News & Events

News

  • Jablonski and Edie Reveal Surprising Response to Mass Extinction Events in Recent Article

    January 09, 2018

    In an article for the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Professor David Jablonski and Graduate Student Stewart Edie reveal a surprising fact about mass extinction events: the robustness of ecological variety that remains in the face of mass die-offs of species. Their research shows that despite the high number of species that die out during these types of events the 'functional diversity' of an ecosystem, i.e. the various modalities through which species survive relative to their ecosystem, remains fairly constant.

  • MacAyeal Cited in New Yorker’s ‘8 Sounds That Defined 2017’

    January 03, 2018

    Professor Doug MacAyeal's involvement with the public-art piece "White Wanderer" was marked by the New Yorker magazine as a defining moment of 2017. Professor MacAyeal provided a seven minute audio track of iceberg B15 breaking off from the Antarctic ice shelf which the artists used in their installation.

  • Dauphas Offers Comprehensive Theory for Solar System Formation

    December 27, 2017

    In the December 22nd edition of the Astrophysical Journal Professor Nicholas Dauphas lays out a comprehensive theory for how our solar system could have formed in the wind-blown bubbles around a giant, long-dead star. His work addresses a nagging cosmic mystery about the abundance of two elements in our solar system compared to the rest of the galaxy. The general prevailing theory is that our solar system formed billions of years ago near a supernova. But the new scenario instead begins with a giant type of star called a Wolf-Rayet star, which is more than 40 to 50 times the size of our own sun.

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