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We are the University of Chicago Department of the Geophysical Sciences. We study the history, interior, and exterior of Earth and other planets.
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Research Spotlight
Professor Sue Kidwell uses the fossil record from the last thousand years to understand changes in biological baselines due to human populations.
Learn More Spotlight ArchiveStudent / Alumni Spotlight
Francois Tissot works hard to measure and understand Uranium isotopes in rocks and meteorites to learn about the early Solar System and early Earth.
Learn More Spotlight ArchiveFaculty Spotlight
Associate Professor Tiffany Shaw uses fundamental principles from fluid dynamics to understand Earth's weather and climate.
Learn more about Tiffany See all PeopleGeophysical Science News
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Checlair’s Work On Tidally-Locked Planets Receives Public Attention
April 10, 2018
Graduate student Jade Checlair investigated whether tidally locked planets in habitable zones could ever be completely covered by ice, and her research has recently received popular attention online. Jade argues that tidally-locked planets could avoid a global ice-age because it would be difficult to completely glaciate the planet and they would possess a functioning silicate-weather feedback.
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Popovic explains melt pond patterns
April 07, 2018
Graduate student Predrag Popovic and associate professor Dorian Abbot, along with coauthors, have published a new mathematical model to explain the patterns of melt ponds on Arctic Sea ice. Melt ponds are critical for sea ice albedo and therefore modeling the loss of sea ice with global warming in global climate models.
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Kite Interviewed for Scientific American Article on Water Worlds
April 06, 2018
Recent astronomical data has indicated that water worlds are likely to be abundant across the cosmos, which has raised questions about how the carbon cycle would function, for example, on a planet covered in 200km of water.
A recent piece in Scientific American tries to answer that question and points to Geophysical Sciences Professor Edwin Kite's work on the habitibility of exoplanet waterworlds. Kite shows that carbon dioxide can shift between ocean and atmosphere to maintain a habitable surface temperature that persists for more than 1 billion years.
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Dauphas Group Tells New Story of Water on Earth
April 06, 2018
Geophysical Sciences Professor Nicolas Dauphas's recent work calls into question the assumption that the majority of water found on earth arrived after the great impact that split the earth and moon into two bodies. Recent isotopic analyses done by Professor Dauphas and his team indicate that most of the water on earth was accreted before the giant impact.