At night, the abundant ocean phytoplankton Prochlorococcus shed extra compounds, which are then consumed by other microbes, researchers have discovered. This “cross-feeding” may play a large role in the ocean’s capacity to cycle and store carbon.

On Friday, the White House honored several MIT affiliates — four faculty and one additional alumnus — with National Medals of Science and of Technology and Innovation. The awards are the nation’s highest honors for scientists and engineers.

A new surface-based sonar system could rapidly map the ocean floor at high resolution. The system’s small fleet of autonomous surface vessels forms a large sonar array for finding submerged objects.

Astronomers have pinned down the origins of at least one fast radio burst, a brilliant explosion of radio waves emitted by an extremely compact object. The team’s method may reveal the sources of other FRBs, which are so bright they can briefly outshine entire galaxies.

Matteo Bucci is on a quest to uncover the physics behind boiling. A better understanding of this phenomenon could enable advances in efficient energy production, electronics cooling, water desalination, medical diagnostics, and more.

Physicists have created a new and long-lasting magnetic state in a material, using only light. They used a terahertz laser to stimulate atoms in antiferromagnetic materials, which could advance information processing and memory chip technology.