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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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