Washington, DC—Carnegie Mineralogist Robert Hazen—who advanced the concept that Earth’s geology was shaped by the rise and sustenance of life—will be honored with the 2022...
Washington, DC— The cause of Earth’s deepest earthquakes has been a mystery to science for more than a century, but a team of Carnegie scientists may have cracked the case.
New research...
Washington, DC—Models of the carbon cycle that are used to understand the effects of climate change in North America need to do a better job of accounting for the carbon dioxide removed from...
Palo Alto, CA—New work from a Stanford University-led team of researchers including Carnegie’s Arthur Grossman and Tingting Xiang unravels a longstanding mystery about the relationship...
Washington, DC— A team of astronomers including Carnegie’s Alycia Weinberger and former-Carnegie postdoc Meredith MacGregor, now an assistant professor at the University of Colorado...
Washington, DC— The 2018 eruption of Kīlauea Volcano in Hawai‘i provided scientists with an unprecedented opportunity to identify new factors that could help forecast the hazard potential...
Washington, DC— Diamonds that formed deep in the Earth’s mantle contain evidence of chemical reactions that occurred on the seafloor. Probing these gems can help geoscientists understand...
Washington, DC— Carnegie’s Yingwei Fei is the namesake of an iron-titanuim oxide mineral discovered in a meteorite that originated on Mars. Caltech’s Chi Ma announced the find this...
Washington, DC— Algae colonizing dead coral are upending scientists’ ability to accurately assess the health of a coral reef community, according to new work from a team of marine science...
Pasadena, CA— The Magellan Baade telescope at Carnegie’s Las Campanas Observatory played an important role in the discovery of the most-distant known quasar with a bright radio emission,...
Washington, DC — Volcanic rock samples collected during NASA’s Apollo missions bear the isotopic signature of key events in the early evolution of the Moon, a new analysis found. Those...
Las Campanas Observatory—When the universe was about 350 million years old it was dark: there were no stars or galaxies, only neutral gas—mainly hydrogen—the residue of the Big Bang...
Palo Alto, CA— Understanding how plants respond to stressful environmental conditions is crucial to developing effective strategies for protecting important agricultural crops from a changing...
Washington, DC—A team of astronomers, including Carnegie’s Scott Sheppard, David Tholen from the University of Hawaiʻi Institute for Astronomy, and Chad Trujillo from Northern Arizona...
Washington, DC— New research led by Carnegie’s Yingwei Fei provides a framework for understanding the interiors of super-Earths—rocky exoplanets between 1.5 and 2 times the size of...
Palo Alto, CA— What if we could increase a plant’s productivity by modifying the light to which it is exposed? This could increase the yield of important food and biofuel crops and also...
Pasadena, CA—An MIT-led team of astronomers that includes Carnegie’s Joshua Simon, Lina Necib, and Alexander Ji has discovered an unexpected outer suburb of stars on the distant fringes...
Pasadena, CA—In a case of cosmic mistaken identity, an international team of astronomers revealed that what they once thought was a supernova is actually periodic flaring from a galaxy where a...
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...
Baltimore, MD— The CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing system can help scientists understand, and possibly improve, how corals respond to the environmental stresses of climate change. Work led by...
Washington, DC— Developing nations have an opportunity to avoid long-term dependence on fossil fuel-burning infrastructure as they move toward economic stability, even if they are slow to...
Pasadena, CA— New work from an international team of astronomers including Carnegie’s Gregory Walth improves our understanding of the most-distant known astrophysical object— GN-z11...
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,...
Baltimore, MD—Human activity endangers coral health around the world. A new algal threat is taking advantage of coral’s already precarious situation in the Caribbean and making it even...
Palo Alto, CA— Anthraquinones are a class of naturally occurring compounds prized for their medicinal properties, as well as for other applications, including ecologically friendly dyes....
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...
Pasadena, CA— The mysterious Blue Ring Nebula has puzzled astronomers since it was discovered in 2004. New work published in Nature by a Caltech-led team including Carnegie astrophysicists Mark...
Pasadena, CA— In a refurbished Southern California garage, Carnegie astrophysicists are creating the virtual reality-enabled scientific workspace of the future where they will unlock...
Washington, DC— With more than a half-century of employment under his belt, Building Maintenance Specialist Don Brooks’ career traced the path of Carnegie’s modern administrative...
Pasadena, CA- La quinta generación del Sloan Digital Sky Survey recogió sus primeras observaciones del cosmos a la 1:47 a.m. del 24 de octubre de 2020. Este innovador estudio del cielo...
Pasadena, CA— The Sloan Digital Sky Survey’s fifth generation collected its very first observations of the cosmos at 1:47 a.m. MDT on October 24, 2020. This groundbreaking all-sky survey...
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...
Palo Alto, CA— In a changing climate, understanding how organisms respond to stress conditions is increasingly important. New work led by Carnegie’s Arthur Grossman and Emanuel Sanz-Luque...
Baltimore, MD— Recently published work from Carnegie’s Allan Spradling and Wanbao Niu revealed in unprecedented detail the genetic instructions immature egg cells go through step by step...
Baltimore, MD— Recent work led by Carnegie’s Kamena Kostova revealed a new quality control system in the protein production assembly line with possible implications for understanding...
Palo Alto, CA— Carnegie’s Moises Exposito-Alonso has been selected for a National Institutes of Health Director’s Early Independence Award, which recognizes “outstanding...
Washington, DC— A 10-year effort by China to improve air quality and reduce pollution-related health risks has caused warming in areas across the northern hemisphere, according to new work...
In 2017 the Carnegie Academy for Science Education (CASE) was selected to manage the Amgen Biotech Experience (ABE) site in Washington, D.C., called ABE-DC. The Amgen Foundation has now awarded CASE...
Pasadena, CA—An unusual stellar explosion is shining new light on the origins of a specific subgroup of Type Ia supernovae.
Called LSQ14fmg, the exploding star exhibits certain characteristics...
Washington, DC— The discovery that our galaxy is teeming with exoplanets has also revealed the vast diversity of planetary systems out there and raised questions about the processes that shaped...
Washington, DC— The composition of Earth’s mantle was more shaped by interactions with the oceanic crust than previously thought, according to work from Carnegie’s Jonathan Tucker...
Washington, DC— When a meteorite hurtles through the atmosphere and crashes to Earth, how does its violent impact alter the minerals found at the landing site? What can the short-lived chemical...
Baltimore, MD— Carnegie’s Department of Embryology welcomes two new Staff Scientists, both of whom specialize in researching the symbiotic relationships between species.
Brittany Belin...
Washington, DC— In September, astronomer Johanna Teske will join Carnegie’s Earth and Planets Laboratory as a Staff Scientist. Teske has been with Carnegie since 2014, first as the...
Palo Alto, CA—Anna Michalak has been named the Director of Carnegie’s Department of Global Ecology. As a world-renowned researcher, her leadership will be invaluable as Carnegie...
Baltimore, MD—New work led by Carnegie’s Meredith Wilson and Steve Farber identifies a potential therapeutic target for clogged arteries and other health risks that stem from an excess of...
Washington, DC— Work led by Carnegie’s Peng Ni and Anat Shahar uncovers new details about our Solar System’s oldest planetary objects, which broke apart in long-ago collisions to...
Pasadena, CA—A team of astronomers including Carnegie’s Ting Li and Alexander Ji discovered a stellar stream composed of the remnants of an ancient globular cluster that was torn apart by...
Pasadena, CA— Filling in the most-significant gaps in our understanding of the universe’s history, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) released Sunday a comprehensive analysis of the...
Baltimore, MD—American Society for Cell Biology recognized Carnegie’s Steven Farber and the University of Pennsylvania’s Jamie Shuda with its Bruce Alberts Award for Excellence in...
Palo Alto, CA— Carnegie evolutionary geneticist Moises Exposito-Alonso was awarded a Max Planck Society’s Otto Hahn Medal for early career excellence. The prize is endowed with 7,500...
Washington, DC— How did the chemical makeup of our planet’s core shape its geologic history and habitability?
Life as we know it could not exist without Earth’s magnetic field and...
Washington, DC— You’ve heard the expression form follows function? In materials science, function follows form.
New research by Carnegie’s Olivier Gagné and collaborator...
Baltimore, MD— New work from a team of Carnegie cell, genomic, and developmental biologists solves a longstanding marine science mystery that could aid coral conservation. The researchers...
Pasadena, California— El universo está lleno de miles de millones de galaxias—pero su distribución en el espacio está lejos de ser uniforme. ¿Por qué...
Pasadena, CA— The universe is full of billions of galaxies—but their distribution across space is far from uniform. Why do we see so much structure in the universe today and how did it...
Washington, DC— Carnegie mineralogist Robert Hazen was inducted last month as a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences—the nation’s highest-level scientific society,...
Palo Alto, CA— Carnegie’s Moises Exposito-Alonso was selected for the Heidelberg Academy of Science’s Karl Freudenberg Prize in recognition of outstanding early career achievements...
Washington, DC— Carbon is essential for life as we know it and plays a vital role in many of our planet’s geologic processes—not to mention the impact that carbon released by human...
Washington, DC— Carnegie evolutionary geneticist Moises Exposito-Alonso was named a member of the 2020 class of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Europe list in science and healthcare.
He was...
The Carnegie Institution for Science is consolidating our California research departments into an expanded presence in Pasadena. With this move, we are building on our existing relationship with...
Baltimore, MD— Carnegie’s Director of Embryology Yixian Zheng is one of 15 scientists awarded a grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to support research on symbiosis in...
Pasadena, CA— A new kind of astronomical observation helped reveal the possible evolutionary history of a baby Neptune-like exoplanet.
To study a very young planet called DS Tuc Ab, a Harvard...
Baltimore, MD—Antibiotics can make easy work of infections. But how do they affect the complex ecosystems of friendly bacteria that make up our microbiome?
“When a doctor prescribes...
Pasadena, CA—John Mulchaey, Director and Crawford H. Greenewalt Chair of the Carnegie Observatories, was presented with a Humanitarian STAR Award by the honor’s founding body—the...
Pasadena, CA—Some of the extremely low-density, “cotton candy like” exoplanets called super-puffs may actually have rings, according to new research published in The Astronomical...
Washington, DC— Could pumping oxygen-rich surface water into the depths of lakes, estuaries, and coastal ocean waters help ameliorate dangerous dead zones? New work led by Carnegie’s...
Baltimore, MD— They say a picture is worth 1,000 words. But what about a real-time window into the complexity of the gastrointestinal system?
A new research tool allowed biologists to...
Palo Alto, CA— Carnegie’s Moises Exposito-Alonso is one of four recipients of the American Society of Naturalists’ Jasper Loftus-Hills Young Investigator Award in recognition of...
Washington, DC— Carnegie astronomers Stephen Shectman and Alycia Weinberger were selected for the inaugural class of Fellows of the American Astronomical Society in recognition of their “...
Washington, DC— Aerosol emissions from burning coal and wood are dangerous to human health, but it turns out that by cooling the Earth they also diminish global economic inequality, according...
Washington, DC— A new approach to analyzing seismic data reveals deep vertical zones of low seismic velocity in the plumbing system underlying Alaska’s Cleveland volcano, one of the most-...
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...
Baltimore, MD— A woman’s supply of eggs is finite, so it is crucial that the quality of their genetic material is ensured. New work from Carnegie’s Marla Tharp, Safia Malki, and...
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...
Washington, DC— A long-sought-after class of “superdiamond” carbon-based materials with tunable mechanical and electronic properties was predicted and synthesized by Carnegie’...
Stanford, CA— Corals depend on their symbiotic relationships with the algae that they host. But how do they keep algal population growth in check? The answer to this fundamental question could...
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...
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...
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...
Baltimore, MD—The buildup of scar tissue makes recovery from torn rotator cuffs, jumper’s knee, and other tendon injuries a painful, challenging process, often leading to secondary tendon...
Washington, DC— Bleached anemones—those lacking symbiotic algae—do not move toward light, a behaviour exhibited by healthy, symbiotic anemones. Published in Coral Reefs, this...
Pasadena, CA—A star traveling at ultrafast speeds after being ejected by the supermassive black hole at the heart of our galaxy was spotted by an international team of astronomers including...
Washington, DC— The discovery of a 13 billion-year-old cosmic cloud of gas enabled a team of Carnegie astronomers to perform the earliest-ever measurement of how the universe was enriched with...
Washington, DC— What does a gestating baby planet look like? New research in Nature by a team including Carnegie’s Jaehan Bae investigated the effects of three planets in the process of...
Washington, DC— The intensity of summer algal blooms has increased over the past three decades, according to a first-ever global survey of dozens of large, freshwater lakes, which was...
Washington, DC— Pressure improves the ability of materials to turn heat into electricity and could potentially be used to create clean generators, according to new work from a team that...
Washington, DC—Move over Jupiter; Saturn is the new moon king.
A team led by Carnegie's Scott S. Sheppard has found 20 new moons orbiting Saturn. This brings the ringed planet’s...
Washington, DC— An age-related decline in recovery from muscle injury can be traced to a protein that suppresses the special ability of muscle stem cells to build new muscles, according to work...
Washington, DC—There is an as-yet-unseen population of Jupiter-like planets orbiting nearby Sun-like stars, awaiting discovery by future missions like NASA’s WFIRST space telescope,...
Washington, DC—El satélite Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) de la NASA ha observado por primera vez las secuelas de una estrella que fue violentamente desgarrada por un...
Pasadena, CA—NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) has for the first time seen the aftermath of a star that was violently ripped apart by a supermassive black hole. Catching...
Washington, DC— New materials can contribute potential solutions to many societal issues—from increasing access to clean drinking water to improving solar panel efficiency. But figuring...
Palo Alto, CA— Plant genetic diversity in Central Europe could collapse due to temperature extremes and drought brought on by climate change, according to a new paper in Nature led by Moises...
Washington, DC— Taxing carbon emissions would drive innovation and lead to improved energy efficiency, according to a new paper published in Joule from Carnegie’s Rong Wang (now at Fudan...
Washington, DC—Some volcanoes take their time—experiencing protracted, years-long periods of unrest before eventually erupting. This makes it difficult to forecast when they pose a danger...
Washington, DC— Major volcanic eruptions spew ash particles into the atmosphere, which reflect some of the Sun’s radiation back into space and cool the planet. But could this effect be...
Pasadena, CA— Sometimes there is more to a planetary system than initially meets the eye.
Ground-based observations following up on the discovery of a small planet by NASA’s...
Baltimore, MD—A newly developed technique that shows artery clogging fat-and-protein complexes in live fish gave investigators from Carnegie, Johns Hopkins University, and the Mayo Clinic a...
Palo Alto, CA—Do plant scientists hold the key to saving vulnerable populations in a changing climate? How should plant researchers prepare to deploy their knowledge to maintain food security...
Pasadena, CA—A team of collaborators from Carnegie and the University of Chicago used red giant stars that were observed by the Hubble Space Telescope to make an entirely new measurement of how...
A $2.7 million multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional NSF-Frontiers of Earth Science grant has been awarded to a team led by Carnegie’s Lara Wagner to study an active flat slab in Colombia. A...
Baltimore, MD—How do the communities of microbes living in our gastrointestinal systems affect our health? Carnegie’s Will Ludington was part of a team that helped answer this question....
Washington, DC—If power plants, boilers, furnaces, vehicles, and other energy infrastructure is not marked for early retirement, the world will fail to meet the 1.5-degree Celsius climate-...
Palo Alto, CA—What factors govern algae’s success as “tenants” of their coral hosts both under optimal conditions and when oceanic temperatures rise? A Victoria University of...
Washington, DC—The first minerals to form in the universe were nanocrystalline diamonds, which condensed from gases ejected when the first generation of stars exploded. Diamonds that...
Washington, DC—Aging-related inflammation can drive the decline of a critical structural protein called lamin-B1, which contributes to diminished immune function in the thymus, according to...
Palo Alto, CA— Determining how one species becomes distinct from another has been a subject of fascination dating back to Charles Darwin. New research led by Carnegie’s Matthew Evans and...
Palo Alto, CA—Photosynthesis makes our atmosphere oxygen-rich and forms the bedrock of our food supply. But under changing or stressful environmental conditions, the photosynthetic process can...
Pasadena, CA—Detection of a supernova with an unusual chemical signature by a team of astronomers led by Carnegie’s Juna Kollmeier—and including Carnegie’s Nidia Morrell...
Washington, DC—Which of Earth’s features were essential for the origin and sustenance of life? And how do scientists identify those features on other worlds?
A team of Carnegie ...
Washington, DC— The longevity of Earth’s continents in the face of destructive tectonic activity is an essential geologic backdrop for the emergence of life on our planet. This stability...
Washington, DC—Changes in temperature and precipitation have already impacted the amount of nitrogen introduced into U.S. waterways, according to new research from a team of three Carnegie...
Washington, DC—An ancient sliver of the building blocks from which comets formed was discovered encased inside a meteorite like an insect in amber by a Carnegie-led research team. The finding,...
Pasadena, CA—A nearby system hosts the first Earth-sized planet discovered by NASA’s Transiting Exoplanets Survey Satellite, as well as a warm sub-Neptune-sized world, according to a new...
Washington, DC—Tiny fragments of plastic in the ocean are consumed by sea anemones along with their food, and bleached anemones retain these microfibers longer than healthy ones, according to...
Palo Alto, CA—The creation of new library of mutants of the single-celled photosynthetic green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii enabled a Carnegie- and Princeton University-led team of...
Washington, DC—Strategies for limiting climate change must take into account their potential impact on water quality through nutrient overload, according to a new study from Carnegie’s...
Washington, DC— On the mountain slopes of the western United States, climate can play a major role in determining which tree communities will thrive in the harshest conditions, according to new...
Washington, DC—Carnegie’s Andrew Steele is a member of the Earth First Origins project, led by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Karyn Rogers, which has been awarded a $9 million...
Washington, DC— Carnegie’s Winslow Briggs, a giant in the field of plant biology who explained how seedlings grow toward light, died on February 11 at Stanford University Medical Center....
Washington, DC—The density of rock layers on the terrain that climbs from the base of Mars’ Gale Crater to Mount Sharp is less dense than expected, according to the latest report on the...
Washington, DC—Chinese regulations on coal mining have not curbed the nation’s growing methane emissions as intended, says new research from a team led by Carnegie’s Scot...
Pasadena, CA— “Can moons have moons?”
This simple question—asked by the four-year old son of Carnegie’s Juna Kollmeier—started it all. Not long after this...
Stanford, CA—For millennia, humanity has used medicinal plants and plant-based compounds to treat a variety of neurological ailments including epilepsy, mania, migraines, and bipolar disorder....
Washington, DC— A team of astronomers has discovered the most-distant body ever observed in our Solar System. It is the first known Solar System object that has been detected at a...
Pasadena, CA— Miguel Roth, director of Carnegie’s Las Campanas Observatory in Chile from 1990 to 2014 and the current representative of the Giant Magellan Telescope Organization (GMTO) in...
Pasadena, CA—New work from the Carnegie Supernova Project provides the best-yet calibrations for using type Ia supernovae to measure cosmic distances, which has implications for our...
Stanford, CA—How much of the ability of a coral reef to withstand stressful conditions is influenced by the type of algae that the corals hosts?
Corals are marine invertebrates from the phylum...
Baltimore, MD—The interactions that take place between the species of microbes living in the gastrointestinal system often have large and unpredicted effects on health, according to new work...
Pasadena, CA—A supernova discovered by an international group of astronomers including Carnegie’s Tom Holoien and Maria Drout, and led by University of Hawaii’s Ben Shappee,...
Washington, DC—Carnegie’s Anna Michalak was a major contributor to the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s Second State of the Carbon Cycle Report released last Friday, which...
Washington, DC—An international team including five Carnegie astronomers has discovered a frozen Super-Earth orbiting Barnard’s star, the closest single star to our own Sun. The Planet...
Baltimore, MD—Since Carnegie Institution’s Barbara McClintock received her Nobel Prize on her discovery of jumping genes in 1983, we have learned that almost half of our DNA is made up of...
Washington, DC—Mars’ organic carbon may have originated from a series of electrochemical reactions between briny liquids and volcanic minerals, according to new analyses of three Martian...
Washington, DC—Today, Paul G. Allen Philanthropies and a consortium of partners, including Carnegie, unveiled the Allen Coral Atlas, a pioneering effort that uses high-resolution satellite...
Pasadena, CA—Carnegie’s Anthony Piro was part of a Caltech-led team of astronomers who observed the peculiar death of a massive star that exploded in a surprisingly faint and rapidly...
Carnegie’s Department of Embryology scientist Steven Farber and team have been awarded a 5-year $3.3-million NIH grant to identify novel pharmaceuticals for combating a host of diseases...
Washington, DC—NASA should incorporate astrobiology into all stages of future exploratory missions, according to a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine...
Washington, DC—Carnegie’s Scott Sheppard and his colleagues—Northern Arizona University’s Chad Trujillo, and the University of Hawaii’s David Tholen—are once again...
Baltimore, MD— Body organs such as the intestine and ovaries undergo structural changes in response to dietary nutrients that can have lasting impacts on metabolism, as well as cancer...
Washington, DC—The line that separates stars from brown dwarfs may soon be clearer thanks to new work led by Carnegie’s Serge Dieterich. Published by The Astrophysical Journal, his team...
Baltimore, MD—The Pew Charitable Trust has awarded Carnegie’s Steve Farber and colleague John F. Rawls of Duke University a $200,000 grant to investigate how dietary nutrients, such as...
Washington, DC—New work from Carnegie’s Jonathan Gagné and the American Museum of Natural History’s Jacqueline Faherty identified nearly a thousand potential members and 31...
Washington, DC— When it comes to aerosol pollution, as the old real estate adage says, location is everything.
Aerosols are tiny particles that are spewed into the atmosphere by human...
Washington, DC—Lab-based mimicry allowed an international team of physicists including Carnegie’s Alexander Goncharov to probe hydrogen under the conditions found in the interiors of...
Baltimore, MD—New work from Carnegie’s Ethan Greenblatt and Allan Spradling reveals that the genetic factors underlying fragile X syndrome, and potentially other autism-related disorders...
New research, led by former Carnegie postdoctoral fellow Summer Praetorius, shows that changes in the heat flow of the northern Pacific Ocean may have a larger effect on the Arctic climate than...
Pasadena, CA—What happens when a star behaves like it exploded, but it’s still there?
About 170 years ago, astronomers witnessed a major outburst by Eta Carinae, the brightest known star...
Washington, DC—Blue diamonds—like the world-famous Hope Diamond at the National Museum of Natural History—formed up to four times deeper in the Earth’s mantle than most other...
Washington, DC—Seagrass meadows could play a limited, localized role in alleviating ocean acidification in coastal ecosystems, according to new work led by Carnegie’s David Koweek and...
Baltimore MD—Almost half of our DNA sequences are made up of jumping genes—also known as transposons. They jump around the genome in developing sperm and egg cells and are important to...
Pasadena, CA—Last autumn, the world was excited by the discovery of an exoplanet called Ross 128 b, which is just 11 light years away from Earth. New work from a team led by Diogo Souto of...
Washington, DC—New work from a team led by Carnegie’s Alexander Goncharov confirms that nitrogen, the dominant gas in Earth’s atmosphere, becomes a metallic fluid when subjected to...
Pasadena, CA—Carnegie’s Eduardo Bañados led a team that found a quasar with the brightest radio emission ever observed in the early universe, due to it spewing out a jet of...
Washington, DC—Carbon dioxide emissions from human activities must approach zero within several decades to avoid risking grave damage from the effects of climate change. This will require...
Baltimore, MD—A tremendous amount of genetic material must be packed into the nucleus of every cell—a tiny compartment. One of the biggest challenges in biology is to understand how...
Washington, DC—A team of scientists including Carnegie’s Michael Ackerson and Bjørn Mysen revealed that granites from Yosemite National Park contain minerals that crystallized at...
Washington, DC— Carnegie’s Greg Asner advanced through a venture capital-style pitch group challenge to win a $250,000 grant from Battery Powered that will enable his flying laboratory...
Washington, DC—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...
Washington, DC— NASA’s Curiosity rover has discovered new “tough” organic molecules in three-billion-year-old sedimentary rocks on Mars, increasing the chances that the record...
Washington, DC—A team of scientists led by Carnegie’s Shaunna Morrison and including Bob Hazen have revealed the mineralogy of Mars at an unprecedented scale, which will help them...
Washington, DC—Un grupo de astrónomos del Observatorio Las Campanas, de Carnegie, incluyendo a Mark Phillips y Guillermo Blanc, junto a Miguel Roth de la Organización...
Washington, DC—A group of astronomers from Carnegie’s Las Campanas Observatory including Mark Phillips and Guillermo Blanc, along with Miguel Roth from the Giant Magellan Telescope...
Washington, D.C. –The DC STEM Network is one of eight groups to win the US2020’s 2018 STEM Coalition Challenge. The Challenge was a nationwide competition for communities toincrease hands...
Baltimore, MD—Allan C. Spradling, Director Emeritus of Carnegie’s Department of Embryology, has been awarded the 23rd March of Dimes and Richard B. Johnson, Jr., MD Prize in...
Washington, DC—A team of researchers including Carnegie’s Bob Hazen is using network analysis techniques—made popular through social media applications—to find patterns in...
Washington, DC — On Saturday, March 17, middle and high school students in the nation’s capital showed off their science and math skills in a full-day celebration of STEM education and...
Palo Alto, CA—Senior scientist Arthur Grossman of Carnegie’s Department of Plant Biology was part of a team* awarded a three-year grant, with $100,000 for each year, from the...
Pasadena, CA—Pomona College junior and returning Carnegie Observatories intern Sal Fu was awarded a Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship in recognition of her academic and research success and to...
Washington, DC—A team of scientists including Carnegie’s Tim Strobel and Venkata Bhadram now report unexpected quantum behavior of hydrogen molecules, H2, trapped within tiny cages made...
Sabah, Malaysia—Degraded forests play a crucial role in the future survival of Bornean elephants. A new study, published in the journal Biological Conservation, finds that forests of...
Washington, DC— Ocean acidification will severely impair coral reef growth before the end of the century if carbon dioxide emissions continue unchecked, according to new research on Australia...
Washington, DC—The paradox of the missing xenon might sound like the title of the latest airport thriller, but it’s actually a problem that’s stumped geophysicists for decades. New...
Washington, DC—Plumes of hot magma from the volcanic hotspot that formed Réunion Island in the Indian Ocean rise from an unusually primitive source deep beneath the Earth’s surface...
Washington, DC—It’s amazing what a difference a little water can make.
The Moon formed between about 4.4 and 4.5 billion years ago when an object collided with the still-forming proto-...
Washington, DC— Brown dwarfs, the larger cousins of giant planets, undergo atmospheric changes from cloudy to cloudless as they age and cool. A team of astronomers led by Carnegie’s...
Washington, DC—Wind and solar power could generate most but not all electricity in the United States, according to an analysis of 36 years of weather data by Carnegie’s Ken Caldeira, and...
Washington, DC—A team of astronomers led by Carnegie’s Meredith MacGregor and Alycia Weinberger detected a massive stellar flare—an energetic explosion of radiation—from the...
Stanford, CA—Roots face many challenges in the soil in order to supply the plant with the necessary water and nutrients. New work from Carnegie and Stanford University’s Jos...
Washington, DC—Water makes up more than 70 percent of our planet's surface and up to 60 percent of our bodies.
Water is so common that we take it for granted. Yet water also has very...
Pasadena, CA— A star about 100 light years away in the Pisces constellation, GJ 9827, hosts what may be one of the most massive and dense super-Earth planets detected to date, according to new...
Washington, DC—A team of experimental and computational scientists led by Carnegie’s Tim Strobel and Venkata Bhadram have synthesized a long sought-after form of titanium nitride, Ti3N4,...
Washington, DC— Plumes of hot rock surging upward from the Earth’s mantle at volcanic hotspots contain evidence that the Earth’s formative years may have been even more chaotic than...
Washington, DC— Dust is everywhere—not just in your attic or under your bed, but also in outer space. To astronomers, dust can be a nuisance by blocking the light of distant stars, or it...
WASHINGTON, D.C. – US2020, a nationwide network of more than 350 organizations to advance the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) fields, chose the DC STEM Network as one of...
Washington, DC— Without eyes, ears, or a central nervous system, plants can perceive the direction of environmental cues and respond to ensure their survival.
For example, roots need to extend...
National Harbor, MD—How far away is that galaxy?
Our entire understanding of the Universe is based on knowing the distances to other galaxies, yet this seemingly-simple question turns out...
National Harbor, MD—Astronomers with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) have learned that the chemical composition of a star can exert unexpected influence on its planetary system—a...
Many people have heard of Pangaea, the supercontinent that included all continents on Earth and began to break up about 175 million years ago. But before Pangaea, Earth’s landmasses ripped...
Pasadena, CA— A team of astronomers led by Carnegie’s Eduardo Bañados used Carnegie’s Magellan telescopes to discover the most-distant supermassive black hole ever observed....
Washington, DC— The climate models that project greater amounts of warming this century are the ones that best align with observations of the current climate, according to a new paper from...
Washington, DC— About 40 percent of northern Malaysian Borneo’s carbon stocks exist in forests that are not designated for maximum protections, according to new remote sensing and...
Washington, DC—Not too long ago, biologists would induce mutations in an entire genome, isolate an organism that displayed a resulting disease or abnormality that they wanted to study, and then...
Washington, DC— New research on oxygen and iron chemistry under the extreme conditions found deep inside the Earth could explain a longstanding seismic mystery called ultralow velocity zones....
SN2015J, a very bright and peculiar supernova, which initially did not have a certain home, now has received its happy ending.
Discovered on April 27, 2015, by the Siding Springs Observatory in...
Pasadena, CA— The next generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-V), directed by Carnegie’s Juna Kollmeier, will move forward with mapping the entire sky following a $16 million...
Washington, DC— Reservoirs of oxygen-rich iron between the Earth’s core and mantle could have played a major role in Earth’s history, including the breakup of supercontinents,...
Pasadena, CA— It’s the celestial equivalent of a horror movie villain—a star that wouldn’t stay dead.
An international team of astronomers including Carnegie’s Nick...
Washington, DC— On August 17, a team of four Carnegie astronomers provided the first-ever glimpse of two neutron stars colliding, opening the door to a new era of astronomy.
Along with...
Washington, DC— There is considerable opportunity for generating wind power in the open ocean, particularly the North Atlantic, according to new research from Carnegie’s Anna Possner and...
Science News magazine has selected José Dinneny, of Carnegie’s Department of Plant Biology, as one of ten young scientists to watch in 2017. The researchers were selected because they...
Pasadena, CA— In 2015, a star called KIC 8462852 caused quite a stir in and beyond the astronomy community due to a series of rapid, unexplained dimming events seen while it was being monitored...
Washington, DC— New work from a research team including the director of Carnegie’s Las Campanas Observatory, Leopoldo Infante, has tripled the sample size of known galaxies that can teach...
Washington, D.C—As part of the team’s commitment to using baseball as a tool to engage students in STEM learning, the Washington Nationals baseball team will recognize and celebrate the...
Stanford, CA— How do green algae grow so quickly? Two new collaborations offer insight into how these organisms siphon carbon dioxide from the air for use in photosynthesis, a key factor...
Carnegie staff scientist Greg Asner has been awarded the 22nd Heinz Award for the Environment,* “ for developing ultra-high-resolution imaging technology that provides unprecedented detail on...
Washington, DC— New work from a team of Carnegie scientists (and one Carnegie alumnus) asked whether any gas giant planets could potentially orbit TRAPPIST-1 at distances greater than that of...
The Amgen Foundation, in partnership with Carnegie Academy for Science Education (CASE), announced that it brings the Amgen Biotech Experience (ABE) to local classrooms as part of a $10.5...
Washington, DC— A team of Carnegie high-pressure physicists have created a form of carbon that’s hard as diamond, but amorphous, meaning it lacks the large-scale structural repetition of...
Washington, DC— The amount of time it takes for an ecosystem to recover from a drought is an important measure of a drought’s severity. During the 20th century, the total area of land...
Washington, DC— According to one longstanding theory, our Solar System’s formation was triggered by a shock wave from an exploding supernova. The shock wave injected material from the...
Washington, DC—Applying big data analysis to mineralogy offers a way to predict minerals missing from those known to science, as well as where to find new deposits, according to a...
Pasadena, CA— Carnegie’s Benjamin Shappee is part of a team of scientists, including an Australian amateur astronomer, which discovered a new comet last week.
Called the All Sky Automated...
Washington, DC— If climate change is not curbed, increased precipitation could substantially overload U.S. waterways with excess nitrogen, according to a new study from Carnegie’s Eva...
Washington, DC— Geoengineering is a catch-all term that refers to various theoretical ideas for altering Earth’s energy balance to combat climate change. New research from an...
New satellite data will mean more accurate and detailed Lake Erie Harmful Algal Bloom Forecast System
Washington, DC—NOAA and its research partners, including Carnegie's Anna Michalak and...
Washington, DC— Bornean orangutans living in forests impacted by human commerce seek areas of denser canopy enclosure, taller trees, and sections with trees of uniform height, according to new...
Palo Alto, CA— The red algae called Porphyra and its ancestors have thrived for millions of years in the harsh habitat of the intertidal zone—exposed to fluctuating temperatures, high UV...
Baltimore, MD— The brain is the body’s mission control center, sending messages to the other organs about how to respond to various external and internal stimuli. Located in the forebrain...
Palo Alto, CA— Algae dominate the oceans that cover nearly three-quarters of our planet, and produce half of the oxygen that we breathe. And yet fewer than 10 percent of the algae have been...
Washington, DC—Solving the climate change problem means transitioning to an energy system that emits little or no greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. According to new work from a team of...
Washington, DC— A team including several Carnegie scientists has developed a form of ultrastrong, lightweight carbon that is also elastic and electrically conductive. A material with such a...
Diana Roman’s job sounds like a blast.
Pun very much intended.
Although many people find volcanoes scary, she knows how to make them fun and, more importantly, fascinating.
A staff scientist...
Stanford, CA—Plants are stationary. This means that the way they grow must be highly internally regulated to use the surrounding resources in the most-advantageous way possible.
Just imagine if...
Pasadena, CA— A team of astronomers including Carnegie’s Eduardo Bañados and led by Roberto Decarli of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy has discovered a new kind of galaxy...
Washington, D.C.—With the growing frequency and magnitude of toxic freshwater algal blooms becoming an increasingly worrisome public health concern, Carnegie scientists Jeff Ho and Anna...
Washington, D.C.—BioEYES was accepted to participate in a National Science Foundation (NSF) video competition on May 15-22, 2017. BioEYES supporters are encouraged to go to the competition...
Washington, DC— Sometimes a brown dwarf is actually a planet—or planet-like anyway. A team led by Carnegie’s Jonathan Gagné, and including researchers from the Institute for...
Baltimore, MD—Studying how our bodies metabolize lipids such as fatty acids, triglycerides, and cholesterol can teach us about cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and other health problems, as...
Washington, DC—Recovered minerals that originated in the deep mantle can give scientists a rare glimpse into the dynamic processes occurring deep inside of the Earth and into the history of the...
Washington, DC—Plants are currently removing more CO2 from the air than they did 200 years ago, according to new work from Carnegie’s Joe Berry and led by J. Elliott Campbell of UC Merced...
Washington, DC—It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of silicon when it comes to computing, solar energy, and other technological applications. (Not to mention the fact that it...
Carnegie Science believes that the March for Science is the perfect opportunity to showcase the connections between scientific discovery, technology, economic strength, global security, human and...
Washington, DC—Hydrogen is both the simplest and the most-abundant element in the universe, so studying it can teach scientists about the essence of matter. And yet there are still many...
Palo Alto, CA—New work from a joint team of plant biologists and ecologists from Carnegie and Stanford University has uncovered the factor behind an important innovation that makes grasses...
Washington, DC—Rock samples from northeastern Canada retain chemical signals that help explain what Earth’s crust was like more than 4 billion years ago, reveals new work from Carnegie...
Washington, DC—When planets first begin to form, the aftermath of the process leaves a ring of rocky and icy material that’s rotating and colliding around the young central star like a...
Washington, DC— New work from a team including Carnegie’s Guoyin Shen and Yoshio Kono used high pressure and temperature to reveal a kind of “structural memory” in samples of...
Washington, DC—A joint study between Carnegie and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has determined that the average temperature of Earth’s mantle beneath ocean basins is about 110...
Washington, DC—Human industry and ingenuity has done more to diversify and distribute minerals on Earth than any development since the rise of oxygen over 2.2 billion years ago, experts say in...
Washington, DC—There may be a large number of undetected bright, substellar objects similar to giant exoplanets in our own solar neighborhood, according to new work from a team led by Carnegie...
Washington, DC—New planetary formation models from Carnegie’s Alan Boss indicate that there may be an undiscovered population of gas giant planets orbiting around Sun-like stars at...
Washington, DC—New work from Carnegie’s Stephen Elardo and Anat Shahar shows that interactions between iron and nickel under the extreme pressures and temperatures similar to a planetary...
Washington, DC— An international team of astronomers released the largest-ever compilation of exoplanet-detecting observations made using a technique called the radial velocity method. They...
Washington, DC— Although helium is the second most-abundant element (after hydrogen) in the universe, it doesn’t play well with others. It is a member of a family of seven elements called...
Stanford, CA—New work from Carnegie’s Shouling Xu and Zhiyong Wang reveals that the process of synthesizing many important master proteins in plants involves extensive modification, or...
Washington, DC—New remote sensing maps of the forest canopy in Peru test the strength of current forest protections and identify new regions for conservation effort, according to a report led...
Pasadena, CA –The Giant Magellan Telescope Organization (GMTO) announces the appointment of physicist Robert N. Shelton to become its president, effective February 20, 2017. Shelton will lead...
Washington, D.C.--Phase transitions surround us—for instance, liquid water changes to ice when frozen and to steam when boiled. Now, researchers at the Carnegie Institution for Science* have...
Even though carbon is one of the most-abundant elements on Earth, it is actually very difficult to determine how much of it exists below the surface in Earth’s interior. Analysis by Carnegie...
Washington, DC—Germanium may not be a household name like silicon, its group-mate on the periodic table, but it has great potential for use in next-generation electronics and energy technology...
Washington, DC–Renowned astrophysicist and National Medal of Science awardee Vera Rubin passed away in Princeton N.J., the evening of December 25, 2016, at the age of 88. Rubin confirmed the...
Washington, DC—New research from a team including Carnegie’s Steven Shirey, Emma Bullock, and Jianhua Wang explains how the world’s biggest and most-valuable diamonds formed—...
Stanford, CA—Climate change and recent heat waves have put agricultural crops at risk, which means that understanding how plants respond to elevated temperatures is crucial for protecting our...
Pasadena, CA – The Giant Magellan Telescope Organization (GMTO) today announced the appointment of Walter E. Massey, PhD, and Taft Armandroff, PhD, to the positions of Board Chair and Vice...
Washington, DC—New research from two Carnegie scientists has serious implications for the development of management strategies to reduce nutrient runoff in waterways and coastal areas.
Human...
Baltimore, MD—A first-of-its-kind study on almost 20,000 K-12 underrepresented public school students shows that Project BioEYES, based at Carnegie’s Department of Embryology, is...
Baltimore, MD— New work led by Carnegie’s Steven Farber, with help from Yixian Zheng’s lab, sheds light on how form follows function for intestinal cells responding to high-fat...
Washington, DC—A group of citizen scientists and professional astronomers, including Carnegie’s Jonathan Gagné, joined forces to discover an unusual hunting ground for exoplanets....
Washington, DC— Did you know that there are at least 17 crystalline forms of ice, many of them formed under extreme pressures, such as those found in the interiors of frozen planets? New work...
Washington, DC— New work from a team led by Carnegie’s Alexander Goncharov has created a new extremely incompressible carbon nitride compound. They say it could be the prototype for a...
Stanford, CA—We generally think of inheritance as the genetic transfer from parent to offspring and that evolution moves toward greater complexity. But there are other ways that genes are...
Baltimore, MD---Athletes, the elderly and those with degenerative muscle disease would all benefit from accelerated muscle repair. When skeletal muscles, those connected to the bone, are injured,...
Stanford, CA— What would we do differently if sea level were to rise one foot per century versus one foot per decade? Until now, most policy and research has focused on adapting to specific...
Stanford, CA— A feature thought to make plants sensitive to drought could actually hold the key to them coping with it better, according to new findings published by eLife, from Kathryn Barton...
Pasadena, CA— A star known by the unassuming name of KIC 8462852 in the constellation Cygnus has been raising eyebrows both in and outside of the scientific community for the past year. In 2015...
Washington, DC— When a star is young, it is often still surrounded by a primordial rotating disk of gas and dust from which planets can form. Astronomers like to find such disks because...
Stanford, CA—Using software tools developed by Near Zero, a research group hosted by the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Department of Global Ecology, a team of researchers has...
Pasadena, CA— Quasars are supermassive black holes that sit at the center of enormous galaxies, accreting matter. They shine so brightly that they are often referred to as beacons and are among...
Washington, DC— Dwarf galaxies are enigmas wrapped in riddles. Although they are the smallest galaxies, they represent some of the biggest mysteries about our universe. While many dwarf...
Washington, DC— Cool brown dwarfs are a hot topic in astronomy right now. Smaller than stars and bigger than giant planets, they hold promise for helping us understand both stellar evolution...
Stanford, CA—One of the world’s longest-running, most comprehensive climate change experiments produced some surprising results. The extensive experiment subjected grassland ecosystems to...
Washington, DC— A team of Carnegie scientists has discovered three giant planets in a binary star system composed of stellar ''twins'' that are also effectively siblings of our...
Pasadena, CA—An international team of astronomers, including Carnegie’s Eric Persson, has charted the rise and fall of galaxies over 90 percent of cosmic history. Their work, which...
Washington, DC— In the race to discover a proposed ninth planet in our Solar System, Carnegie’s Scott Sheppard and Chadwick Trujillo of Northern Arizona University have observed several...
Washington, DC— An international team of astronomers including Carnegie’s Paul Butler has found clear evidence of a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the closest star to our Solar System...
Washington, DC— Brown dwarfs are smaller than stars, but more massive than giant planets. As such, they provide a natural link between astronomy and planetary science. However, they also show...
Washington, DC— Well-understood physical and chemical processes can easily explain the alleged evidence of a secret, large-scale atmospheric spraying program, commonly referred to as “...
Washington, DC—Offering a rare insider analysis of the climate assessment process, Carnegie’s Katharine Mach and colleagues at the Department of Global Ecology examined the writing and...
Washington, D.C.—Scientists have looked for different ways to force hydrogen into a metallic state for decades. A metallic state of hydrogen is a holy grail for materials science because it...
Washington, DC— It is imperative that society learn more about how climate change contributes to episodic and very severe water quality impairments, such as the harmful algal bloom that caused...
Stanford, CA— With a growing world population and a changing climate, understanding how agriculturally important plants respond to drought is crucial. New work from a team led by Carnegie...
Pasadena, CA—Astronomers have believed since the 1960s that a galaxy dubbed UGC 1382 was a relatively boring, small elliptical galaxy. Ellipticals are the most common type of galaxy and lack...
Stanford, CA— Plants have tiny pores on their leaves called stomata—Greek for mouths—through which they take in carbon dioxide from the air and from which water evaporates. New work...
Baltimore, MD— As we age, the function and regenerative abilities of skeletal muscles deteriorate, which means it is difficult for the elderly to recover from injury or surgery. New work from...
Washington, DC— It turns out that forests in the Andean and western Amazonian regions of South America break long-understood rules about how ecosystems are put together, according to new...
Washington, DC— Brown dwarfs are sometimes called failed stars. They’re stars’ dim, low-mass siblings and they fade in brightness over time. They’re fascinating to astronomers...
Washington, DC— Climate change assessments must be more relevant to policymakers’ needs, say Carnegie’s Katharine Mach and Stéphane Hallegatte of the World Bank’s...
Washington, DC— New work from Carnegie’s Peter Driscoll suggests Earth’s ancient magnetic field was significantly different than the present day field, originating from several...
Washington, D.C.— When dormant volcanoes are about to erupt, they show some predictive characteristics—seismic activity beneath the volcano starts to increase, gas escapes through the...
Washington, DC— Hydrogen is the most-abundant element in the universe. It’s also the simplest—sporting only a single electron in each atom. But that simplicity is deceptive, because...
Washington, DC— Using laboratory techniques to mimic the conditions found deep inside the Earth, a team of Carnegie scientists led by Ho-Kwang “Dave” Mao has identified a form of...
Washington, DC— Earth's magnetic field shields us from deadly cosmic radiation, and without it, life as we know it could not exist here. The motion of liquid iron in the planet’s...
Pasadena, CA— Carnegie’s Allan Sandage, who died in 2010, was a tremendously influential figure in the field of astronomy. His final paper, published posthumously, focuses on unraveling a...
Washington, DC— New work from a team including Carnegie’s Hanika Rizo and Richard Carlson, as well as Richard Walker from the University of Maryland, has found material in rock formations...
Stanford, CA— Algae may hold the key to feeding the world’s burgeoning population. Don’t worry; no one is going to make you eat them. But because they are more efficient than most...
Washington, DC—New work from a research team led by Carnegie’s Anat Shahar contains some unexpected findings about iron chemistry under high-pressure conditions, such as those likely...
Pasadena, CA— You can never predict what treasure might be hiding in your own basement. We didn’t know it a year ago, but it turns out that a 1917 image on an astronomical glass plate...
Washington, DC— Planet-hunting is an ongoing process that’s resulting in the discovery of more and more planets orbiting distant stars. But as the hunters learn more about the variety...
Washington, DC—A team of astronomers from Carnegie and Western University in Ontario, Canada, has discovered one of the youngest and brightest free-floating, planet-like objects within...
Pasadena, CA—The lightest few elements in the periodic table formed minutes after the Big Bang. Heavier chemical elements are created by stars, either from nuclear fusion in their...
Washington, DC— A new study, based on the most-extensive set of measurements ever made in tide pools, suggests that ocean acidification will increasingly put many marine organisms at risk by...
Washington, D.C.—For the first time scientists have looked at the net balance of the three major greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide—for every region of...
Washington, D.C.—Scientists have long been puzzled about what makes Mercury’s surface so dark. The innermost planet reflects much less sunlight than the Moon, a body on which surface...
Stanford, CA— You’ve probably seen news stories about the highly lauded, much-discussed genome editing system CRISPR/Cas9. But did you know the system was actually derived from bacteria,...
Stanford, CA— During the daytime, plants convert the Sun’s energy into sugars using photosynthesis, a complex, multi-stage biochemical process. New work from a team including Carnegie...
Baltimore, MD—New work from Carnegie’s Allan Spradling and Lei Lei demonstrates that mammalian egg cells gain crucial cellular components at an early stage from their undifferentiated...
Washington, DC— A team of scientists led by Carnegie’s Rebecca Albright and Ken Caldeira performed the first-ever experiment that manipulated seawater chemistry in a natural coral reef...
Washington, DC— More than 1,000 scientists from nonprofit, corporate, academic, and private institutions say public doubts about genetically modified food crops are hindering the next Green...
Washington, DC— A team of scientists including Carnegie’s Dina Bower and Andrew Steele weigh in on whether microstructures found in 3.46 billion-year-old samples of a silica-rich rock...
Washington, DC—If you freeze any liquid fast enough, even liquid metal, it becomes a glass. Vitrified metals, or metallic glasses, are at the frontier of materials science research. They have...
Washington, D.C.—Earth's magnetic field is generated by the motion of liquid iron in the planet's core. This “geodynamo” occasionally reverses its polarity—the...
Baltimore, MD— Reproduction is highly dependent on diet and the ability to use nutrients to grow and generate energy. This is clearly seen in women, who must provide all the nutritional...
Pasadena, CA—A team of astronomers, including Carnegie’s Benjamin Shappee, Nidia Morrell, and Ian Thompson, has discovered the most-luminous supernova ever observed, called ASAS-SN-15lh....
Pasadena, CA— New work from a team of astronomers led by Carnegie’s Jennifer van Saders indicates that one recently developed method for determining a star’s age needs to be...
Washington, DC—California’s forests are home to the planet’s oldest, tallest and most-massive trees. New research from Carnegie’s Greg Asner and his team reveals that up to 58...
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...
San Diego, CA— Ghosts are not your typical cell biology research subjects. But scientists at the Carnegie Institution for Science and the National Institute of Child Health and Human...
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...
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...
Stanford, CA—Everyone who took high school biology learned that photosynthesis is the process by which plants, algae and select bacteria transform the Sun's energy into chemical energy...
Pasadena, CA – November 11, 2015 – Leading scientists, senior officials, and supporters from an international consortium of universities and research institutions are gathering on a...
Baltimore, MD – On November 12, 2015, students from ConneXions Academy will address water-quality issues in Baltimore through the General Motors Global Rivers Environmental Education Network (...
Stanford, CA— 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...
Washington, DC— Protected areas, such as nature reserves and national parks, play a crucial role in sheltering wildlife, such as African elephants, from hunting and habitat destruction. But it...
Washington, D.C.—With mounting vigor for combating global climate change, increasing the use of renewable energy resources such as solar, without compromising natural habitats, is a challenge...
Stanford, CA— Like humans, plants are surrounded by and closely associated with microbes. The majority of these microbes are beneficial, but some can cause devastating disease. Maintaining the...
Washington, D.C.—The pervasive plant fiber cellulose, which makes up cell walls, represents most of the biomass on Earth and is used to create everything from textiles and building materials,...
Baltimore, MD— Every high school biology class learns about the tiny cells that comprise our bodies, as well as about many of the diverse actions that they perform. One of these actions is...
Washington, DC—New work from an international team including Carnegie’s Ken Caldeira demonstrates that the planet’s remaining fossil fuel resources would be sufficient to melt...
Washington, DC— As astronomers continue finding new rocky planets around distant stars, high-pressure physicists are considering what the interiors of those planets might be like and how their...
Washington, DC—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...
Washington, DC— Tiny beads of volcanic glass found on the lunar surface during the Apollo missions are a sign that fire fountain eruptions took place on the Moon’s surface. Now,...
Stanford, CA— Plants form a vast network of below-ground roots that search soil for needed resources. The structure and function of this root network can be highly adapted to particular...
Washington, DC— 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...
Washington, DC— New work from an international team of researchers including Carnegie’s Lara Wagner improves our understanding of the geological activity that is thought to have formed...
Washington, DC—Colossal magnetoresistance is a property with practical applications in a wide array of electronic tools including magnetic sensors and magnetic RAM. New research from a team...
Washington, DC— Climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions will alter the way that Americans heat and cool their homes. By the end of this century, the number of days each year that...
Washington, DC—Continuing current carbon dioxide (CO2) emission trends throughout this century and beyond would leave a legacy of heat and acidity in the deep ocean. These changes would linger...
Washington, DC— New work from Carnegie’s Alan Boss offers a potential solution to a longstanding problem in the prevailing theory of how rocky planets formed in our own Solar System, as...
Washington, DC—The interiors of several of our Solar System’s planets and moons are icy, and ice has been found on distant extrasolar planets, as well. But these bodies aren’t...
Washington, DC— The matter that makes up distant planets and even-more-distant stars exists under extreme pressure and temperature conditions. This matter includes members of a family of seven...
Washington, DC—The heat generated by burning a fossil fuel is surpassed within a few months by the warming caused by the release of its carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, according to new work...
Stanford, CA— New work from a team including Carnegie’s Devaki Bhaya and Michelle Davison used massive DNA sequencing of bacterial populations that grow in the hot springs in Yellowstone...
Washington, DC— Superconductivity is a rare physical state in which matter is able to conduct electricity—maintain a flow of electrons—without any resistance. It can only be...
Washington, DC— You know the old saying: Location, location, location? It turns out that it applies to the Amazon rainforest, too. New work from Carnegie’s Greg Asner ...
Pasadena, CA— Type Ia supernovae are violent stellar explosions that shine as some of the brightest objects in the universe. But there are still many mysteries surrounding their origin—...
Washington, DC— The top-three students in this year’s DC STEM Fair are currently in Pittsburgh competing at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, the world’s largest...
Washington, D.C.— Carbonates are a group of minerals that contain the carbonate ion (CO32-) and a metal, such as iron or magnesium. Carbonates are important constituents of marine sediments and...
Washington, DC— 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...
Washington, D.C—The MESSENGER Education and Public Outreach (EPO) Team, coordinated through Carnegie Science, announces the winning names from its competition to name five impact craters...
Washington, D.C.— Some scientists have suggested that global warming could melt frozen ground in the Arctic, releasing vast amounts of the potent greenhouse gas methane into the atmosphere,...
Washington, DC— New work from Carnegie’s Russell Hemley and Ivan Naumov hones in on the physics underlying the recently discovered fact that some metals stop being metallic under pressure...
Washington, D.C. – Carnegie Science announces the launch of the Carnegie Airborne Observatory-3 (CAO-3), the most scientifically advanced aircraft-based mapping and data analytics system in...
Stanford, CA—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...
Washington, D.C.— 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...
Pasadena, CA— A Carnegie-based search of nearby galaxies for their oldest stars has uncovered two stars in the Sculptor dwarf galaxy that were born shortly after the galaxy formed,...
Stanford, CA— Inside every seed is the embryo of a plant, and in most cases also a storage of food needed to power initial growth of the young seedling. A seed consists mainly of carbohydrates...
Washington, D.C.— A Carnegie-led team was able to discover five new forms of silica under extreme pressures at room temperature. Their findings are published by Nature Communications.
Silicon...
Washington, D.C.—To combat global climate change caused by greenhouse gases, alternative energy sources and other types of environmental recourse actions are needed. There is a variety of...
Baltimore, MD— Nutrition and metabolism are closely linked with reproductive health. Several reproductive disorders including polycystic ovary syndrome, amenorrhea, and ovarian cancer have been...
Washington, D.C.— 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...
Human health and survival depend in large part on the chemistry of plant metabolism. About a quarter of our prescription drugs and half of anticancer drugs come from plants. These compounds, called...
Washington, D.C.-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...
Washington, D.C.— 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...
Washington, D.C.— A team of Carnegie scientists have found “beautifully preserved” 15 million-year-old thin protein sheets in fossil shells from southern Maryland. Their...
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Washington, D.C.—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...
Tuesday, December 16, 2014—New work from Carnegie's Ivan Naumov and Russell Hemley delves into the chemistry underlying some surprising recent observations about hydrogen, and reveals...
Recent advances in our understanding of the quantities, movements, forms and origin of carbon in Earth are summarized in a just-published report. The research represents fast-paced progress on the...
Washington, D.C—The MESSENGER Education and Public Outreach (EPO) Team is launching a competition this week to name five impact craters on Mercury. The contest is open to all Earthlings, except...
Baltimore MD— We would not expect a baby to join a team or participate in social situations that require sophisticated communication. Yet, most developmental biologists have assumed that young...
Washington, D.C.— Natural gas power plants produce substantial amounts of gases that lead to global warming. Replacing old coal-fired power plants with new natural gas plants could cause...
Washington, D.C.—The climate warming caused by a single carbon emission takes only about 10 years to reach its maximum effect. This is important because it refutes the common misconception that...
Tuesday, November 25, 2014, Baltimore, MD—Biologist Marnie Halpern of Carnegie’s Department of Embryology has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of...
Washington, D.C.—Silicon is the second most-abundant element in the earth's crust. When purified, it takes on a diamond structure, which is essential to modern electronic devices—...
Washington, D.C.— New work from a team led by Carnegie’s Greg Asner shows the limitations of long-used research methods in tropical rainforest ecology and points to new technological...
Stanford, CA—Photosynthesis is the process by which plants convert energy from the sunlight into chemical energy in the form of sugars. These sugars are used by plants to grow and function, as...
Washington, D.C. —A key to understanding Earth’s evolution is to look deep into the lower mantle—a region some 400 to 1,800 miles (660 to 2,900 kilometers) below the surface, just...
Washington, D.C.--A two-person team of Carnegie's Scott Sheppard and Chadwick Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory has discovered a new active asteroid, called 62412, in the Solar System's main...
Washington, D.C.— A new high-resolution mapping strategy has revealed billions of tons of carbon in Peruvian forests that can be preserved as part of an effort to sequester carbon stocks in the...
Stanford, CA—Photosynthesis is probably the most well-known aspect of plant biochemistry. It enables plants, algae, and select bacteria to transform the energy from sunlight during the daytime...
Baltimore, MD—As animals age, their immune systems gradually deteriorate, a process called immunosenescence. It is associated with systemic inflammation and chronic inflammatory disorders, as...
Stanford, CA— Proteins are the machinery that accomplishes almost every task in every cell in every living organism. The instructions for how to build each protein are written into a cell...
Washington, D.C.— Hydrogen—the most abundant element in the cosmos—responds to extremes of pressure and temperature differently. Under ambient conditions hydrogen is a gaseous two-atom molecule. As...
Stanford, CA—When it comes to cellular architecture, function follows form.
Plant cells contain a dynamic cytoskeleton which is responsible for directing cell growth, development, movement, and...
AudioWashington, D.C.—Water was crucial to the rise of life on Earth and is also important to evaluating the possibility of life on other planets. Identifying the original source of Earth’s water is...
Washington, D.C.— A team including Carnegie’s Malcolm Guthrie and George Cody has, for the first time, discovered how to produce ultra-thin "diamond nanothreads" that promise extraordinary properties...
Washington, D.C.— Gallium arsenide, GaAs, a semiconductor composed of gallium and arsenic is well known to have physical properties that promise practical applications. In the form of nanowires and...
AudioWashington, D.C.—New modeling studies from Carnegie’s Alan Boss demonstrate that most of the stars we see were formed when unstable clusters of newly formed protostars broke up. These protostars...
AudioWashington, DC— A team of researchers working on a Carnegie expedition in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef has documented that coral growth rates have plummeted 40 percent since the mid-1970s. The...
AudioPasadena, CA—Quasars are supermassive black holes that live at the center of distant massive galaxies. They shine as the most luminous beacons in the sky across the entire electromagnetic...
Washington, D.C.—A team of scientists led by Carnegie's Jacqueline Faherty has discovered the first evidence of water ice clouds on an object outside of our own Solar System. Water ice clouds exist...
Baltimore, MD--The General Motors Corporation is presenting a $5,000.00 award to Carnegie’s BioEYES K-12 educational program on September 11, 2014, to deliver a two-week environmental curriculum,...
AudioStanford, CA—Sugars are an essential source of energy for microrganisms, animals, and humans. They are produced by plants, which convert energy from sunlight into chemical energy in the form of...
Washington, D.C.—Dr. Matthew P. Scott joins the Carnegie Institution for Science as its 10th president September 1, 2014. Scott was Professor of Developmental Biology, Genetics, Bioengineering, and...
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AudioStanford, CA—Everyone’s heard of the birds and the bees. But that old expression leaves out the flowers that are being fertilized. The fertilization process for flowering plants is particularly...
Wendy Freedman, the Crawford H. Greenewalt Director of the Carnegie Observatories and chair of the Giant Magellan Telescope Organization has accepted a position as a University Professor of Astronomy...
Washington, D.C.—Astronomers have discovered an extremely cool object that could have a particularly diverse history—although it is now as cool as a planet, it may have spent much of its youth as hot...
AudioWashington, D.C.— Molybdenum disulfide is a compound often used in dry lubricants and in petroleum refining. Its semiconducting ability and similarity to the carbon-based graphene makes...
Washington, DC — Scientists unveiled the first high-resolution map of the carbon stocks stored on land throughout the entire country of Perú. The new and improved methodology used to make the map...
Washington, D.C.—Nobel laureate and trustee emeritus Charles Townes is celebrating his 99th birthday on Monday, July 28.
Townes joined the Carnegie board in 1965, one year after he shared the Nobel...
AudioWashington, D.C.—The planet’s soil releases about 60 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year, which is far more than that released by burning fossil fuels. This happens through a...
Washington, DC—Eating meat contributes to climate change, due to greenhouse gasses emitted by livestock. New research finds that livestock emissions are on the rise and that beef cattle are...
AudioPasadena, CA—Something is amiss in the Universe. There appears to be an enormous deficit of ultraviolet light in the cosmic budget.
The vast reaches of empty space between galaxies are bridged...
Washington, D.C.—The Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded Carnegie $10 million over four years for basic research that could lead to the discovery of new energy materials through its program to...
Washington, D.C.-—The American Geophysical Union (AGU) announced on June 30 that Christopher Field will receive the Roger Revelle Medal. Field is director of Carnegie’s Department of Global Ecology....
AudioStanford, CA—Soil is a microscopic maze of nooks and crannies that hosts a wide array of life. Plants explore this environment by developing a complex branched network of roots that tap into...
AudioStanford, CA— A team of researchers studying a flowering plant has zeroed in on the way cells manage external signals about prevailing conditions, a capability that is essential for cells to...
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Washington, D.C.— An international team of astronomers, including five Carnegie scientists, reports the discovery of two new planets orbiting a very old star that is near to our own Sun. One of...
Baltimore, MD— A woman’s supply of eggs is a precious commodity because only a few hundred mature eggs can be produced throughout her lifetime and each must be as free as possible from genetic damage...
Washington, D.C.—Breaking research news from a team of scientists led by Carnegie’s Ho-kwang “Dave” Mao reveals that the composition of the Earth’s lower mantle may be significantly different than...
Pasadena, CA—Wolf-Rayet stars are very large and very hot. Astronomers have long wondered whether Wolf-Rayet stars are the progenitors of certain types of supernovae. New work from the Palomar...
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Pasadena, CA— The structures and star populations of massive galaxies appear to change as they age, but much about how these galaxies formed and evolved remains mysterious. Many of the...
“Matt Scott is the perfect choice to lead the Carnegie Institution for Science. A world-renowned geneticist, his wide-ranging discoveries have illuminated how the body takes shape during embryonic...
“Matt Scott will continue a tradition of strong leadership at the helm of the Carnegie—he is a highly accomplished developmental biologist who also has broad and deep interests in many other areas of...
“Matt Scott will be a visionary leader of the Carnegie Institution at a time when so many extraordinary technological breakthroughs have opened up unprecedented opportunities in science.”
Lucy...
“Matt Scott is a great choice to lead the Carnegie Institution for Science. As a world-class biologist and Chair of Stanford’s Bio-X initiative, Matt has a deep understanding of what leading-edge,...
"Matt Scott transformed Stanford's bioscience research as an inspirational and effective leader of Stanford's interdisciplinary Bio-X Program. The result is a thriving and broad-based research...
"Matt understood our Carnegie. He was excited about the potential of working with us. In parallel, we were thrilled with his ideas, which melded our current state of experience with projected...
Washington, D.C.—By unanimous vote of the Carnegie Board of Trustees, Dr. Matthew P. Scott has been appointed the 10th president of the Carnegie Institution for Science. Dr. Scott is Professor of...
AudioStanford, CA—All living cells are held together by membranes, which provide a barrier to the transport of nutrients. They are also the communication platform connecting the outside world to the...
AudioStanford, CA—Plants spend their entire lifetime rooted to one spot. When faced with a bad situation, such as a swarm of hungry herbivores or a viral outbreak, they have no option to flee but...
Pasadena, CA— New work from a team of scientists including Carnegie’s Josh Simon analyzed the chemical elements in the faintest known galaxy, called Segue 1, and determined that it is effectively a...
Pasadena, CA— Astronomer and instrumentation expert Stephen Shectman of the Carnegie Observatories has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Shectman investigates the large-scale...
Washington, D.C.— Despite overwhelming scientific evidence for the impending dangers of human-made climate change, policy decisions leading to substantial emissions reduction have been slow. New work...
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...
AudioStanford, CA— Photosynthesis provides fixed carbon and energy for nearly all life on Earth, yet many aspects of this fascinating process remain mysterious. For example, little is known about how...
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Stanford, CA—Floods and droughts are increasingly in the news, and climate experts say their frequency will only go up in the future. As such, it is crucial for scientists to learn more about...
Washington, D.C.—The Solar System has a new most-distant member, bringing its outer frontier into focus.
New work from Carnegie's Scott Sheppard and Chadwick Trujillo of the Gemini Observatory...
March 25, 2014--The Kavli Foundation’s board of directors has announced the election of three new board members including Richard A. Meserve, president of the Carnegie Institution for Science,...
Washington, D.C.— Plants convert energy from sunlight into chemical energy during a process called photosynthesis. This energy is passed on to humans and animals that eat the plants, and thus...
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Washington, D.C.—New global imaging and topographic data from MESSENGER* show that the innermost planet has contracted far more than previous estimates. The results are based on a global study...
AudioStanford, CA— Evolution is based on diversity, and sexual reproduction is key to creating a diverse population that secures competitiveness in nature. Plants had to solve a problem: they needed...
AudioPasadena, CA— Some galaxies grew up in a hurry. Most of the galaxies that have been observed from the early days of the universe were young and actively forming stars. Now, an international team...
Washington, D.C.— In many ways, plants act as chemical factories, using energy from sunlight to produce carbon-based energy and taking nutrients from the soil in order to synthesize a wide variety of...
Pasadena, CA–The international consortium of the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) project has passed two major reviews and is positioned to enter the construction phase. When completed, the 25-meter...
AudioStanford, CA— As every gardner knows, nitrogen is crucial for a plant’s growth. But nitrogen absorption is inefficient. This means that on the scale of food crops, adding significant levels of...
YouTubeWashington, D.C.— The pace of global warming over the last century has been about twice as rapid over land than over the oceans and will continue to be more dramatic going forward if emissions...
Washington, D.C.—New research shows that a remarkable defect in synthetic diamond produced by chemical vapor deposition allows researchers to measure, witness, and potentially manipulate electrons in...
Stanford, CA—Carnegie’s Li-Quing Chen, recipient of a Tansley Medal for Excellence in Plant Science, announced late last year, is honored with an editorial and minireview in New Phytologist this...
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Baltimore, MD—Exposure to environmental endocrine disrupters, such as bisphenol A, which mimic estrogen, is associated with adverse health effects. Bisphenol A is commonly found in plastic...
YouTubeBaltimore, MD— As all school-children learn, cells divide using a process called mitosis, which consists of a number of phases during which duplicate copies of the cell's DNA-containing...
Washington, D.C.--Christopher Field, the founding director of Carnegie’s Department of Global Ecology and co-chair of the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC), Working...
Washington, D.C.—Table salt, sodium chloride, is one of the first chemical compounds that schoolchildren learn. Standard chemistry textbooks say that sodium and chlorine have very different...
AudioWashington, D.C.— Forest conservation is an issue of major concern to communities large and small around the globe. But gathering the monitoring data needed to make the right decisions has...
Pasadena, CA— Astronomers, including Carnegie’s Yuri Beletsky, took precise measurements of the closest pair of failed stars to the Sun, which suggest that the system harbors a third, planetary-mass...
AudioBaltimore, MD— One classical question in developmental biology is how different tissue types arise in the correct position of the developing embryo. While one signaling pathway that controls...
AudioBaltimore, MD—In researching neural pathways, it helps to establish an analogous relationship between a region of the human brain and the brains of more-easily studied animal species. New work...
Washington, D.C.—The Carnegie Institution for Science received the highest rating for sound fiscal management and commitment to accountability and transparency—four stars—from Charity Navigator for...
Holiday Leaves -- Image credit: Bi-Huei Hou, Carnegie Institution for Science, Department of Plant Biology
This image was selected as our holiday card for 2013. The “Holiday Leaves”...
Washington, D.C.— Government calculations of total U.S. methane emissions may underestimate the true values by 50 percent, a new study finds. The results are published the week of November 25 in the...
Washington, D.C.— Life originated as a result of natural processes that exploited early Earth’s raw materials. Scientific models of life’s origins almost always look to minerals for such essential...
AudioWashington, D.C.— Around 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period, there was a mass extinction so severe that it remains the most traumatic known species die-off in Earth’s...
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...
AudioStanford, CA—Inside every plant cell, a cytoskeleton provides an interior scaffolding to direct construction of the cell’s walls, and thus the growth of the organism as a whole. Environmental...
Washington, DC—For the first time, researchers have been able to map the true extent of gold mining in the biologically diverse region of Madre De Dios in the Peruvian Amazon. The team combined field...
Pasadena, CA—A team of researchers including Carnegie’s Mansi Kasliwal and John Mulchaey used a novel astronomical survey software system—the intermediate Palomar Transient Factory (iPTF)—to link a...
Washington, D.C.— A new planet-hunting survey has revealed planetary candidates with orbital periods as short as four hours and so close to their host stars that they are nearly skimming the stellar...
Washington, D.C.— A great deal of research has focused on the amount of global warming resulting from increased greenhouse gas concentrations. But there has been relatively little study of the pace...
Washington, D.C.—Hydrocarbons from the Earth make up the oil and gas that heat our homes and fuel our cars. The study of the various phases of molecules formed from carbon and hydrogen under high...
Washington, D.C.— Postdoctoral fellow, Rubén Rellán-Álvarez at the Department of Plant Biology has been awarded the prestigious Marschner Young Scientist Award by the International Plant Nutrition...
Stanford, CA— Coral reefs are tremendously important for ocean biodiversity, as well as for the economic and aesthetic value they provide to their surrounding communities. Unfortunately they have...
Washington, D.C. --The Arabidopsis Information Resource (TAIR), a database of genetic and molecular biology data for the laboratory plant Arabidopsis thaliana, is one of the most widely used plant...
Baltimore, MD--Cells in the body wear down over time and die. In many organs, like the small intestine, adult stem cells play a vital role in maintaining function by replacing old cells with new ones...
Pasadena, CA— A team of astronomers from three institutions has developed a new type of telescope camera that makes higher resolution images than ever before, the culmination of 20 years of...
Washington, D.C—The key to understanding Earth’s evolution is to look at how heat is conducted in the deep lower mantle—a region some 400 to 1,800 miles (660 to 2,900 kilometers) below the surface....
Washington, DC—Researchers reviewed the likelihood of continued changes to the terrestrial climate, including an analysis of a collection of 27 climate models. If emissions of heat-trapping gases...
Washington, D.C.— Hydrogen is deceptively simple. It has only a single electron per atom, but it powers the sun and forms the majority of the observed universe. As such, it is naturally exposed to...
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...
Watch the Carnegie Airborne Observatory make the world's highest resolution carbon map of a country (Panama) in less than one minut
Washington, DC—A team of researchers has for the first time mapped...
Washington, D.C—Carnegie geochemist Richard Carlson has been awarded the prestigious Arthur L. Day Medal from the Geological Society of America (GSA) for “outstanding distinction in contributing to...
Washington, DC—A study published in the July 17, issue of the journal PLOS ONE found that more than 80% of tropical forests in Malaysian Borneo have been heavily impacted by logging.
The Malaysian...
AudioBaltimore, MD—Proper tissue function and regeneration is supported by stem cells, which reside in so-called niches. New work from Carnegie’s Yixian Zheng and Haiyang Chen identifies an important...
Washington, D.C.--Christopher Field, the founding director of Carnegie’s Department of Global Ecology has been awarded one of Germany’s most prestigious prizes, the Max Planck Research Prize with...
Stanford, CA—Transport proteins are responsible for moving materials such as nutrients and metabolic products through a cell’s outer membrane, which seals and protects all living cells, to the cell’s...
Washington, D.C.—Superconductivity is a rare physical state in which matter is able to conduct electricity—maintain a flow of electrons—without any resistance. This phenomenon can only be found in...
Washington, D.C.—To prevent coral reefs around the world from dying off, deep cuts in carbon dioxide emissions are required, says a new study from Carnegie’s Katharine Ricke and Ken Caldeira. They...
Washington, D.C.—A team of astronomers, including Carnegie’s Paul Butler, has combined new observations with existing data to reveal a solar system packed full of planets. The star Gliese 667C is...
Stanford, CA—Cereals are grasses that produce grains, the bulk of our food supply. Carnegie’s Plant Biology Department is releasing genome-wide metabolic complements of several cereals including rice...
Washington, D.C.—Although many many planets have been discovered around other stars, reseaerchers so far have not found any solar systems like ours. In fact recently, a team of researchers has...
Washington, D.C.—Using revolutionary new techniques, a team led by Carnegie’s Malcolm Guthrie has made a striking discovery about how ice behaves under pressure, changing ideas that date back almost...
Images of the Carnegie Rupes:http://carnegiescience.edu/prmessengercarnegierubesaforwebjpghttp://carnegiescience.edu/prmessengercarnegierupespicturebforwebjpg
Washington, D.C.—The International...
Washington, D.C.—The Carnegie Academy for Science Education (CASE) was awarded a grant to run two special career exploration programs for students who attend public schools in the District of...
Washington, D.C.—Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. The way it responds under extreme pressures and temperatures is crucial to our understanding of matter and the nature of...
Washington, D.C.--Christopher Field, the founding director of Carnegie’s Department of Global Ecology, has been elected to the Harvard Board of Overseers. Field, who received his bachelors in biology...
Washington, D.C.—President of the Carnegie Institution, Richard A. Meserve, was awarded the 2013 Henry DeWolf Smyth Nuclear Statesman Award by the American Nuclear Society (ANS) and the Nuclear...
Washington, D.C.— Water is perhaps the most important molecule in our solar system. Figuring out where it came from and how it was distributed within and among the planets can help scientists...
Washington, D.C.— Lyman Thomas Aldrich, 95, who worked as a geophysicist and geochemist at the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism (DTM) for 34 years, including a...
Stanford, CA— An international team of 12 leading plant biologists, including Carnegie’s Wolf Frommer, say their discoveries could have profound implications for increasing the supply of food and...
Washington, D.C.—Carnegie staff scientist Greg Asner has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences. He is one of 84 new members and 21 foreign associates from 14 countries elected “in...
Baltimore, MD—Mammalian females ovulate periodically over their reproductive lifetimes, placing significant demands on their ovaries for egg production. Whether mammals generate new eggs in adulthood...
Washington, D.C.—Forecasting volcanic eruptions with success is heavily dependent on recognizing well-established patterns of pre-eruption unrest in the monitoring data. But in order to develop...
Washington, D.C.— Scientists have long believed that lava erupted from certain oceanic volcanoes contains materials from the early Earth’s crust. But decisive evidence for this phenomenon has proven...
Pasadena, CA— Blazars are the brightest of active galactic nuclei, and many emit very high-energy gamma rays. New observations of a blazar known as PKS 1424+240 show that it is the most-distant known...
Washington, D.C.—A team of scientists, including Carnegie’s Alan Boss, has discovered two Earth-like planets in the habitable orbit of a Sun-like star. Their work is published in Science Express.
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Baltimore, MD— Eggs take a long time to produce in the ovary, and thus are one of a body’s precious resources. It has been theorized that the body has mechanisms to help the ovary ensure that...
Baltimore, MD--Recent research shows that natural experiences in childhood boost creativity, stimulate learning, and improve behavior and health. Carnegie’s BioEYES educational program, in...
Washington, D.C.— A team of researchers has made a major breakthrough in measuring the structure of nanomaterials under extremely high pressures. For the first time, they developed a way to get...
Washington, D.C.— Carnegie scientists have found that the plant species making up an ecosystem are better predictors of ecosystem chemistry than environmental conditions such as terrain, geology, or...
Washington, D.C.—A research team, led by Carnegie’s Anna Michalak, has determined that the 2011 record-breaking algal bloom in Lake Erie was triggered by long-term agricultural practices coupled with...
Pasadena, CA— Supernovae were always thought to occur in two main varieties. But a team of astronomers including Carnegie’s Wendy Freedman, Mark Phillips and Eric Persson is reporting the discovery...
Washington, D.C.— It has long been believed that male lions are dependent on females when it comes to hunting. But new evidence suggests that male lions are, in fact, very successful hunters in their...
Valdivia, Chile, and Washington, D.C.—Cancer cells break down sugars and produce the metabolic acid lactate at a much higher rate than normal cells. This phenomenon provides a telltale sign that...
Pasadena, CA — Using information gathered from several telescopes, a team of astronomers, including Carnegie’s Eric Murphy, searched the sky for very rarely seen dusty starburst galaxies, formed soon...
Pasadena, CA—For only the second time in history, a team of scientists--including Carnegie's Michele Fumagalli--have discovered an extremely rare triple quasar system. Their work is published by...
Pasadena, CA— A team of astronomers including Carnegie’s Ian Thompson have managed to improve the measurement of the distance to our nearest neighbor galaxy and, in the process, refine an...
Washington, D.C.—New theoretical modeling by Carnegie’s Alan Boss provides clues to how the gas giant planets in our solar system—Jupiter and Saturn—might have formed and evolved. His work was...
Washington, D.C.— Mineral evolution is a new way to look at our planet’s history. It’s the study of the increasing diversity and characteristics of Earth’s near-surface minerals, from the dozen that...
Washington, D.C.—Solar geoengineering is a proposed approach to reduce the effects of climate change due to greenhouse gasses by deflecting some of the sun’s incoming radiation. This type of proposed...
Washington, D.C.—Solar geoengineering is a proposed approach to reduce the effects of climate change due to greenhouse gasses by deflecting some of the sun’s incoming radiation. This type...
Washington, DC—A team of scientists, led by researchers at Carnegie’s Department of Global Ecology, has determined that the recent widespread die-off of Colorado trembling aspen trees is a direct...
Pasadena, CA—Type II supernovae are formed when massive stars collapse, initiating giant explosions. It is thought that stars emit a burst of mass as a precursor to the supernova explosion. If...
Washington, D.C. —Until now it has not been clear how salt, a scourge to agriculture, halts the growth of the plant-root system. A team of researchers, led by the Carnegie Institution’s José Dinneny...
Washington, D.C.— Researchers still have much to learn about the volcanism that shaped our planet’s early history. New evidence from a team led by Carnegie’s Frances Jenner demonstrates that some of...
Washington, D.C.—Richard A. Meserve, the president of the Carnegie Institution, has been invited to be an “international adviser” to the Japanese Nuclear Regulatory Authority (JNRA). As a result of...
Washington, D.C.— In 2004 a very popular study aimed to address climate change by deploying wedges of different existing energy technologies or approaches. According to the study by Robert Socolow...
Washington, D.C.—After extensive analyses by a team of scientists led by Carl Agee at the University of New Mexico, researchers have identified a new class of Martian meteorite that likely originated...
Washington, D.C.— An international team of scientists, including Carnegie’s Paul Butler, has discovered that Tau Ceti, one of the closest and most Sun-like stars, may have five planets. Their work is...
Washington, D.C. — When materials are stressed, they eventually change shape. Initially these changes are elastic, and reverse when the stress is relieved. When the material’s strength is exceeded,...
Clathrate Snowflake -- Image credit: Timothy Strobel, Carnegie Institution for Science, Geophysical Laboratory
This image was selected as our holiday card for 2012. The snowflake is based on a new...
Washington, D.C.—The Carnegie Institution for Science received the highest rating for sound fiscal management and commitment to accountability and transparency—four stars—from Charity Navigator for...
San Francisco, CA —Researchers from the Carnegie Institution are rolling out results from the new Airborne Taxonomic Mapping System, or AToMS, for the first time at the American Geophysical Union (...
Stanford, CA — Plants grow upward from a tip of undifferentiated tissue called the shoot apical meristem. As the tip extends, stem cells at the center of the meristem divide and increase in numbers....
Washington, D.C. — Oceanic crust covers two-thirds of the Earth’s solid surface, but scientists still don’t entirely understand the process by which it is made. Analysis of more than 600 samples of...
Washington, D.C.— The mantles of Earth and other rocky planets are rich in magnesium and oxygen. Due to its simplicity, the mineral magnesium oxide is a good model for studying the nature of...
Washington, DC — A team of scientists, including Carnegie's Conel Alexander and Jianhua Wang, studied the hydrogen in water from the Martian interior and found that Mars formed from similar building...
Pasadena, CA— A team of astronomers including Carnegie’s Daniel Kelson have set a new distance record for finding the farthest galaxy yet seen in the universe. By combining the power of NASA's Hubble...
Washington, D.C.—Astronomers have discovered a new super-Earth in the habitable zone, where liquid water and a stable atmosphere could reside, around the nearby star HD 40307. It is one of three new...
Link for image and caption http://carnegiescience.edu/prcohenelectrotcpic101612
Washington, D.C.--Researchers at the Carnegie Institution have discovered a new efficient way to pump heat using...
Washington, DC—The Carnegie Institution announced today that it is a grant recipient of the Grand Challenges Explorations initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Wolf B. Frommer...
Baltimore, MD— The ability of embryonic stem cells to differentiate into different types of cells with different functions is regulated and maintained by a complex series of chemical interactions,...
Washington, D.C.--Scientists with the Giant Magellan Telescope Organization have completed the most challenging large astronomical mirror ever made. The mirror will be part of the 25-meter Giant...
Washington, D.C.— Solar radiation management is a type of geoengineering that would manipulate the climate in order to reduce the impact of global warming caused by greenhouse gasses. Ideas include...
Washington, D.C.—The Carnegie Institution for Science and the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS) have been granted United States Patent 8,283,329, entitled, “Genetic inhibition of...
Pasadena, CA— A team of astronomers, led by Wendy Freedman, director of the Carnegie Observatories, have used NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope to make one of the most accurate and precise measurement...
Pasadena, CA— With the combined power of NASA's Spitzer and Hubble Space Telescopes, as well as a cosmic magnification effect, a team of astronomers, including Carnegie’s Daniel Kelson, have spotted...
Baltimore, MD —You may think you have dinner all to yourself, but you’re actually sharing it with a vast community of microbes waiting within your digestive tract. A new study from a team including...
Washington, D.C.— Over the past two decades, extensive forest death triggered by hot and dry climatic conditions has been documented on every continent except Antarctica. Forest mortality due to...
Washington, D.C.— There is enough energy available in winds to meet all of the world’s demand. Airbourne wind turbines that convert steadier and faster high-altitude winds into energy could generate...
Baltimore, MD—Director Emeritus Donald Brown, of Carnegie’s Department of Embryology, receives the prestigious 2012 Lasker-Koshland Special Achievement Award in Medical Science “For exceptional...
Washington, D.C.—Carnegie scientists are the first to discover the conditions under which nickel oxide can turn into an electricity-conducting metal. Nickel oxide is one of the first compounds to be...
Washington, D.C. — A team of scientists led by Carnegie’s Lin Wang has observed a new form of very hard carbon clusters, which are unusual in their mix of crystalline and disordered structure. The...
Baltimore, MD — The study of muscular system protein myostatin has been of great interest to researchers as a potential therapeutic target for people with muscular disorders. Although much is known...
Washington, D.C. – For years, scientists have debated how big a role elephants play in toppling trees in South African savannas. Tree loss is a natural process, but it is increasing in some regions,...
Washington, D.C.—Type Ia supernovae are violent stellar explosions. Observations of their brightness are used to determine distances in the universe and have shown scientists that the universe is...
Washington, D.C. — For decades it has been thought that a shock wave from a supernova explosion triggered the formation of our Solar System. According to this theory, the shock wave also injected...
Washington, D.C.—Using new, highly efficient techniques, Carnegie and Colombian scientists have developed accurate high-resolution maps of the carbon stocks locked in tropical vegetation for 40% of...
Washington, D.C.— Comets and asteroids preserve the building blocks of our Solar System and should help explain its origin. But there are unsolved puzzles. For example, how did icy comets obtain...
Washington, D.C. — In order to understand Earth's earliest history--its formation from Solar System material into the present-day layering of metal core and mantle, and crust--scientists look to...
Stanford, CA —Light is not only the source of a plant’s energy, but also an environmental signal that instructs the growth behavior of plants. As a result, a plant’s sensitivity to light is of great...
Washington, DC —Scientists have long believed that comets and, or a type of very primitive meteorite called carbonaceous chondrites were the sources of early Earth's volatile elements—which include...
Washington, D.C.— When evaluating the historic contributions made by different countries to the greenhouse gasses found in Earth’s atmosphere, calculations generally go back no further than the year...
Baltimore, MD — In mammals, most lipids (such as fatty acids and cholesterol) are absorbed into the body via the small intestine. The complexity of the cells and fluids that inhabit this organ make...
Washington, D.C.—Although there have been about 800 extra-solar planets discovered so far in our galaxy, the precise masses of the majority of them are still unknown, as the most-common planet-...
Washington, D.C. — Mineral evolution posits that Earth’s near-surface mineral diversity gradually increased through an array of chemical and biological processes. A dozen different species in...
Washington, D.C.—Until now, Earth was the only planet known to have vast reservoirs of water in its interior. Scientists analyzed the water content of two Martian meteorites originating from inside...
Stanford, CA—The scientific community needs to make a 10-year, $100 billion investment in food and energy security, says Carnegie’s Wolf Frommer and Tom Brutnell of the Donald Danforth Plant Science...
Washington, D.C. — One idea for fighting global warming is to increase the amount of aerosols in the atmosphere, scattering incoming solar energy away from the Earth’s surface. But scientists...
Washington, DC — Molecules containing large chains of carbon and hydrogen--the building blocks of all life on Earth--have been the targets of missions to Mars from Viking to the present day. While...
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For Release:May 22, 2012Richard Meserve Receives Nuclear Energy Industry's Leadership Award
CHARLOTTE, N.C.—Carnegie Institution...
Washington, D.C. Carnegie’s Larry Nittler of Carnegie’s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism has been appointed deputy principal investigator of the MESSENGER mission to Mercury. Principal...
Washington, D.C.— In the search for Earth-like planets, it is helpful to look for clues and patterns that can help scientist narrow down the types of systems where potentially habitable planets are...
Pasadena, CA—Type Ia supernovae are important stellar phenomena, used to measure the expansion of the universe. But astronomers know embarrassingly little about the stars they come from and how the...
Baltimore, MD — Insect glands are responsible for producing a host of secretions that allow bees to sting and ants to lay down trails to and from their nests. New research from Carnegie scientists...
Washington, D.C—Geochemist Richard Carlson of Carnegie’s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism has been elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). He is among 84 new members and 21...
Pasadena, CA—The Big Bang produced lots of hydrogen and helium and a smidgen of lithium. All heavier elements found on the periodic table have been produced by stars over the last 13.7 billion years...
Washington, D.C.— Carnegie Institution for Science president Richard A. Meserve has been elected president of the Harvard Board of Overseers for 2012-2013. The Overseers provide advice and approvals...
Washington, D.C. — How hydrogen--the most abundant element in the cosmos--responds to extremes of pressure and temperature is one of the major challenges in modern physical science. Moreover,...
Pasadena, CA – The board of directors of the Giant Magellan Telescope Organization (GMTO) has informed the National Science Foundation (NSF) that they will not participate in an upcoming funding...
Stanford, CA — The Plant Metabolic Network (http://www.plantcyc.org/), which is based at Carnegie’s Department of Plant Biology, has launched four new online databases that offer an unprecedented...
Washington, D.C.—Carnegie staff scientist Greg Asner has been selected as one of 22 experts to serve the U.S. government as part of the Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas (ECPA) through...
On Friday, March 23, the first blast (Big Bang Event) occurred at Las Campanas Peak in Chile, at high noon US Eastern Daylight Time. It marked the beginning of mountain leveling and site preparation...
Pasadena, CA--Astronomers have begun to blast 3 million cubic feet of rock from a mountaintop in the Chilean Andes to make room for what will be the world’s largest telescope when completed near the...
Washington, D.C. — Scientists have long speculated about why there is a large change in the strength of rocks that lie at the boundary between two layers immediately under Earth’s crust: the...
Washington, D.C.—On March 17, the tiny MESSENGER spacecraft completed its primary mission to orbit and observe the planet Mercury for one Earth-year. The bounty of surprises from the mission has...
Washington, D.C.—The Carnegie Institution for Science received the highest rating for sound fiscal management—four stars—from Charity Navigator for the eleventh consecutive year. Only eight...
Pasadena, CA--A team of astronomers has discovered the most distant cluster of red galaxies ever observed using FourStar, a new and powerful near-infrared camera on the 6.5m Magellan Baade Telescope...
Washington, D.C. — Plant science is key to addressing the major challenges facing humanity in the 21st Century, according to Carnegie’s David Ehrhardt and Wolf Frommer. In a Perspective published in...
Washington, D.C. — The Carnegie Institution for Science today announced that the complete archive of the Carnegie Year Book--the annual report of scientific research, published continuously since...
Washington, D.C.— Seawater circulation pumps hydrogen and boron into the oceanic plates that make up the seafloor, and some of this seawater remains trapped as the plates descend into the mantle at...
Stanford, CA—The major difference between plant and animal cells is the photosynthetic process, which converts light energy into chemical energy. When light isn’t available, energy is generated by...
Washington, D.C. — Superconductivity is a rare physical state in which matter is able to conduct electricity—maintain a flow of electrons—without any resistance. This phenomenon can only be found in...
Stanford, CA— Along with photosynthesis, the plant cell wall is one of the features that most set plants apart from animals. A structural molecule called cellulose is necessary for the manufacture of...
Washington, D.C.— Could replacing coal-fired electricity plants with generators fueled by natural gas bring global warming to a halt in this century? What about rapid construction of massive numbers...
Pasadena, CA— Eta Carinae, one of the most massive stars in our Milky Way galaxy, unexpectedly increased in brightness in the 19th century. For ten years in the mid-1800s it was the second-brightest...
Washington, D.C.—By combining airborne laser technology, satellite mapping, and ground-based plot surveys, a team of researchers has produced the first large-scale, high-resolution estimates of...
Washington, D.C.—The Federation of American Scientists presented Richard A. Meserve, the Carnegie Institution president, with the inaugural 2011 Richard L. Garwin Award on February 8, for “his...
Stanford, CA— Plant's leaves are sealed with a gas-tight wax layer to prevent water loss. Plants breathe through microscopic pores called stomata (Greek for mouths) on the surfaces of leaves. Over 40...
Washington, D.C.— An international team of scientists led by Carnegie’s Guillem Anglada-Escudé and Paul Butler has discovered a potentially habitable super-Earth orbiting a nearby star. The star is a...
Washington, D.C. — Carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of coal, oil, and gas have been increasing over the past decades, causing the Earth to get hotter and hotter. There are concerns that a...
Baltimore, MD—Carnegie’s educational outreach program, BioEYES, will be the recipient of the 2012 Viktor Hamburger Outstanding Educator Prize from the Society for Developmental Biology. BioEYES...
Washington, D.C.—On January 14, 2012, the second 8.4-meter (27.6 ft) diameter mirror for the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) will be cast inside a rotating furnace at the University of Arizona’s...
Washington, D.C. — Around 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian geologic period, there was a mass extinction so severe that it remains the most traumatic known species die-off in Earth’s...
Carnegie Institution for Science president Richard A. Meserve was elected a Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He was elected in the section covering the fields of radiation safety,...
Washington, D.C. — Coral reefs are extremely diverse ecosystems that support enormous biodiversity. But they are at risk. Carbon dioxide emissions are acidifying the ocean, threatening reefs and...
Stanford, CA— Plant roots are fascinating plant organs – they not only anchor the plant, but are also the world’s most efficient mining companies. Roots live in darkness and direct the activities of...
Washington, D.C.—The crushing pressures and intense temperatures in Earth’s deep interior squeeze atoms and electrons so closely together that they interact very differently. With depth materials...
Pasadena, CA— A team of scientists, including Carnegie’s Mansi M. Kasliwal, has observed the early stages of a Type Ia supernova that is only 21 million light years away from Earth--the closest of...
Stanford, CA— Over the past 10 years, the death of forest trees due to drought and increased temperatures has been documented on all continents except Antarctica. This can in turn drive global...
Palo Alto, CA — Food prices are soaring at the same time as the Earth’s population is nearing 9 billion. As a result the need for increased crop yields is extremely important. New research led by...
Washington, D.C. — NASA’s Kepler Mission has discovered the first super-Earth orbiting in the habitable zone of a star similar to the Sun. A team of researchers, including Carnegie’s Alan Boss, has...
Baltimore, MD — Scientists have long held theories about the importance of proteins called B-type lamins in the process of embryonic stem cells replicating and differentiating into different...
Washington, D.C. — The composition of the Earth’s core remains a mystery. Scientists know that the liquid outer core consists mainly of iron, but it is believed that small amounts of some other...
Palo Alto, CA--The four largest nonprofit plant science research institutions in the U.S. have joined forces to form the Association of Independent Plant Research Institutes (AIPI) in an effort to...
Baltimore, MD—Carnegie’s educational outreach program, BioEYES, has joined forces with General Motors (GM), and Earth Force to take Walter P. Carter Elementary/Middle School students on a knee-deep...
Palo Alto, CA—U.S. scientists have developed a new, integrated, ten-year science plan to better understand the details of Earth’s carbon cycle and people’s role in it. Understanding the carbon cycle...
Pasadena, CA-Join a discussion with leading astronomers about how one of the world’s largest telescopes, the Giant Magellan Telescope, will help solve some of the most vexing problems in astronomy...
Washington, DC — Solar radiation management is a class of theoretical concepts for manipulating the climate in order to reduce the risks of global warming caused by greenhouse gasses. But its...
Washington, D.C. — It is difficult to measure accurately each nation’s contribution of carbon dioxide to the Earth’s atmosphere. Carbon is extracted out of the ground as coal, gas, and oil, and these...
Washington, D.C. — Carbon is the fourth-most-abundant element in the universe and takes on a wide variety of forms, called allotropes, including diamond and graphite. Scientists at Carnegie’s...
Baltimore, MD—Staff associate Christoph Lepper, at Carnegie’s Department of Embryology, is one of 10 recipients of the NIH Director’s Early Independence Awards. This is the first year of the awards....
WASHINGTON, D.C.– The world's largest celebration of science and engineering, the USA Science & Engineering Festival, will return to Washington, D.C., April 27-29, 2012. For the second year, the...
Washington, D.C.—Only six months into its Mercury orbit, the tiny MESSENGER spacecraft has shown scientists that Mercury doesn’t conform to theory. Its surface material composition differs in...
Washington, D.C. — A planet with two suns may be a familiar sight to fans of the Star Wars film series, but not, until now, to scientists. A team of researchers, including Carnegie’s Alan Boss, has...
Washington, D.C.—Scientists have speculated for some time that the Earth’s carbon cycle extends deep into the planet’s interior, but until now there has been no direct evidence. The mantle–Earth’s...
Washington, D.C.—Carnegie’s Geophysical Laboratory’s newest staff member, Timothy Strobel, will be given the prestigious Jamieson Award on September 26, 2011, from the International Association for...
Video of Julia Pongratz speaking about the cooling influence of evaporation
Video of Ken Caldeira asking: increased evaporation lead to global cooling?
Washington, DC — Scientists have long...
Baltimore, MD— The human genome shares several peculiarities with the DNA of just about every other plant and animal. Our genetic blueprint contains numerous entities known as transposons, or “...
Pasadena, CA— A team of scientists, led by Michael Rauch from the Carnegie Observatories, has discovered a distant galaxy that may help elucidate two fundamental questions of galaxy formation: How...
Palo Alto, CA—Plant biologists have been working for years to nail down the series of chemical signals that one class of plant hormones, called brassinosteroids, send from a protein on the surface of...
Washington, DC— Earth’s Moon could be younger than previously thought, according to new research from a team that includes Carnegie’s Richard Carlson and former-Carnegie fellow Maud Boyet. Their work...
Pasadena, CA— Type Ia supernovae are violent stellar explosions whose brightness is used to determine distances in the universe. Observing these objects to billions of light years away has led to the...
Washington, D.C.—Meteorites hold a record of the chemicals that existed in the early Solar System and that may have been a crucial source of the organic compounds that gave rise to life on Earth....
Baltimore, MD — New research from a team including several Carnegie scientists demonstrates that a specific small segment of RNA could play a key role in the growth of a type of malignant childhood...
Washington, D.C.—Geological history has periodically featured giant lava eruptions that coat large swaths of land or ocean floor with basaltic lava, which hardens into rock formations called flood...
Palo Alto, CA—Decisions by farmers to plant on productive land with little snow enhances the potential for reforestation to counteract global warming, concludes new research from Carnegie’s Julia...
Pasadena, CA— Water really is everywhere. A team of astronomers have found the largest and farthest reservoir of water ever detected in the universe—discovered in the central regions of a distant...
Washington, D.C.—Jewelers abhor diamond impurities, but they are a bonanza for scientists. Safely encased in the super-hard diamond, impurities are unaltered, ancient minerals that can tell the story...
Washington, D.C.—Glasses differ from crystals. Crystals are organized in repeating patterns that extend in every direction. Glasses lack this strict organization, but do sometimes demonstrate order...
Washington, D.C.--On March 18, 2011, the MESSENGER spacecraft entered orbit around Mercury to become that planet’s first orbiter. The spacecraft’s instruments are making a complete reconnaissance of...
Palo Alto, CA— Although scientists have been able to sequence the genomes of many organisms, they still lack a context for associating the proteins encoded in genes with specific biological processes...
Washington, DC— Carbonaceous chondrites are a type of organic-rich meteorite that contain samples of the materials that took part in the creation of our planets nearly 4.6 billion years ago,...
Washington, D.C.—The Moon has much more water than previously thought, a team of scientists led by Carnegie’s Erik Hauri has discovered. Their research, published May 26 in Science Express, shows...
Carnegie president Richard Meserve has been elected to a three-year term as councillor of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) beginning July 1, 2011. The academy, founded in 1964, is a private...
Pasadena, CA- George P. Mitchell, founder of Mitchell Energy & Development Corp. and The Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation, has committed an unprecedented $25-million gift to the Giant...
Washington, DC— Scientists have long debated about the origin of carbon in Earth’s oldest sedimentary rocks and how it might signal the remnants of the earliest forms of life on the planet. New...
Palo Alto, CA— Accurately calculating the amount of carbon dioxide emitted in the process of producing and bringing products to our doorsteps is nearly impossible, but still a worthwhile effort, two...
Washington, D.C. The credit-rating agency Standard & Poor’s (S&P) has reaffirmed the Carnegie Institution for Science’s AA+ long-term rating and stable outlook. It is the second highest...
Washington, D.C.—Paul Butler of Carnegie’s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism (DTM) has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for his discovery of more than half of the known...
Palo Alto, CA—Brazilians are world leaders in using biofuels for gasoline. About A quarter of their automobile fuel consumption comes from sugarcane, which significantly reduces carbon dioxide...
Palo Alto, CA—Scientists have known for decades that black carbon aerosols add to global warming. These airborne particles made of sooty carbon are believed to be among the largest man-made...
Washington, D.C. — Although its name may make many people think of flowers, the element germanium is part of a frequently studied group of elements, called IVa, which could have applications for next...
Washington, D.C.–On Monday, April 4, 2011, Tufts University School of Engineering presented Richard A. Meserve, president of the Carnegie Institution and a Tufts University alumnus, the first...
Washington, D.C.—Formaldehyde, a poison and a common molecule throughout the universe, is likely the source of the solar system’s organic carbon solids—abundant in both comets and asteroids....
Washington, D.C.—Recent climate modeling has shown that reducing the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would give the Earth a wetter climate in the short term. New research from...
Washington, D.C.— In the 1950s, biochemist Stanley Miller performed a series of experiments to demonstrate that organic compounds could be created under conditions mimicking the primordial Earth....
Washington, D.C.—The U.S. Patent & Trademark Office has issued a patent to the Carnegie Institution for a method of creating high quality diamond crystals larger than 10 carats.
Patent number 7,...
The MESSENGER spacecraft has captured the first portrait of our Solar System from the inside looking out. Comprised of 34 images, the mosaic provides a complement to the Solar System portrait – that...
Washington, D.C.—Chemical compounds called manganites have been studied for many years since the discovery of colossal magnetoresistance, a property that promises important applications in the fields...
The Global Ecology team recently completed the airborne phase of a new project to map 35 million acres of tropical forest in the Colombian Amazon. The project seeks to quantify the carbon composition...
Washington, D.C.—Surprising new research shows that, contrary to conventional belief, remains of chitin-protein complex—structural materials containing protein and polysaccharide—are present in...
In the 1950s, biochemist Stanley Miller performed a series of experiments to demonstrate that organic compounds could be created under conditions mimicking the primordial Earth. Some unused samples...
Pasadena, CA— Astronomers have pushed NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to it limits by finding what they believe to be the most distant object ever seen in the universe—at a distance of 13.2 billion...
Palo Alto, CA— Plant biologists have discovered the last major element of the series of chemical signals that one class of plant hormones, called brassinosteroids, send from a protein on the surface...
Video Press Release
Stanford, CA— Genghis Khan and his Mongol hordes had an impact on the global carbon cycle as big as today’s annual demand for gasoline. The Black Death, on the other hand, came...
Washington, D.C.—Carnegie Observatories director Wendy Freedman has been selected as an AAAS Fellow by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The announcement will appear Jan. 11 on...
Video Press ReleaseWashington, D.C. — Sophisticated tools allow scientists to subject the basic elements of matter to conditions drastic enough to modify their behavior. By doing this, they can...
Video Press ReleaseWashington, D.C.—Scientists from all over the world are taking a second, more expansive, look at the car-sized asteroid that exploded over Sudan's Nubian Desert in 2008. Initial...
Palo Alto, CA— Plants are very sensitive to light conditions because light is their source of energy and also a signal that activates the special photoreceptors that regulate growth, metabolism, and...
Palo Alto, CA— Infestation by bacteria and other pathogens result in global crop losses of over $500 billion annually. A research team led by the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Plant Biology...
Pasadena, CA— Allan R. Sandage, Edwin Hubble’s former observing assistant and one of the most prominent astronomers of the last century, died November 13, 2010, at home in San Gabriel, California, of...
Palo Alto, CA— Scientists have known for some time how important plant steroids called brassinosteroids are for regulating plant growth and development. But until now, they did not know how extensive...
Washington, D.C.—Carnegie biogeochemist Marilyn Fogel, developmental biologist Marnie Halpern, and astronomer Stella Kafka were selected from over 500 applicants to be USA Science & Engineering...
Argonne, ILL—For the first time scientists have been able to watch nanoparticles grow from the earliest stages of their formation. Nanoparticles are the foundation of nanotechnology and their...
Palo Alto, CA— Director Emeritus of Carnegie’s Department of Plant Biology, Winslow Briggs,has been elected an Einstein Professor by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). The professorship program...
LINK TO MOVIES
http://deepgreen.stanford.edu/cell%20imaging%20site%20/html/microtubules.htmlPalo Alto, CA— Researchers at the Carnegie Institution for Science, with colleagues at the Nara Institute...
Palo Alto, CA—Geologists have found evidence that some 55 million years ago a river as big as the modern Colorado flowed through Arizona into Utah in the opposite direction from the present-day river...
Washington, D.C. Astronomers have found a new, potentially habitable Earth-sized planet. It is one of two new planets discovered around the star Gliese 581, some 20 light years away. The planet,...
Washington, D.C—The Carnegie Institution for Science posted an 11% return on its investments for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2010. As of today, the institution’s endowment stands at approximately...
High rez image http://carnegiescience.edu/climate_model_results_relative_lowco2_climate
Palo Alto, CA—Scientists at the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology have taken a new approach...
Access to the study available through the Steve Davis site
Stanford, CA— Scientists have warned that avoiding dangerous climate change this century will require steep cuts in carbon dioxide...
Palo Alto, CA- Mediante la integración de mapeo satélital, tecnología láser aerotransportada, y estudios a nivel de parcelas, los científicos de la Institución Carnegie Departamento de Ecología de...
Palo Alto, CA—Using sophisticated airborne imaging and structural analysis, scientists at the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology mapped more than 40,000 termite mounds over 192...
Baltimore, MD—The innovative, educational, outreach program BioEYES has now been adopted by Monash University and the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute. The down-under partnership program...
With VideoWashington, D.C.—Superconductors can carry electricity without resistance, so they are more efficient than copper wires. However, to attain the superconducting state, these materials have...
Image Link http://www.dtm.ciw.edu/users/sheppard/L5trojan/Washington, D.C.—There are places in space where the gravitational tug between a planet and the Sun balance out, allowing other smaller...
Scientists have discovered a new window into the Earth's violent past. Geochemical evidence from volcanic rocks collected on Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic suggests that beneath it lies a...
Palo Alto, CA—By 2100 only 18% to 45% of the plants and animals making up ecosystems in global, humid tropical forests may remain as we know them today, according to a new study led by Greg Asner at...
Palo Alto, CA—The private sector and an Austrian research institute are chipping in to help support one of the most widely used public biological databases in the world. Although the majority of...
Washington, D.C.—Department of Terrestrial Magnetism (DTM) staff member Larry Nittler has been elected a fellow of the Meteoritical Society. Society fellows are “members who have distinguished...
The Giant Magellan Telescope Organization (GMTO) Corporation is pleased to announce that the University of Chicago has joined the partnership that will construct the 25-meter Giant Magellan Telescope...
Analysis of data from MESSENGER’s third and final flyby of Mercury in September 2009 has revealed evidence of younger volcanism on the innermost planet than previously recognized, new information...
Leonard Searle, astronomer and director emeritus of Carnegie Observatories, died at his home on July 2, 2010, in Pasadena, CA, in the midst of a busy retirement that followed a long, distinguished...
Palo Alto, CA—A tiny, little-understood plant pore has enormous implications for weather forecasting, climate change, agriculture, hydrology, and more. A study by scientists at the Carnegie...
With carbon dioxide in the atmosphere approaching alarming levels, even halting emissions altogether may not be enough to avert catastrophic climate change. Could scrubbing carbon dioxide from the...
Washington, D.C.—
Up to now scientists thought that the trace amounts of carbon on the surface of the Moon came from the solar wind. Now researchers at the Carnegie Institution’s...
One proposed emergency fix to halt global warming is to seed clouds over the ocean to make them more reflective, reducing the solar radiation absorbed by the Earth. But the scheme could also change...
The Green Revolution of the late 20th century increased crop yields worldwide and helped feed an expanding global population. According to a new report published in the Proceedings of the National...
Washington, D.C.—Scientists at the Carnegie Institution’s Geophysical Laboratory, with colleagues, have discovered a much higher water content in the Moon’s interior than previous...
Tiny variations in the isotopic composition of silver in meteorites and Earth rocks are helping scientists put together a timetable of how our planet was assembled beginning 4.568 billion years ago...
A team of astronomers including Ivelina Momcheva of the Carnegie Observatories has discovered the most distant cluster of galaxies ever found. In a surprising twist, the young cluster born just 2.8...
Washington, D.C. At its annual May meeting, the Carnegie Institution for Science board of trustees enthusiastically endorsed the construction of the proposed Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT). The GMT...
Washington, D.C. — The evolution of complex life forms may have gotten a jump start billions of years ago, when geologic events operating over millions of years caused large quantities of...
Baltimore, MD— Proteins called cohesins ensure that newly copied chromosomes bind together, separate correctly during cell division, and are repaired efficiently after DNA damage. Scientists...
Washington, D.C.—An unprecedented study of bald eagle diet, from about 20,000 to 30,000 years ago to the present, will provide wildlife managers with unique information for reintroducing Bald...
Palo Alto, CA— Trees and other plants help keep the planet cool, but rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are turning down this global air conditioner. According to a new study...
Baltimore, MD—More than 25 years ago, Dianne Williams of Baltimore was hired by Carnegie’s Department of Embryology to wash lab dishes as part of a city job program for inner city youth...
Baltimore, MD—Douglas E. Koshland, staff scientist at Carnegie’s Department of Embryology, has been elected as one of 72 new members of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) for his...
Palo Alto, CA— Christopher Field, director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology, is among the two hundred and twenty-nine leaders in the sciences, the humanities...
Multipotent stem cells have the capacity to develop into different types of cells by reprogramming their DNA to turn on different combinations of genes, a process called “differentiation....
Stanford, CA – Scientists at Carnegie’s Department of Plant Biology have made the first real-time observations of sugars in the cells of intact and living plant tissues. With the...
Palo Alto, CA—To engineer better, more productive crops and develop new drugs to combat disease, scientists look at how the sensor-laden membranes surrounding cells control nutrient and water...
Metallic glasses are emerging as potentially useful materials at the frontier of materials science research. They combine the advantages and avoid many of the problems of normal metals and glasses...
A new study by scientists at the Carnegie Institution for Science finds that over a third of carbon dioxide emissions associated with consumption of goods and services in many developed countries...
A newly discovered star outside the Milky Way has yielded important clues about the evolution of our galaxy. Located in the dwarf galaxy Sculptor some 280,000 light-years away, the star has a...
Pasadena, CA— Astronomers have found the first clear evidence of a binary quasar within a pair of actively merging galaxies. Quasars are the extremely bright centers of galaxies surrounding...
Washington, D.C.— Carnegie scientists Kenneth Caldeira of the Department of Global Ecology, Yingwei Fei of the Geophysical Laboratory, and Steven Shirey of the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism...
Palo Alto, CA—Scientists have created a new computational model that can be used to predict gene function of uncharacterized plant genes with unprecedented speed and accuracy. The network,...
Washington, D.C.—Physicists have long wondered whether hydrogen, the most abundant element in the universe, could be transformed into a metal and possibly even a superconductor—the elusive state in...
Washington, DC—Former chairman of the Carnegie board of trustees and former chairman of E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Company died after a long illness on Sunday, January 3, at his home in...
See image and caption http://www.ciw.edu/ prlabbehudfz7andz8picbig1_4_10_jpg
Pasadena, CA—Astronomers, using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, have broken the distance limit...
Audio Press Release
Global warming is causing climate belts to shift toward the poles and to higher elevations. To keep pace with these changes, the average ecosystem will need to shift about a...
Palo Alto, CA—Scientists at the Carnegie Institution, with colleagues,* have found that a plant steroid prompts two genes to battle each other—one suppresses the other to ensure that...
Washington, D.C. — Two nearby stars have been found to harbor “super-Earths”― rocky planets larger than the Earth but smaller than ice giants such as Uranus and Neptune. Unlike...
Palo Alto, CA—Tropical forest destruction accounts for some 20% of global greenhouse gas emissions. But quantifying these emissions has not been easy, particularly for tropical nations. New...
Hawaii may be paradise for vacationers, but for geologists it has long been a puzzle. Plate tectonic theory readily explains the existence of volcanoes at boundaries where plates split apart or...
Photosynthetic organisms need to cope with a wide range of light intensities, which can change over timescales of seconds to minutes. Too much light can damage the photosynthetic machinery and...
Scientists at the Carnegie Institution have found for the first time that high pressure can be used to make a unique hydrogen-storage material. The discovery paves the way for an entirely...
Washington, D.C.— Much of our planet’s mineral wealth was deposited billions of years ago when Earth’s chemical cycles were different from today’s. Using geochemical clues...
Pasadena, CA—Astronomers, conducting the broadest survey to date of galaxies from about 800 million years after the Big Bang, have found 22 early galaxies and confirmed the age of one by its...
Can global warming be mitigated by a technological fix such as injecting light-blocking particles into the atmosphere or chemically “scrubbing” excess greenhouse gases from the atmosphere? Department...
Dust samples collected by high-flying aircraft in the upper atmosphere have yielded an unexpectedly rich trove of relicts from the ancient cosmos, report scientists from the Carnegie Institution....
Washington, D.C.—Scientists at the Carnegie Institution have found a way to monitor the strength of geologic faults deep in the Earth. This finding could prove to be a boon for ...
Palo Alto, CA— Director Emeritus of Carnegie’s Department of Plant Biology, Winslow Briggs, will be awarded the prestigious International Prize for Biology from the Japan Society for the...
Palo Alto, CA— Christopher Field , director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology ,* has been awarded a prestigious Heinz award. The awards were established...
Palo Alto, CA—The future of the Earth could rest on potentially dangerous and unproven geoengineering technologies unless emissions of carbon dioxide can be greatly reduced, a new study has...
Washington, D.C.—On August 24, Moody’s Investors Service affirmed its highest rating—Aaa/VMIG1—on the Carnegie Institution’s Series 1993, 2002, and 2006 bonds. Only 37 other higher education...
Washington, D.C.—Scientist, teacher, and co-director of the Carnegie Academy for Science Education (CASE), Toby Horn, will receive the 2009 Bruce Alberts Award for Excellence in Science Education...
Palo Alto, CA—With the information explosion, it’s remarkable that so little is known about the interactions that proteins have with each other and the protective membrane that...
Pasadena, CA-The Australian government has announced that it will provide $88.4 million AUD ($72.4 million USD) to help fund the revolutionary 25-meter Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) to be sited at...
Washington, DC—The oil and gas that fuels our homes and cars started out as living organisms that died, were compressed, and heated under heavy layers of sediments in the Earth’s...
Washington, D.C.— The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has awarded the Carnegie Institution a $4 million grant over three years to initiate the Deep Carbon Observatory -- an international, decade-long...
Palo Alto, CA— When glaciers advanced over much of the Earth’s surface during the last ice age, what kept the planet from freezing over entirely? This has been a puzzle to climate...
Baltimore, MD—Scientists working at the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Embryology, with colleagues, have overturned previous research that identified critical genes for making...
Palo Alto, CA—A tiny plant with a long name (Arabidopsis thaliana) helps researchers from over 120 countries learn how to design new crops to help meet increasing demands for food, biofuels...
Emergency plans to counteract global warming by artificially shading the Earth from incoming sunlight might lower the planet’s temperature a few degrees, but such “geoengineering...
In the future, will wind power tapped by high-flying kites light up New York? A new study by scientists at the Carnegie Institution and California State University identifies New York as a prime...
Washington, D.C. To combat the trend of declining qualified mathematics teachers in middle and high school, the Carnegie Institution’s Carnegie Academy for Science Education (CASE) launched a...
Palo Alto, CA—Cellulose is a fibrous molecule that makes up plant cell walls, gives plants shape and form and is a target of renewable, plant-based biofuels research. But how it forms, and...
Washington, DC—Scientists have made the surprising finding that typhoons trigger slow earthquakes, at least in eastern Taiwan. Slow earthquakes are non-violent fault slippage events that...
Argonne, IL—Millions of people today carry around pocket-sized music players capable of holding thousands of songs, thanks to the discovery 20 years ago of a phenomenon known as the “...
Pasadena, CA—The Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation awarded the 2009 Cosmology Prize to Carnegie’s Wendy Freedman; Robert Kennicutt of the Institute of Astronomy at the University...
Stanford, CA— The Carnegie Institution’s Department of Plant Biology is a major participant in a newly-funded Department of Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) at Stanford University...
STANFORD, CA - Biofuels such as ethanol offer an alternative to petroleum for powering our cars, but growing energy crops to produce them can compete with food crops for farmland, and clearing...
Analyses of data from the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft’s second flyby of Mercury in October 2008 show that the planet’s...
Washington, DC—The Carnegie Institution’s Geophysical Laboratory has been selected as one of 46 Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs) by the U.S. Department of Energy. The announcement came from...
Washington, DC—The most powerful earthquakes happen at the junction of two converging tectonic plates, where one plate is sliding (or subducting) beneath the other. Now a team of...
Pasadena, CA —Using information from a suite of telescopes, astronomers have discovered a mysterious, giant object that existed at a time when the universe was only about 800 million years...
Washington, D.C—Geochemist Richard Carlson of Carnegie’s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism has been elected a 2009 fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He is among 210 new...
Washington, D.C.— The Earth’s original atmosphere held very little oxygen. This began to change around 2.4 billion years ago when oxygen levels increased dramatically during what...
Stanford, CA— Photosynthesis produces the food that we eat and the oxygen that we breathe ― could it also help satisfy our future energy needs by producing clean-burning hydrogen? Researchers...
Washington, D.C.—The car-sized asteroid that exploded above the Nubian Desert last October was small compared to the dinosaur-killing, civilization-ending objects that still orbit the sun....
Washington, D.C.—Unraveling the origins of agriculture in different regions around the globe has been a challenge for archeologists. Now researchers writing in the Proceedings of the National...
Stanford, CA—Plant physiologist Wolf B. Frommer has been selected to lead the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Plant Biology on the campus of Stanford University. Frommer has been acting...
Stanford, CA— Rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the resulting effects on ocean water are making it increasingly difficult for coral reefs to grow, say scientists. A study to be...
Washington, D.C.—Ever since the Bronze Age, humans have experimented with combining different metals to create alloys with properties superior to either metal alone. But not all metals...
Washington, D.C. The Carnegie Institution received the highest rating for sound fiscal management—four stars—from Charity Navigator for the eighth year running. Charity Navigator is America's...
Stanford, CA—One of the rationales behind basic research is to provide the scientific foundations for good public policy. Carnegie scientists have always done their share, but the Department...
Stanford, CA— The African savanna is world famous for its wildlife, especially the iconic large herbivores such as elephants, zebras, and giraffes. But managing these ecosystems and balancing...
Pasadena, CA—Evidence of star birth within a cloud of primordial gas has given astronomers a glimpse of a previously unknown mode of galaxy formation. The cloud, known as the Leo Ring,...
Stanford, CA— Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are rising more rapidly than expected, increasing the danger that without aggressive action to reduce emissions the climate system could cross...
Washington, D.C.— In recent years researchers have found hundreds of new planets beyond our solar system, raising questions about the origins and properties of these exotic worlds—not...
Washington, D.C. The American Association for the Advancement of Science announced that Richard A. Meserve, president of the Carnegie Institution, will receive the 2008 Philip Hauge Abelson Award...
Baltimore, MD–The last step of the cell cycle is the brief but spectacularly dynamic and complicated mitosis phase, which leads to the duplication of one mother cell into two daughter cells...
Pasadena, CA-The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) Corporation is pleased to announce that nine astronomical research organizations from three continents have signed the Founders’ Agreement to...
Baltimore, MD–Biochemist, developmental biologist, and physician, Donald D. Brown of Carnegie’s Department of Embryology, will receive the 2009 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for...
Balitmore, MD—Douglas E. Koshland, staff scientist at Carnegie’s Department of Embryology, has been elected one of 72 Fellows by the American Academy of Microbiology. Fellows are annually elected “...
Washington, D.C.— An international team of researchers including scientists at the Carnegie Institution has discovered a new chemical compound that consists of a single element―boron....
Stanford, CA—Joseph A. Berry, staff scientist at Carnegie’s Department of Global Ecology, has been elected a 2009 Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). The honor is bestowed on those who “...
Washington, D.C.-Here on Earth we worry about our planet's atmosphere warming by a few degrees on average over the next century, and even weather fronts bring temporary changes in temperature...
Stanford, CA—The National Academy of Sciences has awarded Arthur Grossman, of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Plant Biology, the 2009 Gilbert Morgan Smith Medal “in recognition of...
Washington, D.C.—The International Association for the Advancement of High Pressure Science and Technology has awarded Carnegie’s Russell Hemley, director of the Geophysical Laboratory, the 2009...
Pasadena, CA- Dr. George W. Preston of the Carnegie Observatories has been selected by the American Astronomical Society to be the 2009 recipient of its highest distinction: the Henry Norris Russell...
Washington, D.C. Two independent groups have simultaneously made the first-ever ground-based detection of extrasolar planets thermal emissions. Until now, virtually everything known about...
Stanford, CA— Human impact on tropical forest ecosystems has reached a “tsunami” stage, say scientists, and will require a new generation of sophisticated remote-sensing...
Washington, D.C.—
Asteroids are hunks of rock that orbit in the outer reaches of space, and scientists have generally assumed that their small size limited the types of rock that could form...
Baltimore, MD—Stem cells are the body’s primal cells, retaining the youthful ability to develop into more specialized types of cells over many cycles of cell division. How do they do it...
Stanford, CA—A lack of technology needed to explore and monitor vast regions of tropical rain forest has been a critical bottleneck for Earth scientists, conservationists, and forest...
Pasadena, CA— In the early part of the 20th Century, Carnegie astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe is expanding. The rate of expansion is known as the Hubble constant...
The Carnegie Institution is now on Apple's iTunesU. Lectures, interviews, news, and information about the institution are available through the popular, free application and mobile learning site...
Washington D.C.—Christopher B. Field, director of Carnegie’s Department of Global Ecology, and Douglas E. Koshland, staff scientist at the Department of Embryology, have been elected AAAS Fellows by...
Washington, D.C.-The Carnegie Institution has been awarded a $9,400 grant from the Center for History of Physics, American Institute of Physics, to preserve and enhance access to a collection of...
Researchers have discovered that the ocean’s chemical makeup is less stable and more greatly affected by climate change than previously believed. The researchers report in the December 12,...
Stanford, CA—A new and improved tool to monitor deforestation and degradation in tropical forests has just gotten a huge boost. The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation has awarded the Carnegie...
Washington, DC— Evolution isn’t just for living organisms. Scientists at the Carnegie Institution have found that the mineral kingdom co-evolved with life, and that...
Scientists may have overcome a major hurdle to calculating how much carbon dioxide (CO2) is absorbed and released by plants, vital information for understanding how the biosphere responds to...
The key to understanding Earth’s evolution, including how our atmosphere gained oxygen and how volcanoes and earthquakes form, is to look deep, really deep, into the lower mantle—a...
Stanford, CA— In submitted testimony to the British Parliament, climate scientist Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution said that while steep cuts in carbon emissions are essential to...
Gliding over the battered surface of Mercury for the second time this year, NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft has revealed even more previously unseen real estate on the innermost planet, sending home...
Washington, D.C.— Researchers at the Carnegie Institution have developed a new technique for improving the properties of diamonds—not only adding sparkle to gemstones, but also...
Washington, D.C.—The building blocks of life may have emerged in volcanic eruptions on the early Earth, according to a new analysis of classic experiments performed more than fifty years ago...
Washington, D.C.— Robert Hazen, senior staff scientist at the Carnegie Institution’s Geophysical Laboratory, will receive the 2009 Distinguished Public Service Medal of the Mineralogical Society of...
Washington, D.C.—NASA announced today that the Carnegie Institution is one of ten teams selected for the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI) to conduct multidisciplinary research to study the origin...
Washington, D.C.—For several decades, scientists have thought that the Solar System formed as a result of a shock wave from an exploding star—a supernova—that triggered the...
Washington, D.C.—Canadian bedrock more than four billion years old may be the oldest known section of the Earth’s early crust. Scientists at the Carnegie Institution used geochemical...
Stanford, CA—How much carbon dioxide is too much? According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, greenhouse gases in the atmosphere need to be stabilized at levels low enough...
Stanford, CA—Director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology, Christopher Field, has been elected co-chair of Working Group 2 of the Nobel-Prize winning Intergovernmental Panel...
Washington, D.C.— Nitrogen atoms like to travel in pairs, hooked together by one of the strongest chemical bonds in nature. By subjecting nitrogen molecules to extreme temperatures and...
Listen to the lecture here:
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The 19th International Conference on Arabidopsis Research occured in Montreal, Canada...
Baltimore, MD—Scientists have known for decades that certain genes (called transposons) can jump around the genome in an individual cell. This activity can be dangerous, however, especially...
Washington, D.C.--Oxygen, the third most abundant element in the cosmos and essential to life on Earth, changes its forms dramatically under pressure transforming to a solid with spectacular colors....
Stanford, CA—Steroids bulk up plants just as they do human athletes, but the playbook of molecular signals that tell the genes to boost growth and development in plant cells is far more complicated...
Washington, D.C.— Carnegie geochemist Richard Carlson will receive the 2008 Norman L. Bowen Award from the American Geophysical Union. Named in honor of pioneering experimental petrologist and long-...
Washington, DC—The National Association of Geoscience Teachers has awarded the 2008 James H. Shea Award to science writer Alan Cutler at the Carnegie Institution. The Shea Award is given...
Washington, D.C. Using new techniques, scientists have discovered for the first time that tiny beads of volcanic glasses collected from two Apollo missions to the Moon contain water. The...
Paul Silver discusses his research in a video interview.
Washington, DC—Although measurement techniques surrounding earthquakes have improved enormously over the last few decades, it has...
Washington, D.C.—Carnegie’s Russell Hemley, director of the institution’s Geophysical Laboratory, was elected Honoris Causa Professor for Energetics, Mechanics, Machinery, and Control Systems of the...
It’s not just about climate change anymore. Besides loading the atmosphere with heat-trapping greenhouse gases, human emissions of carbon dioxide have also begun to alter the chemistry of the ocean—...
Stanford, CA—Biofuels can be a sustainable part of the world’s energy future, especially if bioenergy agriculture is developed on currently abandoned or degraded agricultural lands,...
Washington, D.C.—Higher than expected levels of sodium found in a 4.6 billion-year-old meteorite suggest that the dust clouds from which the building blocks of the Earth and neighboring planets...
Stanford, CA. The Carnegie Institution’s Department of Plant Biology today announced the launch of a new web-based resource that promises to help researchers around the world meet increasing demands...
Stanford, CA— Nitrogen is essential to all life on Earth, and the processes by which it cycles through the environment may determine how ecosystems respond to global warming. But certain aspects of...
CarnegieScience is the newsletter of the Carnegie Institution for Science. It comes out three times a year and features Carnegie science and other activitities.
The summer 2008...
Washington, D.C.—The world’s richest source of platinum and related metals is an enigmatic geological structure in South Africa known as the Bushveld Complex. This complex of ancient magmas is...
Allan C. Spradling, director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Embryology, has been awarded the 2008 Genetics Prize by the Peter and Patricia Gruber Foundation in recognition of his...
Tropical rain forests are treasure houses of biodiversity, but there has been no effective way to inventory and monitor their plant species over large areas. As a result, we have limited...
Biomass energy—energy generated from agricultural waste or specially grown energy crops—has been widely touted as a clean, renewable alternative to fossil fuels. Research is booming to improve...
Washington, D.C. The District of Columbia, like many other cities, has a continuing need for highly qualified mathematics teachers in its middle and high schools. This nation-wide shortage has left...
Pasadena, CA. Astronomers have seen the aftermath of spectacular stellar explosions known as supernovae before, but until now no one has witnessed a star dying in real time. While looking at...
Washington, D.C.— Carnegie Institution scientist Ho-kwang (Dave) Mao has been elected as a Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London, the National Academy of the United Kingdom and one of the...
Washington, DC—Superconductors can convey more than 150 times more electricity than copper wires because they don’t restrict electron movement, the essence of electricity. But to do this, the...
Washington, D.C.—Curved features on Jupiter’s moon Europa may indicate that its poles have wandered by almost 90°, report scientists from the Carnegie Institution, Lunar and Planetary Institute, and...
Stanford, CA— Over millions of years carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have been moderated by a finely tuned natural feedback system—a system that human emissions have recently overwhelmed. A...
Tanya Atwater of the University of California, Santa Barbara, gave the final Capital Science Lecture for the 2007-2008 season on April 17th. Her engaging talk included computer animations, maps,...
Washington, DC. The Geochemical Society and the European Association for Geochemistry has announced that Bjørn Mysen, senior scientist at Carnegie’s Geophysical Laboratory is one of seven...
Stanford, CA—The Earth’s jet streams, the high-altitude bands of fast winds that strongly influence the paths of storms and other weather systems, are shifting—possibly in response to global warming...
Co-authors Mark Seibert and Barry Madore of the Observatories are part of team that has produced a stunning new image showing infant stars growing in a remote area of galaxy M83. "Before these...
CarnegieScience is the newsletter of the Carnegie Institution for Science. It comes out three times a year and features Carnegie science and other activitities.
The spring 2008...
Washington, D.C. Charity Navigator, America's largest charity evaluator, has awarded the Carnegie Institution of Washington its highest rating, 4 stars, for sound fiscal management for 7 years...
Stanford, CA—Curators at one of the world’s most widely used biological databases, The Arabidopsis Information Resource, or TAIR, have joined forces with the journal Plant Physiology, to solve the...
Washington, DC—The organic soup that spawned life on Earth may have gotten generous helpings from outer space, according to a new study. Scientists at the Carnegie Institution have discovered...
Former Carnegie president and trustee Philip Abelson “had at least nine scientific lives…” Read this memoir appearing in the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. http://www.aps-pub.com...
Stanford, CA — A startling discovery by scientists at the Carnegie Institution puts a new twist on photosynthesis, arguably the most important biological process on Earth. Photosynthesis by plants,...
Washington, DC—The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) announced March 4th that Russell Hemley, director of Carnegie’s Geophysical Laboratory, has been elected to Corresponding Fellowship of the Royal...
Stanford, CA—To the list of threats to tropical rain forests you can add a new one — trees. It might seem that for a rain forest the more trees the merrier, but a new study by scientists at the...
Washington, DC — Interstellar space may be strewn with tiny whiskers of carbon, dimming the light of far-away objects. This discovery by scientists at the Carnegie Institution may have implications...
Stanford, CA — Now that scientists have reached a consensus that carbon dioxide emissions from human activities are the major cause of global warming, the next question is: How can we stop it? Can we...
Long-time Carnegie Institution trustee William T. Golden was honored on January 25 by a symposium held in the institution's auditorium. Friends and colleagues recollected his decades of service...
A discovery by scientists at the Carnegie Institution has opened the door to a new generation of piezoelectric materials that can convert mechanical strain into electricity and vice versa,...
After a journey of more than 2.2 billion miles and three and a half years, NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft made its first flyby of Mercury just after 2 PM Eastern Standard Time on January 14, 2008. All...
Washington, D.C.— Scientists have discovered that the magnetic strength of magnetite—the most abundant magnetic mineral on Earth—declines drastically when put under pressure. Researchers from the...
Washington, D.C. A young star is speeding away from the Milky Way so fast that astronomers have been puzzled by where it came from; based on its young age it has traveled too far to have come from...
Since we can’t sample the deepest regions of the Earth, scientists watch the velocity of seismic waves as they travel through the planet to determine the composition and density of that material....
Pasadena, CA—The Royal Astronomical Society has awarded Stephen Shectman of the Carnegie Observatories the 2008 Jackson-Gwilt Medal for his exceptional work in developing astronomical...
Plate tectonics, the geologic process responsible for creating the Earth’s continents, mountain ranges, and ocean basins, may be an on-again, off-again affair. Scientists have assumed that the...
Washington, DC— Astronomers at the Carnegie Institution have found the first indications of highly complex organic molecules in the disk of red dust surrounding a distant star. The eight-million-...
Stanford, CA — Carbon emissions from human activities are not just heating up the globe, they are changing the ocean’s chemistry. This could soon be fatal to coral reefs, which are havens for marine...
Washington, DC—Organic compounds contain carbon and hydrogen and form the building blocks of all life on Earth. By analyzing organic material and minerals in the Martian meteorite Allan Hills 84001,...
Pasadena CA—Typically, little M-dwarf stars—the most common type of star in the galaxy—are cold, quiet, and dim. Now a team of astronomers led by Edo Berger, a Carnegie-Princeton postdoctoral fellow...
Astronomers have found a new population of faint protogalaxies by taking the most sensitive spectroscopic survey ever of a time when the universe was only 15% of its present age. These objects are...
The American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) announced today that renowned astrophysicist Vera Rubin, who confirmed the existence of dark matter, has been selected to receive the 2008...
The first “State of the Carbon Cycle Report” for North America, released online this week by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, finds the continent’s carbon budget increasingly...
Washington, DC Ronald Cohen of Carnegie’s Geophysical Laboratory will receive the 2009 Dana Medal of the Mineralogical Society of America. The announcement was made today at the Geological...
Stanford, CA The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded a $750,000 grant to the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology for an intensive pilot study of ecosystem diversity in South Africa’...
The Center for the Built Environment—an organization where industry leaders and researchers cooperate to produce substantial, holistic, and far-sighted research on buildings—awarded the Department...
Ken Caldeira, of Carnegie’s Department of Global Ecology, has an Op Ed piece about how to cool the planet in the October 24, 2007, New York Times. See http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/24/opinion/...
Stanford, CA -- Human activities are releasing carbon dioxide faster than ever, while the natural processes that normally slow its build up in the atmosphere appear to be weakening. These conclusions...
The Norwegian Embassy brings together scientists from both sides of the Atlantic for its Annual Science Week at the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C. Among the topics discussed will be the...
Greg Asner of the Department of Global Ecology has been picked by Popular Science magazine as one of its annual “Brillant 10.” According to the magazine’s November issue, Brilliant 10 researchers “...
Carnegie scientists Chris Field and Ken Caldeira of the Department of Global Ecology are key contributors in the UN panel awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize on October 12 for work on global climate...
Former Carnegie Academy for Science Education (CASE) director Inés Cifuentes has won this year’s Hispanic Heritage Award for Math and Science. Instituted by the White House in 1987, the Hispanic...
Genes of a tiny, single-celled green alga called Chlamydomonas reinhardtii may contain scores more data about the common ancestry of plants and animals than the richest paleontological dig. This work...
Senior trustee William T. Golden died on Sunday October 7 at the age of 97. Bill Golden was an icon of American science policy, and the Carnegie Institution was privileged to have his support and...
The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) Consortium* announces that the GMT will be constructed at Cerro Las Campanas, Chile. This location was selected for its high altitude, dry climate, dark skies,...
Carnegie cell biologist Joseph G. Gall in the Department of Embryology was chosen to receive the 2007 Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize, awarded annually by Columbia University to recognize outstanding...
Stanford, CA-- A team, led by researchers at the Carnegie Institution,* has found a key biochemical cycle that suppresses the immune response, thereby allowing cancer cells to multiply unabated. The...
Washington, D.C. In the first experiments able to mimic the crushing, searing conditions found in Earth’s lower mantle, and simultaneously probe tell-tale properties of iron, scientists* have...
The Carnegie Institution’s new look, featured on this new Web site, helps identify who we are clearly and concisely. By closely associating “Carnegie” and “science” in...
Stanford, CA. In a commentary in the September 25, 2007, issue of the Geophysical Research Letters (GRL), a large team of scientists state that human-induced carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will...
Washington DC*-- Key components of a new approach to discover life on Mars were successfully launched into space Friday as part of a twelve-day, low-Earth orbit experiment to assess their...
Plant Biology's Winslow R. Briggs, was awarded the 2007 Adolph E. Gude, Jr., Award. The award was established by the American Society of Plant Biologists and first given in 1983. It is made...
Carnegie Contact: Dr. Winslow Briggs;
(650) 325-1521 x207 or briggs@stanford.edu
For a copy of the paper, please contact:
AAAS Office of Public Programs; (202) 326-6440 or scipak@aaas.org
Stanford,...
August 15, 2007
Contact Dr. Mark Seibert
(626) 304-0273 or mseibert@ociw.edu
For a copy of the paper, please contact Helen Jamison at Nature: h.jamison@nature.com
Graphics and additional information...
Contact Gregory Asner at gpa@stanford.edu
650-380-2828, http://asnerlab.stanford.edu/
For images see http://www.carnegieinstitution.org/asner_peru/
For a copy of the paper contactAAAS Office of...
Carnegie Institution Observatories researchers are featured in Astronomy Magazine discussing dark matter and what supernovae may tell us about the fate of the universe.
Contact Ho-kwang (Dave) Mao at 202-478- 8960, or h.mao@gl.ciw.edu
Contact Russell Hemley at 202-478-8951,or rhemley@ciw.edu
Image at http://www.carnegieinstitution.org/dave_mao/
Washington, D.C. –...
Carnegie Contact: Dr. Mark Phillips
011-56-51-207301 or (mmp@lco.cl)
La Serena, Chile – Carnegie astronomer Mark Phillips will share the 2007 Cosmology Prize of the Peter and Patricia Gruber...
The skies over Hawaii buzz with the propellers of small aircraft. Most of them ferry people among the islands, or give tourists a glimpse of inaccessible locales. But there is one among the swarm...
Kenneth L. Franklin, who from 1954 to 1956 was a research fellow in radio astronomy at the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, has died at 84 following heart surgery.
Carnegie Contact: Dr. Isamu Matsuyama(202) 478-8863 or (matsuyama@dtm.ciw.edu)
For a copy of the paper, please contact Helen Jamison at Nature: h.jamison@nature.com
Washington, DC – Scientists have...
Contact Tina McDowell@ 202-939-1120, or tmcdowell@ciw.edu
For image see http://www.carnegieinstitution.org/meserve/
Washington, D.C. – President of the Carnegie Institution, Richard A....
Contact Chris Field at cfield@globalecology.stanford.edu, (650) 462 1047 x 201
http://www.global-ecology.org/
For a copy of the paper “Global and regional drivers of accelerating CO2 emissions,...
Contact: Russell Hemley at (202) 478-8951 or r.hemley@gl.ciw.edu;
or Ho-kwang (Dave) Mao at (202) 478-8960, or h.mao@gl.ciw.edu
For more information about the workshop see http://cdac.gl.ciw.edu/...
Carnegie Contact: Dr. Seth Newsome;
(202) 478-8987 or snewsome@ciw.edu
For a copy of the paper, contact PNAS at PNASNews@nas.edu
For an image, see http://www.carnegieinstitution.org/furseals/image...
Carnegie Contact: Dr. Christopher Field (650) 462-1047 x201 or cfield@globalecology.stanford.edu
For a copy of the paper, please contact:AAAS Office of Public Programs; (202) 326-6440 or scipak@aaas....
Contact Wendy Freedman @ Wendy@ociw.edu or 626-304-0204
For more information about Wendy Freedman see http://www.ociw.edu/research/wfreedman/
See the Carnegie Observatories at http://www.ociw.edu/...
According to ISI's Web of Science, two of Joe Berry's papers passed extremely high, rarefied citation milestones last week.
The following 1980 paper just passed its 1,500th citation:
Farquhar...
Stanford, CA – Tropical plants are able to adapt to environmental change by extracting nitrogen from a variety of sources, according to a new study that appears in the May 7 early online edition of...
MESSENGER Mission News (MESSENGER website)
MESSENGER Team Member Stan Peale was among the researchers to recently announce the discovery of strong evidence that the planet Mercury has a molten core...
Washington, DC – Paul Silver, a geophysicist at Carnegie’s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism in Washington, DC, was elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on Friday, April...
The President and Trustees of the Carnegie Institution
cordially invite you to view the
CARNEGIE EVENING LECTURE
Dr. Ken Caldeira, Staff Member, Department of Global Ecology
...
Stanford, CA.The American Institute of Architects (AIA) announced this week that Carnegie’s Global Ecology department building is among the top 10 buildings in the country that are “examples of...
Stanford, Calif. – Planting and protecting trees—which trap and absorb carbon dioxide as they grow—can help to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But a new study suggests that, as a way to...
The Lab-On-a-Chip, developed at Carnegie in collaboration with NASA Marshall Space Flight Center and Charles River Labs, has been successfully tested on the space shuttle Discovery.
Global Ecology director Chris Field discusses his latest work, which demonstrates that global warming has already significantly affected agriculture, in a video produced by the Stanford News Service...
Stanford, Calif. – Over a span of two decades, warming temperatures have caused annual losses of roughly $5 billion for major food crops, according to a new study by researchers at the Carnegie...
Contact Ken Caldeira at 650-704-7212, or kcaldeira@globalecology.stanford.edu
Stanford, CA – Much of the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuel burning is absorbed by the oceans. It is...
Carnegie Contact: Dr. Mark Seibert, (626) 304-0273 or mseibert@ociw.edu
Pasadena, CA – Certain double, or binary, star systems erupt in full-blown explosions and then flare up with smaller...
Contact Xiao-Jia Chen at 202-478-8924, xjchen@ciw.edu;Viktor Struzhkin at 202-478-8952, struzhkin@gl.ciw.edu; orRussell Hemley at 202-478-8951, rhemley@ciw.edu
Washington, DC — Scientists at...
Carnegie Contact: Yang Ding; 630-252-4017 or yding@hpcat.aps.anl.gov
Washington, D.C. – Scientists at Carnegie’s Geophysical Laboratory have discovered a new type of phase transition—a change from...
Carnegie Contact: Dr. Allan Spradling, (410) 246-3021 or spradling@ciwemb.edu
For a copy of the paper, please contact:
AAAS Office of Public Programs; (202) 326-6440 or scipak@aaas.org
Baltimore, MD...
Contact: Dominique Loqué at 650/325-1521, x 249, dloque@stanford.edu;
or Wolf Frommer at 650/325-1521, x 208, wfrommer@stanford.edu
For a copy of the paper contact Nature magazine h.jamison@nature....
Contact Dr. Russell Hemley, 202-478-8951, r.hemley@gl.ciw.edu
Image at this link http://www.carnegieinstitution.org/hemley/
Washington, D.C. The Carnegie Institution announced today that longtime...
Contact: Matthew Wright at (202) 939-1142 or mwright@ciw.edu
Washington, DC – The National Academy of Sciences has awarded Carnegie president emerita Maxine F. Singer the Public Welfare Medal, the...
Washington, D.C. – Eleven months ago, NASA’s Stardust mission touched down in the Utah desert with the first solid comet samples ever retrieved from space. Since then, nearly 200 scientists from...
Washington, D.C. - The Carnegie Institution announced today that the Carnegie board of trustees has elected Remi Barbier, founder, president & CEO of Pain Therapeutics, Inc., to their board....
Stanford, CA - Scientists, including Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology, have found that the Earth's global warming, 55 million years ago, may have...
Washington, D.C. - The Carnegie Institution announced today that the United States Patent Office has recently granted a patent for the work of three inventors--Russell Hemley, Ho-kwang Mao, and Chih-...
Washington, D.C. Over the last half century, researchers have found that mineral surfaces may have played critical roles organizing, or activating, molecules that would become essential ingredients...
Washington, D.C. – Water, the only indispensable ingredient of life, is just about the most versatile stuff on Earth. Depending on its temperature we can heat our homes with it, bathe in it, and...
Pasadena, CA – Astronomers have taken amazing pictures of two of the most distant galaxies ever seen. The ultradeep images, taken at infrared wavelengths, confirm for the first time that these...
Washington, D.C.–Researchers have discovered an isolated, self-sustaining, bacterial community living under extreme conditions almost two miles deep beneath the surface in a South African gold mine...
Washington, D.C. Scientists at the Carnegie Institution and Penn State University* have discovered evidence showing that microbes adapted to living with oxygen 2.72 billion years ago, at least 300...
Washington, D.C. – For the first time, astronomers have measured the day and night temperatures of a planet outside our solar system. The team,* which includes Sara Seager of Carnegie’s Department...
Contact Gary Kowalczyk, 202-939-1118 or gkowalczyk@ciw.edu
See Charity Navigator details at http://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm/bay/search.summary/orgid/3424.htm
Washington, D.C. Charity...
Washington, D.C. — Andrew Z. Fire, a scientist who discovered RNAi, or RNA interference while at the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Embryology, along with Craig C. Mello of the...
Contact: Gary Kowalczyk, Director of Administration and Finance;(202) 939-1118 or gkowalczyk@ciw.edu
Washington, D.C. - The Carnegie Institution of Washington announced today that its endowment...
Baltimore, MD—The Lasker Foundation awarded Carnegie’s Joseph G. Gall the prestigious 2006 Lasker Award for Special Achievement in Medical Science. The citation recognizes that Gall is “a founder of...
Washington, D.C. – Christopher Somerville, Director of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Plant Biology, has been awarded the 2006 Balzan Prize in Plant Molecular Genetics, which he will share...
Stanford, CA—Any gardener knows that different plant species mature at different times. Scientists studying natural plant communities know this phenomenon allows species to co-exist by reducing...
Washington, D.C.—For the first time, scientists have dated diamonds from the recently discovered diamond fields in Canada’s Northwest Territories and have found them to be the oldest precisely dated...
STANFORD, CA-A team of scientists, led by Greg Asner of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology, has discovered an important indicator of rain forest vulnerability to clear-cutting in...
Washington, DC— As part of its international scientific exchange effort, the Fulbright Senior Specialists Program has awarded Carnegie scientist Marilyn Fogel a grant to share the most up-to-date...
Carnegie Institution planetary-formation theorist and 1997 National Medal of Science recipient George Wetherill died from heart failure on July 19, 2006, at his Washington, D.C. home. Wetherill...
Washington, DC – The Carnegie Institution of Washington and the University of Massachusetts Medical School announced today that opposition in Australia to the grant of the institutions’ patent...
Washington, DC – Three new objects locked into roughly the same orbit as Neptune—called “Trojan” asteroids—have been found by researchers from the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Terrestrial...
Washington, D.C. Astronomers detected unusually high quantities of carbon, the basis of all terrestrial life, in an infant solar system around nearby star Beta Pictoris, 63 light-years away. “For...
Washington, DC. A new explanation for forming “super-Earths” suggests that they are more likely to be found orbiting red dwarf stars—the most abundant type of star—than gas giant planets like Jupiter...
Washington, DC – Minerals crunched by intense pressure near the Earth’s core lose much of their ability to conduct infrared light, according to a new study from the Carnegie Institution’s Geophysical...
Washington, DC – Nobel laureate and Carnegie trustee emeritus Charles H. Townes has received the 2006 Vannevar Bush Award from the National Science Board, the oversight body of the National Science...
Washington, DC – Like an interplanetary spaceship carrying passengers, meteorites have long been suspected of ferrying relatively young ingredients of life to our planet. Using new techniques,...
Washington, DC. To truly understand some of the movement we see at the Earth’s surface, scientists have to probe deep into the interior. A region near the planet’s core, about 1,800 miles down called...
Stanford, CA – Cellulose—a fibrous molecule found in all plants—is the most abundant biological material on Earth. It is also a favored target of renewable, plant-based biofuels research. Despite...
Pasadena, CA. The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), the first extremely large new-generation telescope to begin production, has gained a new partner—the Australian National University (ANU) http://www....
Washington, D.C.—Christine D. Smith, formerly associate vice president for Main Campus development and senior director of development for the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, has...
Baltimore, MD – We are all familiar with the dangers of too much fat in our diet—increased risk of diabetes, heart disease, and obesity are just a few of the most severe consequences. But some rare...
Washington, D.C. Today’s climate change pales in comparison with what happened as Earth gave birth to its oxygen-containing atmosphere billions of years ago. By analyzing clues contained in rocks,...
Washington, D.C. Rocky planets such as Earth and Mars are born when small particles smash together to form larger, planet-sized clusters in a planet-forming disk, but researchers are less sure about...
Washington, D.C. Evidence never dies in the popular TV show Cold Case. Nor do some traces of life disappear on Earth, Mars, or elsewhere. An international team of scientists,* including researchers...
Washington, D.C. On Sunday, January 15, NASA’s Stardust mission landed safely with the first solid comet fragments ever brought back to Earth. Members of the mission’s Preliminary Examination Team,...
Washington, D.C. Since the mid-1990s a great debate has raged over whether organic compounds and tiny globules of carbonate minerals imbedded in the Martian meteorite Allan Hills 84001 were...
Washington, DC – Like modern day alchemists, materials scientists often turn unassuming substances into desirable ones. But instead of working metal into gold, they create strange new compounds that...
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:
I am grateful for the opportunity to testify before you today. I have appeared before this Committee many times in my former job as the NASA Associate...
Stanford, CA -- Increased carbon dioxide emissions are rapidly making the world’s oceans more acidic and, if unabated, could cause a mass extinction of marine life similar to one that occurred 65...
Carnegie scientists breathed a sigh of relief on Sunday, January 15 when NASA’s Stardust mission landed safely with the first solid comet samples ever brought back to Earth. As members of the mission...
Stanford, CA – Scientists at the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Plant Biology have found that photosynthetic bacteria living in scalding Yellowstone hot springs have two radically different...
Washington, D.C. -- On January 20, 2006, Moody’s Investors Service assigned a Aaa/VMIG1 rating to the Carnegie Institution’s Series 2006 bonds issued though the California Educational Facilities...
Washington, D.C.--New theoretical work shows that gas-giant planet formation can occur around binary stars in much the same way that it occurs around single stars like the Sun. The work is presented...
Contact Tina McDowell at 202-939-1120, or tmcdowell@ciw.edu
Carnegie Institution trustee emeritus John Diebold died at the age of 79. Mr. Diebold actively served on the Carnegie board of...
Contact Dr. Richard Carlson at 202-478-8474, email Carlson@dtm.ciw.edu
Or Sean Solomon at 202-478-8850, email Solomon@dtm.ciw.edu
For image see http://www.carnegieinstitution.org/earlyearth/...
Contact Carnegie Observatories’ Edo Berger at 626-304-0251, or eberger@ociw.edu
For image see http://www.carnegieinstitution.org/BergerGammaRay/
Pasadena, CA – Cosmic gamma-ray bursts...
Contact : Dr. Benjamin Ohlstein, 410-246-3003, or 3403, email, ohlstein@ciwemb.edu;
or Dr. Allan Spradling at 410-246-3021, or 3015, email spradling@ciwemb.edu
For Image see...
Carnegie Contact: Dr. Ken Caldeira; kcaldeira@globalecology.stanford.edu or (650) 704-7212
For images see http://www.carnegieinstitution.org/temperateforests/
Stanford, CA – Growing a...
Baltimore, MD – Carnegie Institution trustees will dedicate a new, $31.2-million research laboratory on the Johns Hopkins University campus on Thursday, December 1, 2005, at 6:30 PM. The...
Carnegie Contact: Dr. Shauna Somerville; ssomerville@stanford.edu or (650) 325-1521 ext. 257
Or Mónica Stein; msteinc@stanford.edu or (650) 325-1521 ext. 406
For a...
Royal Norwegian Embassy
CLIMATE CHANGE AND GLOBAL INFECTIOUS DISEASES DISCUSSED BY TOP U.S. AND EUROPEAN EXPERTS IN WASHINGTON, D.C.
WASHINGTON, DC, October 28, 2005 – From Monday, October...
Contact Carnegie’s Dr. Gregory Asner, office 650-462-1047 x202; cell 650-380-2828; e-mail gasner@globalecology.stanford.edu
For a copy of the paper contact Science at scipak@aaas.org...
Over 400 guests from across the globe gathered in the Scottish Parliament today (Tuesday, October 4) for the presentation of the Andrew Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy 2005.
The Medal...
Contact at Carnegie, Marilyn Fogel at 202-478-8981, email m.fogel@gl.ciw.edu; Andrew Steele at 202-478-8974, email a.steele@gl.ciw.edu.
Contact at the University of Oslo is Hans E.F. Amundsen at
+47...
Contact Dr. Ken Caldeira at kcaldeira@globalecology.stanford.edu, or by cell at 650-704-7212
Stanford, CA – The kind of devastation seen on the Gulf Coast from Hurricane Katrina...
Contact Leonard Garcia, NASA Goddard, 301-286-9486, garcia@mail630.gsfc.nasa.gov; or Michelle Brooks, Carnegie’s Department of Terrestrial Magnetism at 202-478-8830;...
First Minister Jack McConnell is to present entrepreneur and philanthropist Sir Tom Farmer with the philanthropic equivalent of a Nobel Prize, the Carnegie UK Trusts announced today.
Mr...
Contact Russell Hemley at Hemley@gl.ciw.edu, 202-478-8951; or Dave Mao at Mao@gl.ciw.edu
For images, contact Tina McDowell, tmcdowell@ciw.edu, 202-939-1120
Washington, D.C. – Russell...
Contact Frances Donald 44 0 1592 643 200, fdonald@catchline.co.uk
Or Alex Barr 44 0 141 333 9585
Images available from Frances Donald
Andrew Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy...
Contact Armando Gil de Paz at 626-304-0273, agpaz@ociw.edu; or Barry Madore at 626-304-0247, bmadore@ociw.edu, orbarry@ipac.caltech.edu
For images and information about the Galaxy Evolution...
Contact Jung-Fu Lin at 925-424-4157, j.lin@gl.ciw.edu; Viktor Struzhkin at 202-478-8952, v.struzhkin@gl.ciw.edu; or Steve Jacobsen, 202-478-7975, s.jacobsen@gl.ciw.edu
Washington, D.C...
Contact Marilyn Fogel 202-478-8981, m.fogel@gl.ciw.edu
Washington, D.C. – Massive extinctions of animals and the arrival of the first humans in ancient Australia may be...
Contact Dr. Ken Caldeira at kcaldeira@gmail.com, or kcaldeira@globalecology.stanford.edu, 650-462-1047 x204;
or Dr. Chris Field at cfield@globalecology.stanford.edu, 650-462-1047, x201
...
Contact Jung-Fu Lin at 202-478-8911, j.lin@gl.ciw.edu; Ho-kwang Mao,h.mao@gl.ciw.edu 202-321-8899;
or Wolfgang Sturhahn, sturhahn@aps.anl.gov 630-252-0163
Washington, D.C...
Contact Maud Boyet at 202-478-8482 / boyet@dtm.ciw.edu
or Rick Carlson at 202-478-8474 / carlson@dtm.ciw.edu
Washington, D.C. – Could Earth have had an even more violent infancy than...
Contacts: Robert Sanders, University of California, Berkeley: (510) 643-6998, rsanders@berkeley.edu
M. Mitchell Waldrop, NSF: (703) 292-7752, mwaldrop@nsf.gov
Tim Stephens, University of...
Contact Sakiko Okumoto at 650-325-1521 x 636, sokumoto@stanford.edu;
Wolf Frommer at 650-325-1521 x 208,wfrommer@stanford.edu; or
Chris Somerville 650-325-...
Contact Dr. Russell Hemley at 202- 478-8951, r.hemley@gl.ciw.edu;
or Chih-Shiue Yan at 202-478-8959, c.yan@gl.ciw.edu
Washington, D.C. – Researchers at the Carnegie Institution’s Geophysical...
The President and Trustees of the Carnegie Institution
cordially invite you to view the
CARNEGIE EVENING LECTURE
Dr. Russell J. Hemley, Staff Member, Geophysical Laboratory...
Contact Eugene Gregoryanz at 202-478-8953, e.gregoryanz@gl.ciw.edu
Or Olga Degtyareva, 202-478-8948, o.degtyareva@gl.ciw.edu
For image click here http://www....
Contact Douglas Rumble, III, Carnegie Geophysical Laboratory, 202 478- 8990, rumble@gl.ciw.edu
The paper may be viewed at this link http://www.minsocam.org/MSA/ammin/toc/2005/...
Contact Tina McDowell@ 202-939-1120, or tmcdowell@ciw.edu
Carnegie molecular biologist Joseph Gall discusses the work of groundbreaking microscopists, biologists, zoologists...
Contact Sara Seager at 202-478- 8868, or seager@dtm.ciw.edu;
Tina McDowell in the Carnegie Publications office at 202-939-1120, or tmcdowell@pst.ciw.edu;
Whitney Clavin at Spitzer, 818-354-...
Contact: Ivo Labbé at the Carnegie Observatories, ivo@ociw.edu, or 626-304-0265;
Jiasheng Huang at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics CFA, jhuang@cfa....
Contact Carnegie’s Dr. Gregory Asner, at 650-380-2828, gpa@stanford.edu,
or Stanford’s Peter Vitousek, at vitousek@stanford.edu
The Asner Lab Website is located at http://asnerlab.stanford.edu/...
Contact Alan Boss at 202-478-8858, or boss@dtm.ciw.edu
Washington, D.C. – Scientists now believe that the formation of Jupiter, the heavy-weight champion of the Solar System...
PRESS RELEASE
THEIR MAJESTIES KING HARALD V AND QUEEN SONJA OF NORWAY
OPEN SEMINARS ON TRANSATLANTIC RELATIONS.
CARNEGIE INSTITUTION, MARCH 4, 2005
On the occasion of the...
Contact Carnegie Observatories’ Edo Berger at 626-304-0251, or eberger@ociw.edu
Pasadena, CA – Cosmic gamma-ray bursts produce more energy in the blink of an eye, than the Sun will...
Contact Zhi-Yong Wang at Carnegie's Department of Plant Biology, 650-325-1521 ext. 205, or via e-mail at zywang24@stanford.edu
Copies of the embargoed paper may be obtained from the...