Geologists take Earth’s inner temperature using erupted sea glass
The results could help scientists unravel the processes underlying plate tectonics.
Study highlights long road toward gender parity in the geosciences
Researchers find improvement in relative retention of women but predict decades of sustained effort are required to achieve gender parity.
Aboard NASA’s Perseverance rover, MOXIE creates oxygen on Mars
Thanks to an MIT-designed instrument, a NASA mission has produced oxygen on another planet for the first time.
With Perseverance, MIT teams prepare for Mars rover landing
Following touchdown, MOXIE will brew up oxygen while geologists comb for sediments to sample.
Space for all is this student’s goal
Maya Nasr’s work on the Mars 2020 mission has led her to become an advocate for expanding international cooperation in space.
TESS discovers four exoplanets orbiting a nearby sun-like star
MIT-led NASA mission finds a multi-planetary system that could be an “ideal laboratory” to study planetary formation and evolution.
Rock magnetism uncrumples the Himalayas’ complex collision zone
MIT EAPS researchers find the impressive mountain range formed over a series of impacts, not a single event, as previously thought.
3 Questions: Rona Oran and Benjamin Weiss on the ancient moon’s missing magnetism
Simulations rule out plasmas caused by meteoroid impacts as the source of lunar magnetism, supporting the proposal that the ancient moon generated a core dynamo.
Field geology at a distance
As part of NASA’s Mars 2020 mission, Professor Tanja Bosak helps determine the best samples to bring home for clues about life 4 billion years ago.
Astronomers discover an Earth-sized “pi planet” with a 3.14-day orbit
The rocky world, with its baking-hot surface, is likely not habitable.
Astronomers may have found a signature of life on Venus
Evidence indicates phosphine, a gas associated with living organisms, is present in the habitable region of Venus’ atmosphere.
Lava oceans may not explain the brightness of some hot super-Earths
By making their own lava and cooled glass, scientists find these materials likely aren’t responsible for the unexpected glow of some exoplanets.
Study: A plunge in incoming sunlight may have triggered “Snowball Earths”
Findings also suggest exoplanets lying within habitable zones may be susceptible to ice ages.
An origin story for a family of oddball meteorites
Study suggests the rare objects likely came from an early planetesimal with a magnetic core.
TESS mission discovers massive ice giant
Neptune-sized planet may be remnant core of a much larger planet.