News

Mountain belts on Earth are some of the most striking manifestations of plate tectonics. The lifecycle of mountain building—where plates collide and are later uplifted and eroded—can also profoundly impact our climate and global carbon cycle over millions of years, as well as fuelling earthquake hazards.  Understanding mountain building, or ‘orogen…

How can thinking and expertise from a discipline forged in Earth’s 4.6 billion-year-old history inform the search for life beyond our solar system? This month’s edition of Elements Magazine International, titled ‘Geoscience Beyond the Solar System’, and co-edited by Cambridge University’s Dr Oliver Shorttle, explores what the field of Exoplanetary …

An asteroid strike 66 million years ago wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs and devastated the Earth’s forests, but tree-dwelling ancestors of primates may have survived it, according to a new study published today in the journal Ecology and Evolution.   Overall, the study supports the hypothesis that the widespread destruction of forests following …

Members of the Field Palaeobiology Research Group at the Department of Earth Sciences, together with staff at the Sedgwick Museum, were nominated for the Vice Chancellor's Collaboration Award for their exhibit, ‘Dawn of the Wonderchicken: the Oldest Modern Bird’. The Vice Chancellor’s Awards scheme was established in 2016 to recognise and celebrate…

The Integrated Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) has scheduled a new project – Expedition 397 –  that will build a detailed history of Earth’s climate extending back over the last 5 million years.The mission will collect marine sediments from off Portugal’s coast that preserve a detailed history of rapid climate and ocean circulation changes over mill…

CAMBRIDGE -- the Cambridge Centre for Climate Science and Cambridge Zero today held a panel discussion on the recently published IPCC Working Group I report, Climate Change 2021: the Physical Science Basis. The panel was chaired by Eric Wolff, Professor and ice core scientist at the Department of Earth Sciences, Cambridge, and one of the reviewers …

Dr Alex Liu, Lecturer at Cambridge University’s Department of Earth Sciences, will be running in the Cambridge Half Marathon and Town and Gown 10kmnext month, raising funds for family resources at the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences. Normally looking for fossils of the earliest known animals – bizarre anemone and worm-like creatures that once inh…

What conditions lead to the formation of hydrogen needed for early life on rocky planets? Cambridge Earth Science's Dr Paul Rimmer and Prof. Nick Tosca recently featured amongst a panel of earth scientists who discussed this conundrum.Prebiotic chemistry deals with the synthesis and interaction of those organic compounds which might have been prese…

Two Cambridge Earth Scientists have been awarded UKRI Future Leaders Fellowships to help them develop innovative research projects.Dr Owen Weller and Dr David Wallis will be working on solutions to some of the world’s key challenges; from developing new technologies to help identify valuable metal deposits required for a low carbon future, to impro…

C&EN, the weekly news magazine of the American Chemical Society (ACS), has unvelied its annual “Talented 12” list.Dr Emilie Ringe, who is jointly based at Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences and Materials Science, is recognised for her pioneering work on plasmonic nanoparticles. These miniscule particles act like bright beacons, harnessing an…

CAMBRIDGE -- The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has today released the most extensive report on climate change since 2013. Over the last eight years, scientists have benefited from improved measurements of our climate and more powerful models which are able to simulate future scenarios with increased accuracy. They have also been …

Scientists from Cambridge University and NTU Singapore have found that slow-motion collisions of tectonic plates drag more carbon into Earth’s interior than previously thought. They found that the carbon drawn into Earth’s interior at subduction zones - where tectonic plates collide and dive into Earth’s interior - tends to stay locked away at dept…

Did you know that scientists can use dust trapped on tree leaves to monitor air pollution? Hassan Aftab Sheikh, PhD student in our Department, is developing this monitoring technique further and is also exploring if trees can filter harmful particles from the air. These particles, which measure less than a billionth of a metre, are becoming more co…

Microscopic imperfections in rock crystals deep beneath Earth’s surface play a deciding factor in how the ground slowly moves and resets in the aftermath of major earthquakes, says new research involving the University of Cambridge.The stresses resulting from these defects – which are small enough to disrupt the atomic building blocks of a crystal …

Many congratulations to Dr Sasha Turchyn who is the recipient of the 2021 R. Berner Lectureship. The Lectureship, which will be presented at the Goldschmidt 2021 conference, is awarded to scientists who show an 'exceptional ability to define globally important biogeochemical processes, develop new understanding, and significantly advance the corres…