/
Dec 01, 2011... Less and less of today’s computing is done on desktop computers; cloud computing, in which operations are carried out on a network of shared, remote servers, is expected to rise as the demand for computing power increases. This raises some crucial questions about security: Can we, for instance, perform computations on data stored in “the cloud” without letting anyone else see our information? Research carried out at the Weizmann Institute of Science and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is moving us closer to the ability to work on data while it is still encrypted, giving an encrypted result that can later be securely deciphered.
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