Press Releases - 2015

New work from Carnegie's Alan Boss and Sandra Keiser provides surprising new details about the trigger that may have started the earliest phases of planet formation in our solar system.

New research from a team led by Carnegie’s Robert Hazen predicts that Earth has more than 1,500 undiscovered minerals and that the exact mineral diversity of our planet is unique and could not be duplicated anywhere in the cosmos.

Once a mother plant releases its embryos to the outside world, they have to survive on their own without family protection. To ensure successful colonization by these vulnerable creatures, the mother plant provides the embryo with a backpack full of energy, called the endosperm. Since, over time, the only plants that will survive are those that reproduce and compete successfully, the mother plant’s whole life is dedicated to producing sugars in its leaves, which are ultimately stored in these backpacks. The sugars are manufactured in the leaves when the plant turns the Sun’s energy into chemical energy and then transported to the seeds. The amount of sugars that fill a seed directly determines the seed’s size.

astronomy, Giant Magellan Telescope, GMT, GMTO

Impacts of Large Herbivores on Vegetation: publications from the journals Ecography and Publications of the National Academy of Sciences

Ben Shappee, Hubble, Carnegie-Princeton Fellow, summarizes results for the Shappee et al. paper, "The Young and Bright Type Ia Supernova ASASSN-14lp: Discovery, Early-Time Observations, First-Light Time, Distance to NGC 4666, and Progenitor Constraints." This paper uses prediscovery photometry (with a detection less than a day after first light) and extensive ultraviolet through near-infrared followup observations to run out a red giant secondary in the progenitor system of ASASSN-14lp. This is another exciting discovery from the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN or "Assassin"). For more details, see: http://arxiv.org/abs/1507.04257 Video made by Benjamin Shappee: http://users.obs.carnegiescience.edu/bshappee/ For more information about the ASAS-SN Project, see: http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~assassin/index.shtml

New work from a team including Carnegie’s Christopher Glein has revealed the pH of water spewing from a geyser-like plume on Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Their findings are an important step toward determining whether life could exist, or could have previously existed, on the sixth planet’s sixth-largest moon.

The 2000-2003 drought in the American southwest triggered a widespread die-off of forests around the region. A Carnegie-led team of scientists developed a new modeling tool to explain how and where trembling aspen forests died as a result of this drought. It is based on damage to an individual trees' ability to transport water under water-stressed conditions. If the same processes and threshold govern the future, their results suggest that more widespread die-offs of aspen forests triggered by climate change are likely by the 2050s. 

To combat global climate change caused by greenhouse gases, alternative energy sources and other types of environmental recourse actions are needed. There are several proposals that involve using vertical ocean pipes to move seawater to the surface from the depths in order to reap a variety of different potential climate benefits. A new study from a group of Carnegie scientists determines that these types of pipes could actually increase global warming quite drastically.

In the face of global climate change, increasing the use of renewable energy resources is one of the most urgent challenges facing the world. Further development of one resource, solar energy, is complicated by the need to find space for solar power-generating equipment without significantly altering the surrounding environment. New work from Carnegie found that the amount of energy that could be generated from solar equipment constructed on and around existing infrastructure in California would exceed the state’s demand by up to five times. 

Silicon dioxide, commonly called silica, is one of the most-abundant natural compounds and a major component of the Earth’s crust and mantle.  Silica’s various high-pressure forms make it an often-used study subject for scientists interested in the transition between different chemical phases under extreme conditions, such as those in the deep Earth. A Carnegie-led team was able to discover five new forms of silica under extreme pressures at room temperature.

A team has, for the first time, discovered how to produce ultra-thin "diamond nanothreads" that promise extraordinary properties, including strength and stiffness greater than that of today's strongest nanotubes and polymer fibers. Such exceedingly strong, stiff, and light materials have an array of potential applications, everything from more-fuel efficient vehicles or even the science fictional-sounding proposal for a “space elevator.” 

In the face of global climate change, increasing the use of renewable energy resources is one of the most urgent challenges facing the world. Further development of one resource, solar energy, is complicated by the need to find space for solar power-generating equipment without significantly altering the surrounding environment. New work from Carnegie found that the amount of energy that could be generated from solar equipment constructed on and around existing infrastructure in California would exceed the state’s demand by up to five times. 

A plant's roots grow and spread into the soil, taking up necessary water and minerals. The tip of a plant's root is a place of active cell division followed by cell elongation, with different zones all working together to expand into new depths of the soil. Achieving an optimal root growth rate is critical for plant survival under drought conditions. New work reports the mechanisms that together determine the rate of root growth.

Nutrition and metabolism are closely linked with reproductive health. Several reproductive disorders have been linked to malnutrition, diabetes, and obesity. Furthermore, fasting in numerous species can result in decreased fertility. New work from a Carnegie team focuses on the accumulation of triglyceride and a certain kind of steroids called sterols during the development of immature egg cells. The researchers were able to identify an insect steroid hormone that is crucial to both lipid metabolism and egg production in fruit flies. 

Two new papers from members of the MESSENGER Science Team provide global-scale maps of Mercury’s surface chemistry that reveal previously unrecognized geochemical terranes — large regions that have compositions distinct from their surroundings. The presence of these large terranes has important implications for the history of the planet.

A team of Carnegie scientists have found “beautifully preserved” 15 million-year-old thin protein sheets in fossil shells from southern Maryland.  The team—John Nance, John Armstrong, George Cody, Marilyn Fogel, and Robert Hazen—collected samples from Calvert Cliffs, along the shoreline of the Chesapeake Bay, a popular fossil collecting area. They found fossilized shells of a snail-like mollusk called Ecphora that lived in the mid-Miocene era--between 8 and 18 million years ago.

Quasars--supermassive black holes found at the center of distant massive galaxies--are the most-luminous beacons in the sky. These central supermassive black holes actively accrete the surrounding materials and release a huge amount of their gravitational energy. An international team of astronomers has discovered the brightest quasar ever found in the early universe, which is powered by the most massive black hole observed for an object from that time. 

Fast radio bursts are quick, bright flashes of radio waves from an unknown source in space. They are a mysterious phenomenon that last only a few milliseconds, and until now they have not been observed in real time. An international team of astronomers, including three from the Carnegie Observatories, has for the first time observed a fast radio burst happening live. 

Lake Erie just can’t catch a break. The lake has experienced harmful algal blooms and severe oxygen-depleted “dead zones” for years, but now a team of researchers led by Carnegie’s Anna Michalak and Yuntao Zhou has shown that the widespread drought in 2012 was associated with the largest dead zone since at least the mid-1980s. 

Earth’s magnetic field is crucial for our existence, as it shields the life on our planet’s surface from deadly cosmic rays. It is generated by turbulent motions of liquid iron in Earth’s core. Iron is a metal, which means it can easily conduct a flow of electrons that makes up an electric current. New findings show that a missing piece of the traditional theory explaining why metals become less conductive when they are heated was needed to complete the puzzle that explains this field-generating process.