Earth & Planetary Science Stories
“It was probably the runt of the family,” Scott Sheppard tells the L.A. Times of the theorized ninth planet. Sheppard's 2014 co-discovery of the planetoid 2012 VP113, popularly nicknamed "Biden," ...
"Estimates range as high as there being one habitable Earth-like planet for every star in our galaxy. As someone who has lived through the ups and downs of the history of the field of planet...
Smithsonian Magazine talks Bob Hazen about "Life's Rocky Start" the NOVA special that features his work on mineral evolution and ecology. “We see this intertwined co-evolution of the geosphere and...
Washington, DC— A team made up almost entirely of current and former Carnegie scientists has discovered a highly unusual planetary system comprised of a Sun-like star, a dwarf star, and an...
Washington, DC— As astronomers continue to find more and more planets around stars beyond our own Sun, they are trying to discover patterns and features that indicate what types of planets are likely...
Washington, D.C.—New observations from an international geophysics team, including Carnegie’s Lara Wagner, suggest that the standard belief that the Earth’s rigid tectonic plates stay strong when...
“We can’t explain these objects’ orbits from what we know about the solar system,” says Carnegie's Scott Sheppard in Science Magazine's coverage of his announcement at a meeting of the American...
Not only did our early Solar System potentially consist of five or even six giant worlds, but there may have been a large number of inner, terrestrial planets that were ejected back in the Solar...
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Carbon plays an unparalleled role in our lives: as the element of life, as the basis of most of society’s energy, as the backbone of most new materials, and as the central focus in efforts to understand Earth’s variable and uncertain climate. Yet in spite of carbon’s importance, scientists remain...
Starting in 2005, the High Lava Plains project is focused on a better understanding of why the Pacific Northwest, specifically eastern Oregon's High Lava Plains, is so volcanically active. This region is the most volcanically active area of the continental United States and it's relatively young....
CALL FOR PROPOSALS
Following Andrew Carnegie’s founding encouragement of liberal discovery-driven research, the Carnegie Institution for Science offers its scientists a new resource for pursuing bold ideas.
Carnegie Science Venture grants are internal awards of up to $100,000 that are intended to...
Viktor Struzhkin develops new techniques for high-pressure experiments to measure transport and magnetic properties of materials to understand aspects of geophysics, planetary science, and condensed-matter physics. Among his goals are to detect the transition of hydrogen into a high-temperature...
Geochemist and director of Terrestrial Magnetism, Richard Carlson, looks at the diversity of the chemistry of the early solar nebula and the incorporation of that chemistry into the terrestrial planets. He is also interested in questions related to the origin and evolution of Earth’s continental...
Some 40 thousand tons of extraterrestrial material fall on Earth every year. This cosmic debris provides cosmochemist Conel Alexander with information about the formation of the Solar System, our galaxy, and perhaps the origin of life.
Alexander studies meteorites to determine what went on before...
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Washington, D.C.—Carnegie’s Robert Hazen has been awarded a $1.4 million grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation for a three-year data-driven research project on the co-evolution of the planet’s biology...
Are today’s minerals a predictable consequence of the planet’s chemical makeup? Or are they the result of chance events? What if we were to look out at the cosmos and spot another Earth-like planet—...
Washington, D.C.— Linda Elkins-Tanton, director of the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, is resigning her position at Carnegie, effective May 9, 2014. She has accepted a position as the director...
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