UCLA Meteorite Museum displays extensive collection to the public for the first time
Nearly 50,000 years ago, an asteroid fragment slammed into Earth approximately forty miles east of what is now Flagstaff, Arizona. Upon impact, the celestial projectile shattered into thousands of pieces and created a mile-wide hole now known as Meteor Crater. A 357-pound chunk of that original asteroid now stands center stage in the new UCLA Meteorite Museum. The Canyon Diablo meteorite was donated to UCLA by philanthropist William Andrews Clark, Jr. upon his death in 1934, becoming one of the first specimens entered into the UCLA Meteorite Collection. While originating from sporadic...
Read MoreGraduate student awarded Chateaubriand Fellowship
Alex Grannan, a graduate student in Professor Jonathan Aurnou’s SPINLab has been awarded a Chateaubriand Graduate Exchange Fellowship. The award will provide funding for him to spend a year in the IRPHE Lab in Aix-en-Marseilles with Professor Michael Le Bars studying tidally driven resonant flows in planetary and stellar interiors.
Read MoreUCLA scientists monitor collisions in space
In a paper published in the Journal of Meteoritics and Planetary Science, UCLA Professor Christopher T. Russell and graduate student Hairong Lai present a new way of monitoring collisions between asteroids and meteroids. Their method, developed based on 30 years of observational data on these small interplanetary objects, may help scientists better predict when debris from these impacts may pose a danger to Earth. Read more about this recent discovery at: http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/ucla-space-scientists-find-way-245276.aspx . Professor Russell recently celebrated his seventieth...
Read MoreiPLEX newsletter highlights planetary research at UCLA
Distribution of the first annual iPLEX newsletter began on April 24, 2013. This 36-page publication highlights planetary research at UCLA undertaken by scientists from the Earth & Space Sciences, Astronomy, and Atmospheric & Oceanic Science departments, including the recent discovery of ice on Mercury, weather on Titan, and the Dawn spacecraft at Vesta. Also included is an update on the UCLA Meteorite Museum and a Q&A with Ashwin Vasavada, the deputy project scientist for the Mars Science Laboratory mission. Hard copies of the newsletter are available free of charge in the...
Read MoreKeck Institute for Space Studies Short Course: “Airships: A New Horizon for Science”
Keck Institute for Space Studies Short Course: “Airships: A New Horizon for Science” The Keck Institute for Space Studies (KISS) invites all interested researchers, faculty and students to attend the following short course: Airships: A New Horizon for Science Tuesday, April 30, 2013 7:45 a.m. — Coffee and refreshments 8:15 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. — Short Course Hameetman Auditorium, Cahill Building – Caltech 1216 E California Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91125 Introducing Key Science Opportunities from Airships in – · Earth Sensing and Atmospheric Science...
Read MoreTop scientists debate whether life could survive on Mars
More than 50 of the world’s top Mars scientists gathered in Royce Hall last week to discuss whether life could survive on the red planet. Three dozen talks over two days covered topics ranging widely from the current liquid water activity on Mars to NASA’s planetary protection policies. “The habitability of Mars is a pressing issue because we plan to send humans there in the next century,” said David Paige, a UCLA professor of Earth and space sciences and a co-organizer of the conference, held Feb. 4-5. “To do that in a responsible way, we should take into account that...
Read MoreiPLEX Conference discusses life on Mars
The UCLA Institute for Planets and Exoplanets, The UK Center for Astrobiology and the NASA Astrobiology Institute held a meeting on campus last week where planetary scientists from around the world discussed their research determining the present-day habitability of Mars. While the conference has concluded, the talks were recorded and can be streamed publicly online here. Read more about the conference from these media outlets: Top scientists debate whether life could survive on Mars http://planets.ucla.edu/news/top-scientists-debate-whether-life-could-survive-on-mars/ Is there water on...
Read MoreWhen Science Becomes Art: Crafting the Cover of Science
The latest issue of Science magazine features the discovery of ice on Mercury, preserved within permanently shadowed areas inside north polar craters. The cover of the magazine showcases a beautiful high-resolution map that combines topographic and thermal model measurements to identify the places at Mercury’s north pole where water ice remains stable. Creating a cover for the prestigious journal Science is no easy feat. In this case, Professor David Paige harnessed the power of hundreds of computers working for dozens of hours to create the final version. Read more about...
Read MoreMESSENGER scientists announce discovery of Mercury ice on NASA TV
UCLA Professor David Paige explains how his thermal model of Mercury helped determine the location of surface and subsurface water ice on Mercury. Watch the entire NASA TV press conference below:
Read MoreESS 51 students present mineralogy research
On December 7, 2012, undergraduate students in Professor Axel Schmitt’s mineralogy course (ESS 51) presented their research projects to the Earth and Space Sciences department at UCLA. Jason Brouwer, an ESS 51 student, completed his end of term project studying Native American arrowheads that he collected in the Santa Barbara and Ventura counties. Brouwer used X-ray Fluorescence Spectroscopy to determine the amounts of certain trace elements within the obsidian arrowheads left behind by Chumash tribes. He...
Read MoreNew evidence for water ice and organics on Mercury
By Kim DeRose Planetary scientists have identified water ice and anomalously dark deposits within permanently shadowed regions at Mercury’s north pole. Using data collected by NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft, a UCLA team crafted the first accurate thermal model of the solar system’s innermost planet that successfully pinpoints extremely cold regions where ice has been found on or below the surface. They conclude that the newly discovered black deposits are a thin dark crust of residual organic material brought to the planet over the past several million years by water-rich asteroid and...
Read MoreSpecial Seminar: November 29th at 2pm
Post-doctoral scholar David Cebron will give a special seminar Thursday, November 29th, at 2pm in Geology 3814. The talk is entitled “Inertial waves & instabilities in planetary and stellar fluid interiors.” Most astrophysical bodies such as gaseous planets, stars or the Earth liquid core are rapidly rotating fluids which allow the propagation of inertial waves. These waves are excited by natural mechanical forcings (tides, precession, libration) always present in such systems. Forcings can excite one particular wave (direct resonance) or can couple waves via parametric...
Read MoreObserve the Moon Public Event: October 21, 2012
Join the Diviner Lunar Radiometer team and the UCLA Undergraduate Astronomical Society for a Moon-watching event on the evening of October 21st. Brush up on your Moon trivia, learn about the latest results from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and observe the Moon firsthand using UCLA’s 14-inch telescope! A few short talks given by researchers in astronomy and planetary science will begin at 6:30pm in the UCLA Planetarium (Mathematical Sciences 8224), with open observing and refreshments on the roof of the Mathematical Sciences building from 7:30-9pm. For more...
Read MoreDistinguished alumnus to give lecture on the search for extraterrestrial life
The UCLA Department of Earth and Space Sciences will be hosting its annual lecture, “Focusing the search for biosignatures on Mars”. The lecture will be held on Wednesday, November 28, 2012 in the Sequoia Room at the UCLA Faculty Center. The reception will begin at 5:30pm followed by the lecture at 7pm. Researcher Dorothy Oehler (M.S. ’67, Ph.D. ’73) is a planetary geologist and Precambrian paleontologist at Johnson Space Center (JSC). She is interested in finding ways to identify the biosignatures of potential extraterrestrial life, and is currently working to...
Read MoreExplore Your Universe: November 10, 2012
Explore Your Universe (EYU) is an annual event that will next be held on campus on November 10, 2012. EYU showcases science from a broad range of departments at UCLA in a format that is accessible to all members of the public from “K through gray”. Visit exhibits from 12-5pm with a night-observing session from 5-8pm (weather-permitting). Spread the word about the event with this Explore Your Universe 2012 flyer. For more information, visit: http://planets.ucla.edu/outreach/explore-your-universe/...
Read MoreUCLA scientist discovers plate tectonics on Mars
For years, many scientists had thought that plate tectonics existed nowhere in our solar system but on Earth. Now, a UCLA scientist has discovered that the geological phenomenon, which involves the movement of huge crustal plates beneath a planet’s surface, also exists on Mars. “Mars is at a primitive stage of plate tectonics. It gives us a glimpse of how the early Earth may have looked and may help us understand how plate tectonics began on Earth,” said An Yin, a UCLA professor of Earth and space sciences and the sole author of the new research. Read full UCLA Newsroom...
Read MoreESS professor named Fellow of the Meteoritical Society
Professor Ed Young of the Department of Earth & Space Sciences at UCLA was recently named a Fellow of the Meteoritical Society, an international organization dedicated to research and education on meteorites and other extraterrestrial materials. To read more about this honor and the Meteoritical Society, click here. To read more about Professor Young’s research, click...
Read MoreThe Grandest Canyon: New insight into Mars’ Valles Marineris
By Ivy S. Carpenter A giant gash scars the surface of Mars. Known as Valles Marineris, it is one of the largest and most recognizable topographic features in our solar system. Boasting a whopping 4000-km length and a depth ranging from 10 – 15 km, it easily dwarfs Earth’s Grand Canyon (which is a piddling 2 km deep). But despite the distinction of being the longest trough system in the solar system, its origin and formation remain enigmatic. In a new study selected as Editor’s Choice in the 2012 June 29th issue of Science and to be published in Lithosphere, UCLA’s Professor An Yin...
Read MoreIPLEX Ices & Organics in the Inner Solar System Conference Recap
The first IPLEX-hosted conference, titled Ices and Organics in the Inner Solar System, was held in the historic Royce Hall on the UCLA campus on June 12-13, 2012. The conference was a great success, with more than fifty attendees and twenty half-hour featured presentations that covered a diverse array of topics concerning organics found in the inner solar system. Highlights included several talks on recent work involving water-ice distribution and stability on the Moon, Mars and Mercury and recent results from the Mars Phoenix lander indicating the presence of unexpected salts on the...
Read MoreIn pursuit of Venus
Roughly 1,500 people formed long lines Tuesday on Janss Terrace to get a glimpse of an astronomical phenomenon that won’t happen again until 2117. For them, the wait to get a good look at the second and last transit of Venus of the 21st century was well worth it, thanks to telescopes and other solar sight devices manned by knowledgeable members of the Department of Earth and Space Sciences and graduate students with the campus organization, Astronomy Live! Read full article by Kathleen Micham
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