Earth & Planetary Science Stories
Photo credit: Max Hirshfeld Studio, courtesy of AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives
Carnegie trustee emeritus Frank Press dies
Washington, D.C.— Carnegie trustee emeritus Frank Press, a National Medal of Science laureate and former president of the National Academy of Sciences, died January 29 at his home in Chapel...
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Carnegie Earth and Planets Director Richard Carlson
Carnegie Science Earth and Planets Director Richard Carlson receives Geochemical Society’s highest honor
Washington, DC — Richard Carlson, director of Carnegie’s Earth and Planets division, has been chosen to receive the Geochemical Society’s highest honor, the Victor Moritz...
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Artist’s concept by Robin Dienel, courtesy of Carnegie Institution for Science
“Cold Neptune” and two temperate super-Earths found orbiting nearby stars
Washington, DC— A “cold Neptune” and two potentially habitable worlds are part of a cache of five newly discovered exoplanets and eight exoplanet candidates found orbiting nearby...
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Would a deep-Earth water cycle change how we understand planetary evolution?
Washington, DC— Every school child learns about the water cycle—evaporation, condensation, precipitation, and collection. But what if there were a deep Earth component of this process...
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Image Credit: NASA, ESA, JPL, SSI, Cassini Imaging Team
How Enceladus got its stripes
Washington, DC— Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus is of great interest to scientists due to its subsurface ocean, making it a prime target for those searching for life elsewhere. New research...
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Artist’s conception of Kepler-432b, courtesy of MarioProtIV/Wikimedia Commons.
Gas giant composition not determined by host star
Pasadena, CA— A surprising analysis of the composition  of gas giant exoplanets and their host stars shows that there isn’t a strong correlation between their compositions when it...
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Artist's conception by Robin Dienel, courtesy of the Carnegie Institution for Sc
Cascades of gas around young star indicate early stages of planet formation
Washington, DC— What does a gestating baby planet look like? New research in Nature by a team including Carnegie’s Jaehan...
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Saturn image is courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute.
Saturn surpasses Jupiter after the discovery of 20 new moons and you can help name them!
Washington, DC—Move over Jupiter; Saturn is the new moon king. A team led by Carnegie's Scott S. Sheppard has found 20...
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Carnegie Planet Search
Carnegie's Paul Butler has been leading work on a multiyear project to carry out the first reconnaissance of all 2,000 nearby Sun-like stars within 150 light-years of the solar system (1 lightyear is about 9.4 trillion kilometers). His team is currently monitoring about 1,700 stars, including 1...
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Intracontinental Deformation And Surface Uplift In Mongolia
High-elevation, low relief surfaces are common on continents. These intercontinental plateaus influence river networks, climate, and the migration of plants and animals. How these plateaus form is not clear. Researchers are studying the geodynamic processes responsible for surface uplift in the...
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The Anglo-Australian Planet Search
The Anglo-Australian Planet Search (AAPS) is a long-term program being carried out on the 3.9-meter Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) to search for giant planets around more than 240 nearby Sun-like stars. The team, including Carnegie scientists,  uses the "Doppler wobble" technique...
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Meet Carnegie Scientists
Bjørn Mysen
Roiling cauldrons of liquid-laden material flow within Earth’s rocky interior. Understanding how this matter moves and changes is essential to deciphering Earth’s formation and evolution as well as the processes that create seismic activity, such as earthquakes and volcanoes. Bjø...
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Alycia Weinberger
Alycia Weinberger wants to understand how planets form, so she observes young stars in our galaxy and their disks, from which planets are born. She also looks for and studies planetary systems. Studying disks surrounding nearby stars help us determine the necessary conditions for planet formation....
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Andrew Steele
Andrew Steele uses traditional and biotechnological approaches for the detection of microbial life in the field of astrobiology and Solar System exploration. Astrobiology is the search for the origin and distribution of life in the universe. A microbiologist by training, his principle interest is...
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New and improved way to find baby planets
New work from an international team of astronomers including Carnegie’s Jaehan Bae used archival radio telescope data to develop a new method for finding very young extrasolar planets. Of...
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Evidence of 3.5 billion-year-old bacterial ecosystems found in Australia
AudioWashington, D.C.— Reconstructing the rise of life during the period of Earth’s history when it first evolved is challenging. Earth’s oldest sedimentary rocks are not only rare, but also almost...
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Solar system’s youth gives clues to planet search
AudioWashington, D.C.—Comets and meteorites contain clues to our solar system's earliest days. But some of the findings are puzzle pieces that don't seem to fit well together. A new set of...
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Explore Carnegie Science

Rough diamond photograph purchased from iStock
Scientists and philosopher team up, propose a new way to categorize minerals
December 21, 2020

Washington, DC— A diamond lasts forever, but that doesn’t mean all diamonds have a common history. 

Some diamonds were formed billions of years ago in space as the carbon-rich atmospheres of dying stars expanded and cooled. In our own planet’s lifetime, high-temperatures and pressures in the mantle produced the diamonds that are familiar to us as gems. 5,000 years ago, a large meteorite that struck a carbon-rich sediment on Earth produced an impact diamond.

Each of these diamonds differs from the others in both composition and genesis, but all are categorized as “diamond” by the authoritative guide to minerals—the International

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Islands of Four Mountains, Alaska. USGS Photo by John Lyons.
Alaska’s Islands of the Four Mountains could be single giant volcano
December 3, 2020

Washington, DC— A small group of volcanic islands in Alaska's Aleutian chain could actually be part of a single, previously unrecognized giant volcano in the same category as Yellowstone, according to work from a research team, including Carnegie’s Diana Roman, Lara Wagner, Hélène Le Mével, and Daniel Portner, as well as recently departed postdoc Helen Janiszewski (now at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa), who will present their findings at the American Geophysical Union’s Fall Meeting next week.

The Islands of the Four Mountains in the central Aleutians is a tight group of six volcanos: Carlisle, Cleveland, Herbert, Kagamil, Tana and

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Richard Carlson, Director Carnegie Earth and Planets Laboratory
AAAS and Carnegie Institution for Science announce 2020 fellows
November 24, 2020

Washington, DC— Richard Carlson, Director of Carnegie’s Earth and Planets Laboratory, has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was selected for his “outstanding research, leadership, innovation, and service to the community in geochemistry and geology.”

The tradition of AAAS Fellows began in 1874 and election for this honor is bestowed upon AAAS members by their peers. This year 489 members have been selected due to their “scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications.” 

A Carnegie staff member since 1981, Carlson is widely recognized for his use

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Saturn image is courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute.
Where were Jupiter and Saturn born?
October 29, 2020

Washington, DC—New work led by Carnegie’s Matt Clement reveals the likely original locations of Saturn and Jupiter. These findings refine our understanding of the forces that determined our Solar System’s unusual architecture, including the ejection of an additional planet between Saturn and Uranus, ensuring that only small, rocky planets, like Earth, formed inward of Jupiter.

In its youth, our Sun was surrounded by a rotating disk of gas and dust from which the planets were born.  The orbits of early formed planets were thought to be initially close-packed and circular, but gravitational interactions between the larger objects perturbed the arrangement and

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A Virtual Conversation With Johanna Teske
January 28, 2021

Join us to learn about exoplanet science from Johanna Teske, a former Carnegie postdoc who joined our Earth and Planets Laboratory as a Staff Scientist last September. This is the first virtual program in our winter series of online conversations with several of our exciting investigators.  

Teske’s work aims to help scientists better understand the planetary formation process and explain why there is such tremendous planetary diversity in our galaxy. She uses observational data from the telescopes at Carnegie’s Las Campanas Observatory, as well as from space-based telescopes and other facilities, to estimate the interior and atmospheric

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Superdeep Diamonds and Mantle Convection

Superdeep diamonds are  tiny time capsules carrying unchanged impurities made eons ago and providing researchers with important clues about Earth’s formation.  Diamonds derived from below the continental lithosphere, are most likely from the transition zone (415 miles, or 670km deep) or the top of the lower mantle. Understanding diamond origins and compositions of the high-pressure mineral phases has potential to revolutionize our understanding of deep mantle circulation.
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The Deep Carbon Observatory

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 largely ignorant of the physical, chemical, and biological behavior of many of Earth’s carbon-bearing systems. The Deep Carbon Observatory (DCO) is a global research program to transform our understanding of carbon in Earth. At its heart, DCO is a community of scientists, from biologists to physicists, geoscientists to chemists, and many others whose work crosses these

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Deep Carbon Observatory

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 largely ignorant of the physical, chemical, and biological behavior of many of Earth’s carbon-bearing systems. The Deep Carbon Observatory is a global research program to transform our understanding of carbon in Earth. At its heart, DCO is a community of scientists, from biologists to physicists, geoscientists to chemists, and many others whose work crosses these

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Marilyn Fogel Endowed Fund for Internships

Established in June of 2016 with a generous gift of $50,000 from Marilyn Fogel and Christopher Swarth, the Marilyn Fogel Endowed Fund for Internships will provide support for “very young budding scientists” who wish to “spend a summer getting their feet wet in research for the very first time.”  The income from this endowed fund will enable high school students and undergraduates to conduct mentored internships at Carnegie’s Geophysical Laboratory and Department of Terrestrial Magnetism in Washington, DC starting in the summer of 2017.

Marilyn Fogel’s thirty-three year career at Carnegie’s Geophysical Laboratory (1977-2013), followed

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Lara Wagner

Seismic waves flow through Earth’s solid and liquid material differently, allowing Earth scientists to determine various aspects of the composition of the Earth’s interior. Broadband seismology looks at a broad spectrum of waves for high-resolution imaging. Lara Wagner collects this data from continental areas of the planet that have not been studied before to better understand the elastic properties of Earth’s crust and upper mantle, the rigid region called the lithosphere.

By its nature seismology is indirect research and has limitations for interpreting features like temperature, melting, and exact composition. So Wagner looks at the bigger picture. She

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Hélène Le Mével

Hélène Le Mével studies volcanoes. Her research focuses on understanding the surface signals that ground deformations make to infer the ongoing process of the moving magma  in the underlying reservoir. Toward this end she uses space and field-based geodesy--the mathematics of the area and shape of the Earth--to identify, model and interpret this ground deformation.

She uses data from radar called Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR), and data from the Global Positioning System (GPS) to characterize ground motion during volcanic unrest. She also collects gravity data, which indicate changes in mass and/or density underground. These data sets,

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Steven Shirey

Geochemist Steven Shirey is researching how Earth's continents formed. Continent formation spans most of Earth's history, continents were key to the emergence of life, and they contain a majority of Earth’s resources. Continental rocks also retain the geologic record of Earth's ancient geodynamic processes.

Shirey’s past, current, and future studies reflect the diversity of continental rocks, encompassing a range of studies that include rocks formed anywhere from the deep mantle to the surface crust. His work spans a wide range of geologic settings such as volcanic rocks in continental rifts (giant crustal breaks where continents split apart), ancient and

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Larry Nittler

Cosmochemist Larry Nittler studies extraterrestrial materials, including meteorites and interplanetary dust particles (IDPs), to understand the formation of the Solar System, the galaxy, and the universe and to identify the materials involved. He is particularly interested in developing new techniques to analyze different variants of the same atom—isotopes—in small samples. In related studies, he uses space-based X-ray and gamma-ray instrumentation to determine the composition of planetary surfaces. He was part of the 2000-2001 scientific team to hunt for meteorites in Antarctica.

Nittler is especially interested in presolar grains contained in meteorites and in what

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