Stanford, CA— Over millions of years carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have been moderated by a finely tuned natural feedback system—a system that human emissions have recently overwhelmed. A...
Tanya Atwater of the University of California, Santa Barbara, gave the final Capital Science Lecture for the 2007-2008 season on April 17th. Her engaging talk included computer animations, maps,...
Washington, DC. The Geochemical Society and the European Association for Geochemistry has announced that Bjørn Mysen, senior scientist at Carnegie’s Geophysical Laboratory is one of seven...
Stanford, CA—The Earth’s jet streams, the high-altitude bands of fast winds that strongly influence the paths of storms and other weather systems, are shifting—possibly in response to global warming...
Co-authors Mark Seibert and Barry Madore of the Observatories are part of team that has produced a stunning new image showing infant stars growing in a remote area of galaxy M83. "Before these...
CarnegieScience is the newsletter of the Carnegie Institution for Science. It comes out three times a year and features Carnegie science and other activitities.
The spring 2008...
Washington, D.C. Charity Navigator, America's largest charity evaluator, has awarded the Carnegie Institution of Washington its highest rating, 4 stars, for sound fiscal management for 7 years...
Stanford, CA—Curators at one of the world’s most widely used biological databases, The Arabidopsis Information Resource, or TAIR, have joined forces with the journal Plant Physiology, to solve the...
Washington, DC—The organic soup that spawned life on Earth may have gotten generous helpings from outer space, according to a new study. Scientists at the Carnegie Institution have discovered...
Former Carnegie president and trustee Philip Abelson “had at least nine scientific lives…” Read this memoir appearing in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. http://www.aps-pub.com...
Stanford, CA — A startling discovery by scientists at the Carnegie Institution puts a new twist on photosynthesis, arguably the most important biological process on Earth. Photosynthesis by plants,...
Washington, DC—The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) announced March 4th that Russell Hemley, director of Carnegie’s Geophysical Laboratory, has been elected to Corresponding Fellowship of the Royal...
Stanford, CA—To the list of threats to tropical rain forests you can add a new one — trees. It might seem that for a rain forest the more trees the merrier, but a new study by scientists at the...
Washington, DC — Interstellar space may be strewn with tiny whiskers of carbon, dimming the light of far-away objects. This discovery by scientists at the Carnegie Institution may have implications...
Stanford, CA — Now that scientists have reached a consensus that carbon dioxide emissions from human activities are the major cause of global warming, the next question is: How can we stop it? Can we...
Long-time Carnegie Institution trustee William T. Golden was honored on January 25 by a symposium held in the institution's auditorium. Friends and colleagues recollected his decades of service...
A discovery by scientists at the Carnegie Institution has opened the door to a new generation of piezoelectric materials that can convert mechanical strain into electricity and vice versa,...
After a journey of more than 2.2 billion miles and three and a half years, NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft made its first flyby of Mercury just after 2 PM Eastern Standard Time on January 14, 2008. All...
Washington, D.C.— Scientists have discovered that the magnetic strength of magnetite—the most abundant magnetic mineral on Earth—declines drastically when put under pressure. Researchers from the...
Washington, D.C. A young star is speeding away from the Milky Way so fast that astronomers have been puzzled by where it came from; based on its young age it has traveled too far to have come from...
Since we can’t sample the deepest regions of the Earth, scientists watch the velocity of seismic waves as they travel through the planet to determine the composition and density of that material....
Pasadena, CA—The Royal Astronomical Society has awarded Stephen Shectman of the Carnegie Observatories the 2008 Jackson-Gwilt Medal for his exceptional work in developing astronomical...
Plate tectonics, the geologic process responsible for creating the Earth’s continents, mountain ranges, and ocean basins, may be an on-again, off-again affair. Scientists have assumed that the...
Washington, DC— Astronomers at the Carnegie Institution have found the first indications of highly complex organic molecules in the disk of red dust surrounding a distant star. The eight-million-...
Stanford, CA — Carbon emissions from human activities are not just heating up the globe, they are changing the ocean’s chemistry. This could soon be fatal to coral reefs, which are havens for marine...