Press Releases

Carnegie geochemist Richard Carlson will receive the 2008 Norman L. Bowen Award from the American Geophysical Union. Named in honor of pioneering experimental petrologist and long-time Geophysical Laboratory staff member Norman Bowen, the award is given annually for outstanding contributions to volcanology, geochemistry or petrology.

The National Association of Geoscience Teachers has awarded the 2008 James H. Shea Award to science writer Alan Cutler at the Carnegie Institution. The Shea Award is given annually. Other winners of the Shea Award include Science magazine writer Richard Kerr, Pulitzer Prize winner John McPhee, and Stephen Jay Gould.

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Using new techniques developed by Carnegie’s Erik Hauri, scientists have discovered that tiny beads of volcanic glasses collected from two Apollo missions to the Moon contain water. Contrary to previous thought, water was not entirely vaporized in the violent events that formed the Moon. The results call into question some critical aspects of the “giant impact” theory of the Moon’s formation and may have implications for the origin of possible water reservoirs at the Moon’s poles. more »

Although measurement techniques surrounding earthquakes have improved enormously over the last few decades, it has remained very difficult to measure changes in the crust that could enable earthquake prediction. Now, Carnegie’s Paul Silver and team have measured interesting changes in the speed of seismic waves that preceded two small earthquakes—an encouraging sign for the field of earthquake prediction. more »

 Carnegie’s Russell Hemley, director of the institution’s Geophysical Laboratory, was elected Honoris Causa Professor for Energetics, Mechanics, Machinery, and Control Systems of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The degree is awarded to the most eminent foreign scientists. more »

Biofuels can be a sustainable part of the world’s energy future, especially if bioenergy agriculture is developed on currently abandoned or degraded agricultural lands, report scientists from the Carnegie Institution and Stanford University. Using these lands for energy crops, instead of converting existing croplands or clearing new land, avoids competition with food production and preserves carbon-storing forests needed to mitigate climate change.

Higher than expected levels of sodium found in a 4.6 billion-year-old meteorite suggest that the dust clouds from which the building blocks of the Earth and neighboring planets formed were much denser than previously supposed.

The Carnegie Institution’s Department of Plant Biology today announced the launch of a new web-based resource that promises to help researchers around the world meet increasing demands for food production, animal feed, biofuels, industrial materials, and new medicines. It is the Plant Metabolic Network (PMN) at http://www.plantcyc.org/ more »