In 1928, two Caltech biologists rented a ramshackle pier shed in Corona del Mar to collect marine specimens. Thomas Hunt Morgan, founder of Caltech’s Division of Biology, and Albert Tyler planned to sleep there overnight, forgetting a fundamental truth about o... More »
NASA has successfully tested an artificial intelligence system that allows satellites to autonomously decide when and where to capture images. The technology, called Dynamic Targeting, was developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and deployed abo... More »
Some five years ago, mathematician Sergei Gukov began teaching himself how to build the neural networks that are the foundation of artificial intelligence, simply to see whether they might be useful in the realm of pure mathematics. He was, he admits now, skep... More »
Hirosi Ooguri, the Fred Kavli Professor of Theoretical Physics and Mathematics at Caltech, will become the next chair of the Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy (PMA) on August 16, 2025. Ooguri, who has served as the director of the Walter Burke Ins... More »
Stargazers across Pasadena can witness a rare celestial spectacle this week as three major meteor showers simultaneously illuminate the night sky. The Perseid, Southern Delta Aquariids, and Alpha Capricornids showers promise quite a display. Ed Krupp, director... More »
A comet is hurtling into our solar system from interstellar space at about 152,000 miles per hour. The comet, named 3I/ATLAS, was discovered by the NASA-funded ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) survey telescope in Rio Hurtado, Chile, on Jul... More »
When white dwarfs—the hot remnants of stars like our Sun—are orbited closely by another star, they sometimes steal mass away from their companion. The stolen matter builds up on the surface of the white dwarf, triggering eruptions called novae. Theorists have ... More »
While millions of Americans swelter under heat warnings from the National Weather Service, new research finds that not only will climate change make heat waves hotter and longer, but the lengthening of heat waves will accelerate with each additional fraction o... More »
As researchers at Caltech and beyond have worked to develop artificial intelligence technologies to perform ever-more data-intensive and critical scientific inquiries, they and their colleagues have also sought to steer those technologies’ ethical development,... More »
In 2015, Andre Hoelz, the Mary and Charles Ferkel Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, learned he had a rare brain tumor that was pressing on his acoustic nerve. The chemist, who normally focuses on solvin... More »
Jocelyn Holland, professor of comparative literature at Caltech and an expert on the intellectual history of 18th- and 19th-century Germany, has written a new book published by Brill. In the work, Theory’s Practice: Reflections on Technology in Germany Around ... More »
A Caltech-led team has developed a safe, effective, and painless breast imaging technique that incorporates machine learning to help differentiate between suspicious and healthy tissue. The method has now been tested on patients and performs as well as or bett... More »
