all Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences stories

Expert: Lift taboo on Earth engineering

404132862 — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 14:46:52 -0400

The effects of climate change are so uncertain and potentially long-lasting that policymakers should begin examining options that include geoengineering, an area that has so far been off-limits, according to a former Harvard researcher who is now a professor at the University of Calgary, Canada.

Huybers and Mahadevan named MacArthur Foundation Fellows

404132862 — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 09:36:02 -0400

Two Harvard faculty members who study present and past ice sheets and the science behind familiar objects and everyday events have been named recipients of prestigious MacArthur Foundation “genius” grants.

Geology is destiny

404132862 — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 13:51:17 -0400

As a teenager in Toronto in the 1950s, Paul Hoffman would spend hours in the Royal Ontario Museum studying its collection of rocks and minerals. He became a passionate collector, trading rocks with friends and exploring abandoned mines in search of crystals.

During his freshman year at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Hoffman landed a summer job with the Ontario Department of Mines, which dispatched him on a four-month journey to map rocks in northern Ontario. It was 1961 and his first field season.

Unusual Antarctic Microbes Live Life on a Previously Unsuspected Edge

50443248 — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 17:03:40 -0400

Microbes thrive in harsh, isolated water under Antarctic glacier

50443248 — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 14:46:13 -0400

A reservoir of briny liquid buried deep beneath an Antarctic glacier supports hardy microbes that have lived in isolation for millions of years, researchers report this week in the journal Science.

Taking a stride toward synthetic life

50443248 — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 19:29:28 -0500

Harvard scientists have cleared a key hurdle in the creation of synthetic life, assembling a cell’s critical protein-making machinery in an advance with both practical, industrial applications and that advances the basic understanding of life’s workings.

Riding — and reading — the Earth tide

404132862 — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 14:39:51 -0500

Once a day, Miaki Ishii rides the Earth tide, rising slowly — along with her desk, chair, and entire office — 20 to 30 centimeters before sinking back again.

Ishii isn’t alone on her little journey. She makes it with the rest of us, together with our desks and chairs, houses and office buildings, rising in concert as the solid earth responds to the tug of the moon and the sun.

The Earth tide is a little-known daily event, similar to the oceans’ more familiar tides. But the sun and moon’s gravity doesn’t just pull on water, it deforms the Earth itself, causing the ground beneath us to bulge toward the pulling heavenly body.

Hotter seasons coming earlier, research finds

404132862 — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 14:54:04 -0500

An analysis of global temperatures between 1850 and 2007 has illuminated some climate change details, showing that winter temperatures have risen more rapidly than summer temperatures and that the seasons are coming nearly two days earlier than they were 50 years ago.

Perhaps most worrisome, however, is that none of the dozens of computerized climate models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – the globe-spanning collaboration of scientists that analyzes climate change scenarios – had predicted the earlier seasons.

Climate options must include ‘all of the above’

404132862 — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 16:06:21 -0500

Climate change has so much momentum behind it that “either/or” discussions about options are meaningless because it’ll take all we can do just to arrest carbon dioxide at levels double those in preindustrial times, a top climate scientist said in a talk last month.

Researchers study glaciers on Earth’s coldest desert

404132862 — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 08:46:18 -0500

It’s December, and undergraduate Jenny Middleton bundles up to face the cold. While all across campus, students, and faculty don their winter gear, Middleton is not preparing for the New England winter; she is preparing for an expedition through the Earth’s coldest desert: the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica.

For science adviser, dogged work against global perils

404132862 — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 08:56:21 -0500

John P. Holdren named President-elect Obama’s Science Advisor

404132862 — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 12:13:59 -0500

President-elect Barack Obama today announced that he has selected Harvard’s John P. Holdren to serve as Assistant to the President for Science and Technology in the new administration. The post, popularly known as “the President’s science advisor,” also includes directorship of the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President and requires Senate confirmation.

Global warming threatens his nation's existence, a president warns

404132862 — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 13:55:55 -0400

During a talk at Harvard, the leader of the South Pacific island nation of Kiribati laid out an extraordinary plan that would scatter his people through the nations of the world as rising sea levels submerge the islands they have called home for centuries.

Mars' water appears to have been too salty to support life

yvette — Wed, 28 May 2008 13:10:42 -0400

A new analysis of the Martian rock that gave hints of water on the Red Planet -- and, therefore, optimism about the prospect of life -- now suggests the water was more likely a thick brine, far too salty to support life as we know it.

The finding, by scientists at Harvard University and Stony Brook University, is detailed this week in the journal Science.

Sulfur dioxide may have helped maintain a warm early Mars

404132862 — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 12:56:35 -0500

Sulfur dioxide (SO2) may have played a key role in the climate and geochemistry of early Mars, geoscientists at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) suggest in the Dec. 21 issue of the journal Science. Their hypothesis may resolve longstanding questions about evidence that the climate of the Red Planet was once much warmer than it is today.