News

Carbon capture and storage or ‘CCS’ – capturing CO2 emissions from industrial processes and injecting it deep underground – has been recognised by the IPCC for its potential to help nations meet net-zero targets by 2050. For this reason, interest in CCS is growing, but key questions remain as to its feasibility and costs. One priority for geologist…

In this blog, PhD student Peter Methley describes the role of the oceans in cycling carbon through Earth’s history, and explains his lab experiments to recreate Precambrian seawater and crystallize ancient carbonate minerals in the lab.What makes fizzy drinks fizz? Carbonated drinks, like lemonade, contain dissolved carbon dioxide that bubbles out …

PhD student Matthew Morris gives a round‑up of Cambridge’s critical‑metals research presented at the Mineral Deposits Studies Group Conference.Earlier this month, a group of Cambridge researchers made the journey across a snow-covered Britain to Cardiff for the annual winter conference of the Mineral Deposits Studies Group (MDSG). Our group was led…

Tectonic activity is constantly reshaping Earth’s surface—ploughing continents together to build lofty mountains or pulling them apart so they may become basins or oceans.Researchpresented at this year’s AGU Annual Meeting explores the rifting process in the Main Ethiopian Rift—part of a major fault system that is pulling East Africa in two to even…

A Cambridge geochemist, who will represent Great Britain at a major Latin dance world championship, had to keep on top of practice during fieldwork expeditions, and even rehearsed her steps on Greenland’s windswept tundra – in between polar bear watches.Dr Carrie Soderman – who is investigating rare earth elements and why they form in particular en…

The Teaching Team held the inaugural Winter Lecture on 5 December. The event was an opportunity to come together at the end of Michaelmas term to hear from one of our Emeritus faculty members, Professor Dave Norman, who delivered a lecture titled ‘Dinosaurs: are their evolutionary origins and relationships problematic? … and … should we care?’Dave …

New evidence reveals that unmelted asteroids originating from different parts of the Solar System were a key source of volatile elements during the formation of Earth and Mars.Researchers from the University of Cambridge and Imperial College London measured zinc isotopes within Martian meteorites, tracing their unique signature to volatile-rich unm…

PhD student Frankie Butler reflects on navigating fieldwork with a disability, her recent travels to Ireland and Iceland in search of igneous rocks, and how she is working to make earth sciences fieldwork more accessible to all. My researchI’m Frankie Butler (aka Francesca), a second-year PhD student working with Prof. John Maclennan and Prof. Mari…

A new study reveals why rocks within some mountain ranges get hot enough to form lithium-rich deposits—insights that could help pinpoint untapped sources of this critical mineral.Dubbed the ‘white gold’ of the energy transition, lithium is essential for batteries that power electric vehicles and store renewable energy. “We’re currently not producin…

A new study has uncovered how tiny differences in boron atoms can help scientists better predict the long-term behaviour of glass used to store hazardous waste. The findings, published in Environmental and Biogeochemical Processes, could improve forecasts of how radioactive materials are released from storage over thousands of years.Glass is often …

Of all songbirds, the bowerbird has perhaps one of the strangest courtship displays. To attract a mate, males of the species build arched structures or ‘bowers’ using twigs, embellished with colourful objects such as leaves, fruit and even plastic—behaviour famously captured in David Attenborough’s documentaries.Now, research led by the University …

PhD student Julian Pahl recounts his fieldwork in Hawaiʻi this summer, where he got a chance to sample historic lava flows and witness the ongoing eruption of Kīlauea.Hi! I am Julian, a second-year PhD student specialising in igneous petrology at Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences. My research focuses on the magmatic processes of active volca…

Buried in ancient seafloor sediments dating back millions of years lie minuscule magnetic fossils—fragments left behind by a mysterious, unidentified organism. Shaped like spearheads, spindles, bullets and needles, and no larger than a bacterial cell, scientists are confident these magnetofossils are biological in origin, but they don’t know what c…

As her plane approached Victoria Island in Nunavut, Canada, Kate Oglethorpe caught her first glimpse of the white and expansive Arctic, and the study region of her PhD.Normally Oglethorpe studies the Arctic Ocean from her desk at Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences, where she uses publicly available ocean data to examine how the region's ocean…

Flightless birds such as ostriches, emus, rheas, and kiwis inhabit far-flung corners of the Southern Hemisphere, but how did these grounded birds spread so far and wide? New research sheds light on the mystery, showing they had ancestors that could likely fly across oceans.  Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the Smithsonian National …