Astronomer Ana Bonaca, for whom the Milky Way galaxy is laboratory to explore the evolution of the universe, has joined the Carnegie Observatories as a Staff Scientist. “Over the next decade, we will be able to understand our galaxy in unprecedented detail and I plan to use this avalanche of data to turn the Milky Way into a cosmological laboratory,” she said. “Having access to the facilities at Carnegie’s Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, as well as to the computational resources of the Carnegie Theoretical Astrophysics Center, makes this the perfect home to advance my research goals.”
Washington, DC—Our planet provides ample research opportunities for scientists like Diana Roman, who has devoted her career
Carnegie has named Earth and Planets Laboratory Staff Scientists Diana Roman and Lara Wagner as the inaugural Harry Oscar Wood Chairs of Seismology.
Michael Gellert, co-founder of investment vehicle Windcrest Partners who oversaw a decade of major institutional initiatives as the Chairman of Carnegie’s Board of Trustees, died August 17. He is one of the largest donors in the institution’s history, supporting many projects and initiatives that span the breadth of our research.
The Sun has a new neighbor that was hiding in plain twilight. An asteroid that orbits the Sun in just 113 days—the shortest known orbital period for an asteroid and second shortest for any object in our Solar System after Mercury—was discovered by Carnegie’s Scott S. Sheppard in evening twilight images taken by Brown University’s Ian Dell'Antonio and Shenming Fu.
A Carnegie-led survey of exoplanet candidates identified by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanets Satellite Survey (TESS) is laying the groundwork to help astronomers understand how the Milky Way’s most common planets formed and evolved, and determine why our Solar System’s pattern of planetary orbits and sizes is so unusual.
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Remembering Vera Rubin
As we commemorate the extraordinary life of Vera Rubin—who forever altered how we understand the universe—on what would have been her 93rd birthday, I keep coming back to a legendary moment in her transformative career and what it can teach us about our present moment.
Earlier this year, Carnegie sat down (via Zoom) with Jacqueline and Simon Mitton, authors of Vera Rubin: A Life, the first biography of the legendary Carnegie scientist Vera Rubin, whose work on the rotation curves of galaxies confirmed the existence of dark matter.
Designing future low-carbon energy systems to use power generated in excess of the grid’s demands to produce hydrogen fuel could substantially lower electricity costs, according to new from Carnegie’s Tyler Ruggles and Ken Caldeira.
Carnegie’s Steven Farber was awarded nearly $500,000 over three years by The G. Harold & Leila Y. Mathers Foundation to identify the chemical components of cinnamon oil that show effectiveness against cardiovascular disease-causing fats.
Carnegie William Ludington’s quest to understand the community ecology of our gut microbiome was this spring awarded nearly $1 million over three years from the National Science Foundation. He was also selected as one of 14 researchers to receive $55,000 from the Research Corporation for Science Advancement for its inaugural Scialog: Microbiome, Neurobiology, and Disease initiative.
Carnegie’s Arthur Grossman and Stanford University’s Ellen Yeh were awarded a $900, 000 grant this spring from the university’s public-private partnership Strategic Energy Alliance to research the synthesis of biofuels from a species of green microalgae called Botryococcus braunii.
Carnegie’s Earth and Planets Laboratory welcomes two new staff scientists whose expertise spans from terrestrial planet interiors to the atmo
Dehydrated plant seeds can lay dormant for long periods—over 1,000 years in some species—before the availability of water can trigger germination. This protects the embryonic plant inside from a variety of environmental stresses until conditions are favorable for growth and survival. However, the mechanism by which the baby plant senses water and reactivates cellular activity has remained a mystery until now.
A team of Carnegie astronomers was awarded $1.4 million from the Heising-Simons Foundation to develop an ambitious and versatile infrared spectrograph for the Magellan telescopes at Carnegie’s Las Campanas Observatory in Chile that will enable breakthroughs in understanding cosmology, galaxy evolution, and exoplanet atmospheres.
Carnegie’s Anat Shahar is the lead investigator on an interdisciplinary, multi-institution research team that this spring was awarded nearly $1.5 million from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to understand the chemical makeup of our galaxy’s most common planets with a goal of developing a framework for detecting chemical signatures of life on distant worlds.
Embedded deep in the brain's temporal lobe, the hippocampus plays a major role in learning and memory. Dr.
Join us to learn from Carnegie Earth and Planets Laboratory astronomer Dr.