Earth & Planets Laboratory

The Earth and Planets Laboratory is home to leading scientists in Earth, planetary, and space sciences. We discover new worlds, create new materials, illuminate the inner workings of our planet, and seek to understand the universe that is our home. Through our Neighborhood Lecture, we aim to share our science with you!

We also regularly invite speakers from around Carnegie Science's two other divisions—Observatories and Biosphere Sciences and Engineering—to talk about anything ranging from coral and climate change to the mysteries of dark matter. 

Some recent topics include: 

• Sample Return Missions
• Dark Matter and Dark Energy
• Mineralogy and Planetary Evolution
• Exploring Exoplanets 
• Planetary Habitability
• Strange High-Pressure Science
• Earth's Early History
• The Biology of Corals
• Searching for Planet X

The talk will be held in the Greenewalt Building auditorium on the Carnegie Institution for Science's Broad Branch Road Campus. Refreshments will likely take place on the outdoor patio. 

Address: 5241 Broad Branch Rd NW, Washington, DC 20015

Once you're on campus, look for the building with the patio next to the building that looks like a giant water tower.

These events are normally hybrid, which means we encourage you to join us either in person or online! Joining us over Zoom or tuning in via our YouTube stream is easy.

Space is limited, and early registration helps us get an accurate count of who is going to attend before the event.

When you register online and share your email address, it also allows us to stay in touch with you with important updates and potential changes, like cancellations, before the presentation.

Rest assured that we do not share your email address with any external partners. Click here to view our privacy policy.

If you do not want to register online, we are happy to add you to our list via email or phone. To do this, please contact our events coordinator, Alycia Alexander.

The Earth and Planets Laboratory is a division of the Carnegie Institution for Science, an independent research institution dedicated to providing our scientists with the flexibility to follow their ideas and discoveries, seize opportunities, and define new fields of investigation. At the Earth and Planets Laboratory, we work at the frontier of human knowledge. We discover new worlds, create new materials, illuminate the inner workings of our planet, and seek to understand the universe that is our home.

We're proud to provide professional ASL interpretation services for these public science events. If you require this service, please make a request before your arrival on-site so that we can have an interpreter present. 

Simply email our events coordinator Alycia Alexander (adalexander@carnegiescience.edu) to make your request.

There will be closed captioning available via Zoom for virtual attendees.

No.

The Capital Science Evenings are hosted by Carnegie Science and are often held downtown at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library. The Neighborhood Lecture Series is hosted by the Earth and Planets Laboratory and is held at the Broad Branch Road campus. 

"Since 1991, Carnegie Science has hosted extraordinary researchers from a wide range of scientific disciplines as part of the Capital Science Evenings lecture series. The lectures provide a unique opportunity to connect with some of the most gifted investigators in science and hear the stories behind their discoveries. These hour-long lectures, followed by a brief question and answer period, go beyond the media accounts for a firsthand look at the “ah-ha” moments, the setbacks, and the triumphs that drive brilliant minds and fundamentally change our understanding of the world around us."