March 30, 2023
New research by former postdoctoral scholars Jennifer Bergner and Darryl Seligman published in Nature offers a suprisingly simple explanation for interstellar visitor ‘Oumuamua’s weird orbit.
Read the University of Chicago news article here.
The Nature article, "Acceleration of 1I/‘Oumuamua from radiolytically produced H2 in H2O ice," can be found here.
March 27, 2023
While sweltering temperatures and acidic clouds form an environment too hostile for life on modern-day Venus, the question of whether the planet was habitable in its early history remains. Results from a new study by graduate student Sasha Warren and Associate Professor Edwin Kite suggest that Venus was unlikely to have ever been a habitable planet.
The study has been published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
To read a summary of the work, click here.
February 24, 2023
The finding was made by measuring the lingering movement registered by GPS sensors on islands in the wake of a deep earthquake in the Pacific Ocean near Fiji. Published Feb. 22 in Nature, the study demonstrates a new method to measure the fluidity of the Earth’s mantle.
“Even though the mantle makes up the largest part of Earth, there’s still a lot we don’t know about it,” said Sunyoung Park, a geophysicist with the University of Chicago and the lead author on the study. “We think there’s a lot more we can learn by using these deep earthquakes as a way to probe these questions.”
By examining how the Earth deformed over time, they found evidence of a layer about 50-miles thick that is less viscous (that is, “runnier”) than the rest of the mantle, sitting at the bottom of the upper mantle layer. They think this layer may extend around the entire globe.