Pieces of the asteroid Bennu, collected by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, are being studied at Brown as part of an effort to better understand the solar system’s early history and the origins of materials necessary for life on Earth.
This summer, DEEPS Assistant Professor Emily H. G. Cooperdock, graduate student Anahi Carrera, and Columbia University Professor Steven L. Goldstein visited the island of Unalaska to collect samples that will help interpret data from a 2015 NSF GeoPRISMS campaign, as well as pave the way for future research.
Brown University researchers highlight the roles of carbon dioxide and ocean currents as key drivers of temperature fluctuations in the tropical Andes over a 16,000 year period.
Working with a 3-million-year-old Colombian sediment core in a research lab at Brown this summer, the rising sophomore is extracting ancient biological data to inform future climate models.
Brown's Initiative for Sustainable Energy recently announced Seed Research Awards for 2024-2025, including Assistant Professor Dan Ibarra for his project, “Investigating Mineralogical, Geochemical, & Thermodynamic Mechanisms Governing Lithium Enrichment in Lake Clay Deposits.”
Gabriel Traietti ‘25, concentrating in Geochemistry, investigates the terrestrial paleoclimate of the Congo River Basin in Senior Associate Dean James Russell’s lab. He emphasizes how DEEPS gave him the tools to explore his passion for reconstructing ancient climate to help anticipate the effects of climate change on a local level.
Assistant Professor Dan Ibarra and his team have published a special outreach article in in PAGES Horizons highlighting their cave monitoring efforts in the Philippines. Ibarra said, "it is exciting to share our efforts to develop this work in multiple cave systems in the Philippines over the last several years." The work is led by former Voss Postdoc Natasha Sekhon, co-authored by Celia Kong-Johnson, Justin Custado, Carlos CP David, Mónica Geraldes Vega, and many others, and made possible with support from the National Cave and Karst Research Institute and the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society (IBES).
Research Matters, hosted by the Graduate School, is an annual live event featuring short talks by Brown graduate students on why their research matters. DEEPS graduate student Alexia Rojas presented on her research, "Lead Absorption in Zeolites and Community Science."
Professor Tim Herbert commented on new research in Science, saying “The dance of global temperature is primarily not called by ice, but more likely by [carbon dioxide]."
Aiming to spark a love for learning, the annual student-organized academic tournament invites high schoolers to showcase knowledge, skills and enthusiasm for science in a fun, competitive atmosphere.
Brown research team finds small unmapped lakes in the Arctic are far less abundant than previously thought, greatly reducing the cumulative methane emissions they were thought to contribute to Earth’s atmosphere.
Assistant Professor Emily Cooperdock and colleagues have published new research on uranium isotopes in serpentinite rocks found both underwater and on land. The team discovered that the uranium isotope ratios in submarine serpentinites are influenced by seafloor weathering and differ from seawater ratios. Overall, the results show exciting evidence that U-isotopes can be used to measure recent weathering of ultramafic serpentinites. The findings also caution against using these systems as indicators of ancient geological events.
Assistant Professor James W. Dottin III is featured on a recent episode of PBS's science documentary series, NOVA. In the episode, "Ancient Earth: Birth of the Sky," scientists explore the creation of Earth's atmosphere and our familiar blue sky.
Building on a deep interest in synthetic biology, the rising Brown University senior spent his summer helping to develop a sustainable alternative to arsenic detection and removal methods.
Jim Russell, Senior Associate Dean of the Faculty and Professor of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences, has been elected as a Geological Society of America Fellow. Society Fellowship is an honor in recognition of a sustained record of distinguished contributions to the geosciences.
New research describes evidence that deep sea methane deposits change into gas more frequently than could be monitored previously and that a set of fossilized organisms has a unique ability to detect these releases.
A new U.S. Geological Survey reports that the world has enough rare earth minerals and other critical raw materials to switch from fossil fuels. “There are enough materials in reserves. The analysis is robust and this study debunks those (running out of minerals) concerns,” said DEEPS Assistant Professor Daniel Ibarra, who wasn’t part of the study but looks at lithium shortages.
Sharp fronts and eddies that are ubiquitous in the world ocean, as well as features such as shelf seas and under-ice-shelf cavities, are not captured in climate projections. Such small-scale processes can play a key role in how the large-scale ocean and cryosphere evolve under climate change, posing a challenge to climate models.
The field of seismology is entering a new era where our understanding of earthquakes and the solid earth is increasingly driven by new Big Data experiments and algorithms.