Caltech Geology and Planetary Science News Releases

Astronauts on the Web

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Thanks, in part, to its famed Graduate Aerospace Laboratories (GALCIT) and its historic ties to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech has attracted many students who at some point dreamed of riding a rocket into space. And thus far, 11 of them have actually become NASA astronauts.

Lean more about the Institute's astronaut corps in this slideshow, featuring some rarely seen images. For more coverage of Caltech's alumni astronauts, check out these Caltech News articles: "A Cosmic Reunion" and "A Little Science on the Moon."

Caltech Researchers Reveal Unexpected Sources of Nitrogen Fixation

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Caltech researchers led by assistant professor of geobiology Victoria Orphan have found that the members of a deep-sea symbiotic microbial community are able to fix nitrogen. The unexpected metabolic ability may help solve a lingering mystery about the world's nitrogen cycling budget. A paper about the work appears in the October 16 issue of the journal Science.

Caltech Scientists Discover Storms in the Tropics of Titan

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Saturn's moon Titan is dull, weatherwise. Nothing happens for years, making it hard to understand the carved channels that seem to line the surface. Now Titan has finally been caught in the act. Caltech planetary astronomer Mike Brown and his colleagues set a trap for Titan, waited years for it to be tripped, and, finally, nabbed their prey: bright but transient clouds over Titan's tropics, a region where clouds were thought unlikely to form.

Research Shows Earliest Animals Lived in Lake Environment

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Conventional wisdom has it that animal evolution began in the ocean, with animal life adapting to terrestrial environments much later in Earth history. But a UC Riverside–led team of researchers including Thomas F. Bristow, who is now Caltech's O K Earl Postdoctoral Scholar in Geology, has found that the first animal fossils in the paleontological record are actually preserved in ancient lake deposits, not marine. In their research, the authors focused on South China's Doushantuo Formation, one of the oldest fossil beds, which houses highly preserved fossils dated to about 600 million years ago. Their study was published in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Caltech, JPL Researchers Provide Evidence that Microbial Mats Helped Build 3.4-Billion-Year-Old Stromatolites

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Stromatolites are dome- or column-like sedimentary rock structures that are formed in shallow water, layer by layer, over long periods of geologic time. Now, researchers from Caltech and JPL have provided evidence that some of the most ancient stromatolites on our planet were built with the help of communities of equally ancient microorganisms, a finding that "adds unexpected depth to our understanding of the earliest record of life on Earth," notes JPL astrobiologist Abigail Allwood, a visitor in geology at Caltech. Their research, published in a recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), might also provide a new avenue for exploration in the search for signs of life on Mars.

Geology Grad Students Lead Kids on an Educational Hike (June 2009)

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Three graduate students from Caltech's Tectonics Observatory recently led a class of 40 sixth graders from Burbank Elementary School on a geology field trip through Eaton Canyon. The graduate students, Alan Chapman, Janet Harvey, and Steve Kidder, each led a third of the class on an exploration of the geological features of the canyon, teaching them about rocks and their origins, faults of different scales, why some boulders are rounded and others angular, and the difference between gabbro and granite.

As the groups hiked along, they whacked their way through bushes, threw rocks into streams, and made several stream crossings. Each of the students also had a chance to hammer on rocks to reveal fresh surfaces—hidden garnet was the students' favorite discovery. Finally, the entire class met together at a waterfall for lunch. One of the sixth graders said it was "the best field trip ever," and a chaperone mother pointed out, "Hiking isn't as interesting without a geologist along!"

Caltech Grad Students and Professor Participate in Local Public Middle School's Science and Math Fair

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Three graduate students and a professor from Caltech's Tectonics Observatory presented hands-on activities in Earth science at Sierra Madre Middle School's Science and Math Fair on February 18. About 70 of the school's sixth graders, along with their families, attended the event, at which the sixth graders presented posters of their science and math projects.

Graduate student Ravi Kanda used styrofoam and playdough models of earthquake faults to demonstrate how mountains are built. After moving the blocks along the faults, the students compared the resulting deformation of the playdough to actual photographs of different types of mountains and stream offsets from California and Nevada.

Using an earthquake machine (a spring-slider model), graduate student Ozgun Konca demonstrated how plate motions on the earth cause earthquakes. The students tested the intensity of an earthquake by putting lego buildings on one plate to see whether they would topple over, and a few students stayed on to complete a triangulation exercise using actual seismograms to locate the epicenter of an earthquake that occurred in California.

Sparking student interest in plate tectonics by showing the highly detailed USGS map "This Dynamic Earth," graduate student Michelle Selvans asked students to find patterns, such as mid-ocean ridges and earthquake and volcano locations. The students then examined different types of plate motions and identified which might form these different types of features.

Caltech Scientists Lead Deep-Sea Discovery Voyage

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Scientists from Caltech and an international team of collaborators have returned from a month-long deep-sea voyage to a marine reserve near Tasmania, Australia, that not only netted coral-reef samples likely to provide insight into the impact of climate change on the world's oceans, but also brought to light at least three never-before-seen species of sea life.

"It was truly one of those transcendent moments," says Caltech's Jess Adkins of the descents made by the remotely operated submersible Jason. Adkins was the cruise's lead scientist and is an associate professor of geochemistry and global environmental science at Caltech. "We were flying—literally flying—over these deep-sea structures that look like English gardens, but are actually filled with all of these carnivorous, Seuss-like creatures that no one else has ever seen."

Potential for Large Earthquake Off the Coast of Sumatra Remains Large, Says Caltech-Led Team of Scientists

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000

The subduction zone that brought us the 2004 Sumatra-Andaman earthquake and tsunami is ripe for yet another large event, despite a sequence of quakes that occurred in the Mentawai Islands area in 2007, according to a group of earthquake researchers led by scientists from the Tectonics Observatory at Caltech. "From what we saw," says geologist Jean-Philippe Avouac, director of the Tectonics Observatory and one of the paper's lead authors, "we can say with some confidence that we're probably not done with large earthquakes in Sumatra." Their findings were published in a letter in the December 4 issue of the journal Nature.