Recent Popular Content

With Video

There are places in space where the gravitational tug between a planet and the Sun balance out, allowing other smaller bodies to remain stable called Lagrangian points. So-called Trojan asteroids have been found in some of these stable spots near Jupiter and Neptune. Now Scott Sheppard at the Carnegie’s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism and Chad Trujillo have discovered the first Trojan asteroid in a difficult-to-detect stability region at Neptune—the Lagrangian L5 point.

With Video
Tiny variations in the isotopic composition of silver in meteorites and Earth rocks are helping scientists put together a timetable of how our planet was assembled beginning 4.568 billion years ago. The new study, published in the journal Science, indicates that water and other key volatiles may have been present in at least some of Earth’s original building blocks, rather than acquired later from comets, as some scientists have suggested.

With Audio
Accurately calculating the amount of carbon dioxide emitted in the process of producing and bringing products to our doorsteps is nearly impossible, but still a worthwhile effort, two Carnegie researchers claim in a commentary published online this week. The Global Ecology department’s Ken Caldeira and Steven Davis commend the work of industrial ecologist Glen Peters and colleagues, published in the same journal late last month, and use that team’s data to do additional analysis on the disparity between emissions and consumption in different parts of the world.

With Video
Although its name may make many people think of flowers, the element germanium is part of a frequently studied group of elements, called IVa, which could have applications for next-generation computer architecture as well as implications for fundamental condensed matter physics. New research  reveals details of the element’s transitions under pressure. Their results show extraordinary agreement with the predictions of modern condensed matter theory.
 

With Video
Up to now scientists thought that the trace carbon on the surface of the Moon came from the solar wind. Now researchers at the Geophysical Lab have detected and dated Moon carbon in the form of graphite, which survived from the late heavy bombardment era 3.8 billion years ago. The discovery means that the Moon could hold a record of the meteoritic carbon input to the Earth-Moon system, when life was just beginning to emerge. Multimedia version

With Video

Nitrogen atoms like to travel in pairs, hooked together by one of the strongest chemical bonds in nature. By subjecting nitrogen molecules to extreme temperatures and pressures scientists are getting a new understanding of not only nitrogen but other similar molecules, including hydrogen. Hypothesized nitrogen polymers could form materials with higher energy content than any known non-nuclear material.