Latest news with #Degree
Yahoo
02-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
The speech that got MIT's 2025 class president banned from graduation
Megha Vemuri, Massachusetts Institute of Technology's 2025 class president, was banned from participating in her graduation commencement ceremony last week, after she accused the university of having 'aided and abetted' Israel's 'assault on the Palestinian people' during a speech on campus the day before. On Thursday, Vemuri took to the stage at the OneMIT commencement ceremony, donning a keffiyeh — a traditional scarf worn by Arab communities that has been a symbol of Palestinian nationalism for decades — over her graduation gown. During her speech, Vemuri denounced Israel's war in Gaza and criticized the university for its ties to the country's military. 'Right now, while we prepare to graduate and move forward with our lives, there are no universities left in Gaza,' Vemuri said. 'We are watching Israel try to wipe out Palestine off the face of the earth, and it is a shame that MIT is a part of it.' According to the Hamas-run Palestinian Health Ministry, at least 54,418 people have been killed and 124,190 injured in Gaza amid Israel's ongoing attack in the region since Hamas' terrorist attack in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. That attack killed more than 1,200 people in Israel and took around 250 hostage, according to Israeli counts. Vemuri's speech starts around the 55:30 mark, and her remarks related to Gaza begin at the 56:00 mark: At the end of her speech, Vemuri referenced a decades-old MIT tradition in which graduating students turn their class rings, featuring their university's mascot, 'Tim the Beaver,' outward, symbolizing that their time at MIT is now in the past. 'As you lift it off your fingers, notice that the beaver is no longer facing you; it is now facing the world,' Vemuri said. 'This is a world that we will be entering with an immeasurable responsibility. We will carry with us the stamp of the MIT name, the same name that is directly complicit in the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people. And so we carry with us the obligation to do everything we can to stop it.' After Vemuri finished her speech, Sally Kornbluth, the university's president, tried to settle the crowd. 'At MIT, we believe in freedom of expression. But today is about the graduates,' Kornbluth said. Without naming Vemuri, MIT confirmed that she had been banned from Friday's events, after they said she delivered a speech a day earlier that was not the one provided to the school in advance of the event. 'While that individual had a scheduled role at today's Undergraduate Degree Ceremony, she was notified that she would not be permitted at today's events,' university spokesperson Kimberly Allen said in a statement. 'MIT supports free expression but stands by its decision, which was in response to the individual deliberately and repeatedly misleading Commencement organizers and leading a protest from the stage, disrupting an important Institute ceremony.' Vemuri's speech quickly attracted criticism, including from House Speaker Mike Johnson, who called it 'Ignorant. Hateful. Morally bankrupt,' in a post on X. 'Where is the shame — or appropriate response from the institution? Have your children avoid MIT & the Ivy League at all costs,' Johnson wrote. An MIT spokesperson told CNN that despite not attending Friday's ceremony, Vemuri will still receive her degree. 'What I am dealing with right now is absolutely nothing compared to the people of Palestine, and I'd take on much more if it meant helping their cause,' Vemuri told CNN on Sunday. This article was originally published on
New Indian Express
31-05-2025
- Politics
- New Indian Express
Indian-origin MIT class president barred from graduation commencement after pro-Palestine speech
Other social media users suggested deportation proceedings, calling her speech, an attempt to grab attention, and calling her remarks 'unacceptable.' Some users distanced her views from the broader Indian-American community, describing her as part of the 'woke' movement. MIT's response MIT clarified that Vemuri's delivered speech differed from the one previously submitted to the university. According to NBC News, MIT banned her from participating in the ceremony due to her actions. "While that individual had a scheduled role at today's Undergraduate Degree Ceremony, she was notified that she would not be permitted at today's events," said university spokesperson Kimberly Allen. Allen added that MIT supports free expression, but the act was misleading the organisers of the commencement, and disrupting an important ceremony. (This story was originally published in EdexLive)
India Today
31-05-2025
- Politics
- India Today
MIT bans Indian-origin student from graduation event over pro-Palestine speech
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) barred the Class of 2025 president Megha Vemuri from participating in Friday's official graduation commencement ceremony after she delivered a pro-Palestine speech during a separate campus event a day university confirmed the disciplinary action in a statement on Friday, without naming the student. "While that individual had a scheduled role at today's Undergraduate Degree Ceremony, she was notified that she would not be permitted at today's events," said MIT spokesperson Kimberly supports free expression but stands by its decision, which was in response to the individual deliberately and repeatedly misleading Commencement organisers and leading a protest from the stage, disrupting an important Institute ceremony," the spokesperson added. The speech, which went viral online and was shared by the Palestinian Youth Movement. During Thursday's OneMIT commencement event, Vemuri wore a keffiyeh - a symbol of Palestinian solidarity - and condemned MIT's research collaborations with the Israeli military. She accused the university of "aiding and abetting" Israel's actions against Palestinians and called for a "free Palestine"."The students of MIT will not tolerate genocide," she said, praising campus activism in support of Palestinian officials said Vemuri's remarks differed from the speech approved in advance and that her actions amounted to staging a protest during an official an Indian-American student leader, had been expected to speak again at Friday's main graduation event but was informed she would no longer be allowed to incident comes amid heightened tensions on US campuses over the war in Gaza and increasing scrutiny of institutional ties with Israel. Pro-Palestine protests have intensified in recent months, with students demanding that universities divest from companies and programs linked to the Israeli military.
News18
12-05-2025
- Science
- News18
Scientists Have Created Gold From Lead In The CERN Large Hadron Collider
Last Updated: In the LHC, the world's largest collider, scientists accelerated lead nuclei to 99.999993% the speed of light, sending them hurtling through vacuum-sealed tunnels In a scene that feels torn from the pages of medieval alchemy, the world's most advanced physics laboratory has managed to achieve what mystics once only dreamed of – transforming one element into another, specifically, lead into gold. But this modern-day transmutation was not the result of ancient spells or bubbling cauldrons. It happened inside the 27-kilometre ring of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, on the outskirts of Geneva, during a series of high-energy experiments conducted between 2015 and 2018. According to a recently published paper in Physical Review C, scientists during this period succeeded in producing an estimated 86 billion gold nuclei, albeit for a fleeting instant. That's roughly 29 picograms of gold – a trillionth of a gram – far too small to mint a coin or even to see, but a dazzling scientific feat nonetheless. The process reads like a sci-fi interpretation of the periodic table. Lead and gold are neighbours on the elemental chart, with gold containing 79 protons and lead 82. Theoretically, by knocking a few protons and neutrons off a lead atom, you could arrive at gold. However, this transformation requires titanic forces that no ancient alchemist could dream of. Enter the LHC, the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator. There, scientists accelerated lead nuclei to 99.999993% the speed of light, sending them hurtling through vacuum-sealed tunnels. When two such nuclei passed close to one another, their immense electromagnetic fields clashed, generating an intense burst of photons. These photon pulses were powerful enough to destabilise the nuclei, ejecting protons and neutrons in a process known as photodisintegration. In this atomic mayhem, some of the remaining particles briefly reassembled into gold nuclei – exquisitely short-lived and impossibly rare. Most were destroyed within moments as they collided with the LHC's walls, but their formation was detected thanks to the highly sensitive Zero Degree Calorimeters (ZDC) in the ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) detector. The ZDC measured the emission of nuclear fragments and converted this invisible alchemy into quantifiable data. And gold wasn't the only element born in the chaos. The collisions also produced mercury (80 protons) and thallium (81 protons) – elements just shy of lead on the periodic table. While these were more abundant than gold in the LHC experiments, it is gold's symbolic and scientific significance that captured imaginations. This achievement may not herald a new age of gold mining in laboratories – the amount created is cosmically small and extraordinarily expensive. But it provides valuable insights into the nuclear processes that occur in extreme environments, such as supernovae or neutron star collisions, where nature might perform similar transmutations on a far grander scale. Watch India Pakistan Breaking News on CNN-News18. Get breaking news, in-depth analysis, and expert perspectives on everything from geopolitics to diplomacy and global trends. Stay informed with the latest world news only on News18. Download the News18 App to stay updated! First Published:
Newsweek
09-05-2025
- Science
- Newsweek
Alchemist's Dream Realized As Lead Turned Into Gold at Large Hadron Collider
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Fulfilling the dream of medieval alchemists, physicists have observed the transmutation of lead into gold—through nuclear physics at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's most powerful particle accelerator. For centuries, this idea of turning lead into gold—chrysopoeia—seemed out of reach. The two metals share a similar density, but modern science later proved they are distinct elements and chemically non-interchangeable. However, gold can be produced, albeit in microscopic amounts, at the heart of ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment), one of the four main instruments on the LHC at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. The ALICE experiment is dedicated to heavy-ion physics and investigates matter under extreme energy densities. During high-energy collisions of lead nuclei at the LHC, scientists can momentarily recreate quark–gluon plasma, a state of matter that existed just millionths of a second after the Big Bang. Still, gold is not born from these direct crashes. Instead, it forms in a more subtle scenario—when lead nuclei almost collide head-on, but miss. "It is impressive to see that our detectors can handle head-on collisions producing thousands of particles, while also being sensitive to collisions where only a few particles are produced at a time, enabling the study of electromagnetic 'nuclear transmutation' processes," ALICE spokesperson Marco Van Leeuwen, said in a statement. An image of the tunnel inside a large hadron collider. An image of the tunnel inside a large hadron collider. Getty Images In near-miss encounters, intense electromagnetic fields surrounding the rapidly moving lead nuclei generate brief pulses of photons. T When these photons interact with nuclei, they cause a phenomenon known as electromagnetic dissociation, in which protons and neutrons are ejected from a nucleus. In rare cases, three protons are knocked out of a lead nucleus, leaving behind gold in its place. The ALICE team used specialized instruments known as Zero Degree Calorimeters (ZDC) to measure these rare events. By detecting the number of protons and neutrons ejected in collisions, researchers were able to distinguish between the creation of other heavy elements like thallium and mercury—and gold. Sadly, the resulting gold nuclei do not stick around for long. Traveling at nearly the speed of light, they smash into the walls of the collider or its components and disintegrate almost instantly into smaller particles. Still, the numbers are impressive: during Run 2 of the LHC (2015–2018), about 86 billion gold nuclei were produced. Run 3 has already nearly doubled that count. Yet despite this, the total mass of gold created is vanishingly small—trillions of times less than what would be needed to make, say, a wedding ring. While that may dash the hopes of some, the experiment opens a new window into how elements are formed and how electromagnetic fields can manipulate atomic nuclei. It also highlights the extraordinary sensitivity of the ALICE detector, which was designed not for gold-making, but to probe the universe's earliest moments. Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about particle physics? Let us know via science@ Reference ALICE Collaboration, Acharya, S., Agarwal, A., Aglieri Rinella, G., Aglietta, L., Agnello, M., Agrawal, N., Ahammed, Z., Ahmad, S., Ahn, S. U., Ahuja, I., Akindinov, A., Akishina, V., Al-Turany, M., Aleksandrov, D., Alessandro, B., Alfanda, H. M., Alfaro Molina, R., Ali, B., ... Zurlo, N. (2025). Proton emission in ultraperipheral Pb-Pb collisions at $sqrt{{s}_{NN}}=5.02$ TeV. Physical Review C, 111(5).
