Maggie Gonzalez, a 2025 Leadership Alliance REU student, has published a paper in Geophysical Research Letters with DEEPS Postdoc Lily Dove and Assistant Professor Mara Freilich. The publication explores the biogeochemical and seasonal properties of Antarctic Winter Water using data collected by profiling floats. Gonzalez developed an algorithm to detect a layer of water in the Southern Ocean from observations, as well as the first description of the seasonal and geographical patterns of the biogeochemistry of this water.

Solar sails aren't only good for getting to Mars and beyond. In fact, they can be more efficient when going towards the Sun. Professor Steve Parman joins Youtuber Fraser Cain to discuss his proposed Mercury Scout mission.

In a recent episode on Planetary Radio, Postdoc Adomas (Adam) Valantinas joins host Sarah Al-Ahmed to discuss his team’s discovery that Mars’ iconic red dust is likely dominated not by hematite but by a hydrated mineral called ferrihydrite.

As we prepare for the Fall 2025 semester, DEEPS is proud to announce our upcoming course options.

Experts react to the US Environmental Protection Agency's announcement that it would undertake massive deregulatory actions, including DEEPS Chair Meredith Hastings and IBES Director Kim Cobb. In an interview with The Herald, Professor Meredith Hastings explained that the EPA’s regulatory system may not be perfect, but federal oversight has been historically crucial in improving air and water quality at state and local levels.

During the 2025 Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, researchers, including DEEPS Professor Jim Head, shared how NASA NIAC-funded technologies could enable building and maintaining surface habitats in lunar lava tubes and dike tip voids for long-term human space exploration.

Rescue teams in Myanmar and Thailand are searching for survivors after Friday’s 7.7 magnitude quake that toppled buildings and damaged roads on Sunday, March 30th. As rescue teams continue to search, experts share the factors that impact their chances for survival. Trapped victims are more likely to survive if they are in a debris-free pocket that prevents major injury while they await rescue, like under a sturdy desk, said Professor Victor Tsai in an email.

NASA’s Curiosity rover has detected what could be a chemical relic of long-ago life on Mars: long-chain organic molecules likely derived from fatty acids, a common building block of cell membranes on Earth. DEEPS Professor Jack Mustard commented on these exciting findings, suggesting that Curiosity’s successor, Perseverance, will likely find similar molecules.

In a new article in Nature Review Earth & Environment, Postdoctoral Fellow Lily Dove explores how, with Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite data, oceanographers are beginning to understand the global distribution of submesoscale currents and their associated vertical motions. This information will inform global and regional-scale climate models, improving predictions of heat and carbon storage in a changing climate.

Professor Amanda Lynch was recently named to the Advisory Council of the The Hague Institute for Global Justice: North World Approach. Building upon the success of The Washington Compact for Off World Governance, The Hague Institute for Global Justice is pioneering a new frontier in global governance with The North World Approach. This initiative is a necessary step towards ensuring sustainable, cooperative, and just governance in one of the world’s most strategically significant and rapidly changing regions—the Arctic.

A team of six DEEPS researchers (including Ewerton Santos, Bumsoo Kim, Rafael Tarozo, Sarah McGrath, Marcelo Alexandre, and Professor Yongsong Huang) recently published an article in "Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry" presenting a new reactor system that greatly outperforms the conventional reactor system in efficiency, precision, and accuracy.

Sarah Esenther won within the Hydrology section for her AGU presentation, "Machine learning empowers remote sensing of ice shelf supraglacial stream works." Yiran Huang won within the Tectonophysics section for her talk, “Investigating Layered Cratonic Lithosphere in the Fennoscandian Shield”. Jared Nirenberg won within the Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology for his presentation, “Plant Waxes Record East Antarctic Hydroclimate during Miocene Global Warmth.” Lastly, Leadership Alliance REU student Margaret Gonzalez, who worked with Mara Freilich and Lily Dove in the summer of 2024, won in the Ocean Sciences section for her presentation, “The importance of Antarctic Winter Water in the global carbon cycle.” Congratulations to all four winners for their hard work and achievements!

Brown University's Ibarra Lab recently helped verify a meteorite that landed in a Pennsylvania resident's ice cream.

Pope Francis has appointed five new members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, including Maria Zuber, a 1985 graduate of Brown University and an accomplished planetary scientist involved in multiple NASA missions.

NASA has chosen eight scientists to participate in its Lucy mission, including Fiona Nichols-Fleming, a 2023 graduate of Brown's Department of Earth, Environmental Sciences and currently a Postdoctoral Research Geologist at the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. The Lucy mission aims to study the Jupiter Trojan asteroids, which are considered remnants from the early solar system.

As President Donald Trump’s administration looks to reverse a cornerstone finding that climate change endangers human health and welfare, scientists say they just need to look around because it’s obvious how bad global warming is and how it’s getting worse. “There is no possible world in which greenhouse gases are not a threat to public health,” said IBES Director and DEEPS Professor Kim Cobb. “It’s simple physics coming up against simple physiology and biology, and the limits of our existing infrastructure to protect us against worsening climate-fueled extremes.”