Jason Scott ‘10 and Beth Turner ‘10 enjoy their time on the playa.

The road from the Man to the temple on the horizon.

A view out onto the desert from the inside of the Pier.

Burners relax under the waning sun.

Whiteouts, caused by whirling dust in high winds, were common this year due to the lack of precipitation last winter.

Christopher Varenhorst ‘09 sits by the embers of the Circle of Regional Effigies (CORE). The Man is surrounded by a ring of 34 wooden effigies, each built by a different regional Burning Man group and burned simultaneously on Thursday.

Inside the wooden structure of the Man.

Burning Man participants walk and bike to and fro as the sun sets over the playa.

Moral compass Brooke (Brit Marling) and finance fraud Robert Miller (Richard Gere) go head-to-head in Nicholas Jarecki’s Arbitrage.

An MIT graduate student peruses an art piece in the Wiesner Building Wednesday evening during a special reception held in conjunction with the annual Student Loan Art Program Exhibition. The program allows students to borrow framed artwork from a collection of about 500 pieces.

Students inspect herbs on sale at the MIT Endicott House Plant Sale in front of W20 on Thursday.

Former MIT professor Steven A. Pinker delivers a talk on “Communicating Science and Technology in the 21st Century,” on Wednesday afternoon in 34-101. The talk, which was the first annual Nuclear Science and Engineering lecture on scientific communication, was attended by over 300 people.