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16 December 2014
Scientists trying to create “exoplanet zoo”
Scientists are working to simulate and catalogue the properties of Earth-like planets to create an “exoplanet zoo,”—a collection of worlds with similar compositions but different levels of habitability. That’s the goal of a new modeling approach presented by Cayman Unterborn during a poster session Monday morning at the American Geophysical Union’s Fall Meeting in San Francisco.
18 September 2014
Planetary atmospheres and climate: An interview with Dr. Jonathan Mitchell
Dr. Jonathan Mitchell is Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth & Space Sciences and the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at UCLA. Dr. Mitchell’s research interests include surface-atmosphere interactions on Titan, superrotating atmospheres, tidal interactions of synchronous satellites, and Earth’s paleoclimate.
16 September 2014
First results from Rosetta landing expected to be unveiled at AGU Fall Meeting
Scientists expect to present preliminary results from the first spacecraft to land on a comet at the American Geophysical Union’s Fall Meeting in December. That’s assuming, of course, that they first succeed at dropping a lander from thousands of meters away onto a tiny comet – a feat never tried before.
The Rosetta mission is the first designed to orbit and land on a comet, according to the European Space Agency. The mission’s Philae lander will touch down at candidate site “J” at the head of comet 67/P Churyumov-Gerasimenko on 11 November, the ESA announced Monday morning after weeks of deliberation.
18 February 2013
Remote Sensing and Planetary Processes: An Interview with Dr. Alex Hayes
Dr. Alex Hayes is Assistant Professor of Astronomy at Cornell University. Hayes uses spacecraft-based remote sensing to study the properties of planetary surfaces, their interactions with the interior, and if present, atmosphere. Recently, he has focused on studying the coupling of surface, subsurface, and atmospheric processes on Titan and Mars.
12 October 2012
On the early lives of diamonds
Diamonds may not be forever, but they do last an incredibly long time. The forces in the Earth’s interior that shape these famously durable gems have long been mysterious. A new study looks at teensy chunks of an inner zone of the planet that can get caught within diamonds’ crystal structures. It presents new evidence that diamonds often take a long ride in the planet’s fluidly moving gut before rising to the surface.
6 August 2012
As Curiosity’s wheels touch down, science gets rolling
As viewing parties celebrating the successful landing of the Mars Science Laboratory wound down early Monday morning, 400 scientists – many of them AGU members – were already using their newest tool for investigating the red planet.
21 June 2012
AGU interviews astronauts in space
AGU Video: On 19 June, AGU had the unique opportunity to interview three astronauts aboard the International Space Station about what it’s like to live in orbit and study the Earth from space. Astronauts Joe Acaba (NASA), André Kuipers (ESA) and Don Pettit (NASA) answered questions about their everyday lives in orbit, the hazards of life in space and how their experiences in microgravity have affected their thoughts about our home planet. Watch the video interview here!
5 June 2012
Volcanism & the thermal evolution of planets: An interview with Dr. Sue Smrekar
Dr. Sue Smrekar is the deputy project scientist for NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. At NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory she helps coordinate the efforts of researchers working on the mission’s scientific investigations. Besides Mars, one of her principal topics of research has been the volcanism on Venus, based on data from NASA’s Magellan mission.
5 March 2012
Space weather explosions detected on Venus
Scientists have found clear evidence on Venus for a type of space weather quite common at Earth, called a hot flow anomaly, an explosion that deflects solar wind.
13 October 2011
Cosmochemistry and Meteoritics: An Interview with Dr. John Wasson
John Wasson is a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of California at Los Angeles. He holds joint appointments in the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics and two departments – Earth and Space Sciences and Chemistry and Biochemistry. His research interests include cosmochemistry (the chemical composition of the solar system), the solar nebula, and meteoritics. Wasson also has a mineral named after him – Wassonite, composed of sulfur and titanium, which was identified in a meteorite found in Antarctica.
GeoSpace is a blog on Earth and space science, managed by AGU’s Public Information staff. The blog features posts by AGU writers and guest contributors on all sorts of relevant science topics, but with a focus on new research and geo and space sciences-related stories that are currently in the news.