October 22, 2020
What factors controlled the accumulation of atmospheric oxygen gas (O2) early in the history of Earth? In a paper just published in Science, graduate student Andy Heard and Louis Block Professor Nicolas Dauphas used high-precision iron isotopic measurements of Archean-Paleoproterozoic sediments, with ages between 3.8 billion and 2.3 billion years ago, and laboratory data about synthetic pyrites to show that pyrite, or iron sulfide, burial could have resulted in net O2 export. These reactions therefore may have contributed to early episodes of transient oxygenation before the Great Oxidation Event that began about 2.4 billion years ago.
September 22, 2020
Hubble Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr. Jenny Bergner, shared her thoughts on the possibility of life on Venus with WGN9.
September 22, 2020
Professor David Jablonski discusses how life bounces back after mass extinctions with National Geophic in "How apocalypses paved the way for humans (and terror birds)"