STANFORD, CA - Biofuels such as ethanol offer an alternative to petroleum for powering our cars, but growing energy crops to produce them can compete with food crops for farmland, and clearing...
Analyses of data from the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft’s second flyby of Mercury in October 2008 show that the planet’s...
Washington, DC—The Carnegie Institution’s Geophysical Laboratory has been selected as one of 46 Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs) by the U.S. Department of Energy. The announcement came from...
Washington, DC—The most powerful earthquakes happen at the junction of two converging tectonic plates, where one plate is sliding (or subducting) beneath the other. Now a team of...
Pasadena, CA —Using information from a suite of telescopes, astronomers have discovered a mysterious, giant object that existed at a time when the universe was only about 800 million years...
Washington, D.C—Geochemist Richard Carlson of Carnegie’s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism has been elected a 2009 fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He is among 210 new...
Washington, D.C.— The Earth’s original atmosphere held very little oxygen. This began to change around 2.4 billion years ago when oxygen levels increased dramatically during what...
100 Hours of Astronomy (100HA) is a worldwide celebration to involving the public in the excitement of astronomy. It will take place from April 2 to 5 2009. More than 1,000,000 people are expected to...
Stanford, CA— Photosynthesis produces the food that we eat and the oxygen that we breathe ― could it also help satisfy our future energy needs by producing clean-burning hydrogen? Researchers...
Washington, D.C.—The car-sized asteroid that exploded above the Nubian Desert last October was small compared to the dinosaur-killing, civilization-ending objects that still orbit the sun....
Washington, D.C.—Unraveling the origins of agriculture in different regions around the globe has been a challenge for archeologists. Now researchers writing in the Proceedings of the National...
Stanford, CA—Rolling Stone magazine has ranked Global Ecology's Ken Caldeira number 36 among 100 "artists and leaders, policymakers, writers, thinkers, scientists and provocateurs who are fighting...
Stanford, CA—Plant physiologist Wolf B. Frommer has been selected to lead the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Plant Biology on the campus of Stanford University. Frommer has been acting...
Stanford, CA— Rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the resulting effects on ocean water are making it increasingly difficult for coral reefs to grow, say scientists. A study to be...
Washington, D.C.—Ever since the Bronze Age, humans have experimented with combining different metals to create alloys with properties superior to either metal alone. But not all metals...
Washington, D.C. The Carnegie Institution received the highest rating for sound fiscal management—four stars—from Charity Navigator for the eighth year running. Charity Navigator is America's...
Stanford, CA—One of the rationales behind basic research is to provide the scientific foundations for good public policy. Carnegie scientists have always done their share, but the Department...
Stanford, CA— The African savanna is world famous for its wildlife, especially the iconic large herbivores such as elephants, zebras, and giraffes. But managing these ecosystems and balancing...
The National Space Club will be awarding the 2009 Nelson P. Jackson Award to the “The MESSENGER spacecraft flybys.” Director of Terrestrial Magnetism and principal investigator of the mission...
Pasadena, CA—Evidence of star birth within a cloud of primordial gas has given astronomers a glimpse of a previously unknown mode of galaxy formation. The cloud, known as the Leo Ring,...
SANTA CRUZ, CA--Sandra Faber, University Professor and chair of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has been chosen to receive the 2009 Bower Award and Prize...
Stanford, CA— Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are rising more rapidly than expected, increasing the danger that without aggressive action to reduce emissions the climate system could cross...
Washington, D.C.— In recent years researchers have found hundreds of new planets beyond our solar system, raising questions about the origins and properties of these exotic worlds—not...
Washington, D.C. The American Association for the Advancement of Science announced that Richard A. Meserve, president of the Carnegie Institution, will receive the 2008 Philip Hauge Abelson Award...
Baltimore, MD–The last step of the cell cycle is the brief but spectacularly dynamic and complicated mitosis phase, which leads to the duplication of one mother cell into two daughter cells...