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 future of humanity.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/science-tips-march-2015/
Mar 02, 2015...
Manot Cave cranium
A partial human skull unearthed in 2008 in northern Israel may hold some clues as to when and where humans and Neanderthals might have interbred. The key to addressing this, as well as other important issues, is precisely determining the age of the skull. A combination of dating methods, one of them performed by Dr. Elisabetta Boaretto, head of the Weizmann Institute’s D-REAMS (DANGOOR Research Accelerator Mass Spectrometry) laboratory, has made it possible to define the period of time that the cave was occupied and, thus, the skull’s age. The combined dating provides evidence that Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis could have lived side by side in the area.
Jan 29, 2019...
Israeli scientists participate in an experiment simulating a mission to Mars, at the D-MARS Desert Mars Analog Ramon Station project, February 18, 2018. \ RONEN ZVULUN/ REUTERS
The race to land humans on Mars is on again – and at an accelerated pace. Superpowers including China and the United States have declared their intentions to land astronauts on the Red Planet, as have private entrepreneurs who are taking the challenge seriously, among them Elon Musk.
Mar 28, 2019...
LOS ANGELES (March 28, 2019) —XPRIZE, the global leader in designing and operating world-changing incentive competitions, announces that it will offer a $1 million Moonshot Award in recognition of an XPRIZE team demonstrating the achievement of a “moonshot” technological feat outside the parameters or timeframe of an XPRIZE competition.
The Award is inspired by SpaceIL, a former Google Lunar XPRIZE team, whose mission to become the first private, non-government entity to land on the surface of the Moon is underway, with an anticipated landing on April 11, 2019. A successful lunar landing will result in SpaceIL receiving the inaugural Moonshot Award from XPRIZE.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/astronomers-witness-biggest-star-explosion/
Dec 01, 2009...
Astronomers have watched the violent death of what was probably the most massive star ever detected. The supernova explosion, which lasted for months, is thought to have generated more than 50 Suns' worth (1032 kilograms) of different elements, which may one day go on to make new solar systems.
The explosion — dubbed SN2007bi — was spotted as part of a digital survey to hunt for supernovae at the Palomar Observatory near San Diego, California.
Oct 31, 2017...
An artist’s impression shows two tiny but very dense neutron stars at the point at which they merge and explode as a kilonova. (ESO/L. Calçada/M. Kornmesser)
In October, LIGO and its European counterpart, VIRGO, witnessed gravitational waves rippling out from a breathtaking collision between two neutron stars. This unprecedented event looked like yet another triumph for a new kind of astronomy, one that could use gravitational waves to probe some of the universe’s deepest mysteries. But in all the excitement, most people didn’t notice that something had died: a whole group of theories that posit a universe with no dark matter.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/news-releases/science-tips-february-2013/
Feb 07, 2013... Before they go all-out supernova, certain large stars undergo a sort of “mini-explosion,” throwing a good-sized chunk of their material off into space. Though several models predict this behavior and evidence from supernovae points in this direction, actual observations of such pre-explosion outbursts have been rare. In new research led by Dr. Eran Ofek of the Weizmann Institute of Science, scientists found such an outburst taking place a short time — just one month — before a massive star underwent a supernova explosion.
Mar 19, 2019...
Beresheet and its route to the moon. (photo credit: SPACEIL)
A team of scientists from the Weizmann Institute of Science and SpaceIL engineers have identified the site for Israel's Beresheet spacecraft's lunar landing.
According to a release disseminated by the Weizmann Institute, the chosen site was selected by Prof. Oded Aharonson of the Weizmann Institute and Prof. Jim Head of Brown University. It is located in the northeastern part of Mare Serenitatis, a few hundreds of miles east of the Apollo 15 landing site and a similar distance northwest from the Apollo 17 site.
Jul 04, 2012...
Illustration of a particle collision.
The long and complicated journey to detect the Higgs boson, which started with one small step about 25 years ago, might finally have reached its goal. This was reported by Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particle accelerator scientists on July 4 at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, CERN, near Geneva.
Named after Scottish physicist Peter Higgs, the Higgs boson is the final building block that has been missing from the “Standard Model,” which describes the structure of matter in the universe. The Higgs boson combines two forces of nature and shows that they are, in fact, different aspects of a more fundamental force. The particle is also responsible for the existence of mass in the elementary particles.
Mar 07, 2018...
Jupiter’s cloud bands — seen here in this image created by citizen scientists Gerald Eichstädt and Seán Doran, using data from NASA’s Juno spacecraft — extend more than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) into the planet’s interior, three new studies suggest. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstädt/Seán Doran
The colorful stripes of Jupiter run more than 1,000 miles deep and hold so much gas that their mass is about three times that of the entire Earth, three new studies find.
https://weizmann-usa.org/news-media/feature-stories/looking-back-looking-forward/
Apr 11, 2016... In a place that fosters curiosity and the pursuit of "what if," where scientists come to work every day with the knowledge that anything can happen, astounding discoveries are realized on a regular basis. That place is the Weizmann Institute of Science, where accomplishments are so remarkable and varied that, at times, we need to pause and take it all in. The beginning of a new year is just such a time.
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