News

A new MPhil in Quantitative Climate and Environmental Science will equip scientists with skills to work with environmental data and address the myriad challenges associated with climate change. Applications are now open, with the first cohort starting in October 2024. The 10-month cross-departmental programme, hosted by the School of the Physical S…

Rob Theodore, Exhibitions and Displays Coordinator at the Sedgwick Museum, has been interested in the natural world since he moved from Greater London to the Cambridgeshire Fens when he was four. Rob puts his love of all things palaeontology down to a book, the ‘Sainsbury’s Book of Dinosaurs’, which his dad gave him soon after they moved.Now Rob ge…

Cambridge Earth Science’s Professors Sally Gibson and Sergei Lebedev have been awarded a £1 million NERC Pushing the Frontiers grant to explore the processes that create rare earth metals needed for modern technology. Rare earth elements are used in anything from smartphones and computers to products needed for green energy technologies — including…

Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the Institut of Teknologi Bundung, in Indonesia, are working together to understand earthquake risk at the site of Indonesia’s new capital city, which is being relocated from Jakarta to Nusantra, in Indonesian Borneo. Their work could help build the new city in a way that is protected from earthquake…

Following a swarm of earthquakes on Iceland’s Reykjanes Peninsula, the country is now on high alert over a possible eruption. There have been three eruptions in the Reykjanes area in the last three years: one in 2021, 2022 and 2023. Scientists are carefully watching the unfolding seismic activity and ground deformation, which is a symptom of magma …

For alumni especially, James Jackson is one of the best-known and most energetic members of the Earth Sciences department, and so it comes as a surprise to find that he has reached the official retirement age for academics. Here, the even older Nigel Woodcock looks back on James’s teaching, research and administrative career, and finds out what his…

This half term, visitors to Cambridge’s Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences will get a chance to listen in on the mesmerising and eerie sounds of our planet. The family-friendly installation and activities are free and will run from the 24th October to the 4th November. Conversations between whales in the oceans, the low throb of ships engines, burst…

Professor Rich Harrison will be giving the Edward Bullard Lecture at AGU 2023. The Edward Bullard Lecture is presented at AGU’s annual meeting by a scientist who has made significant contributions in the field of geomagnetism, paleomagnetism, or electromagnetism. It is named to honor the work and life of geophysicist Edward Crisp Bullard, who studi…

A new study led by Cambridge University confirms that planting hedges between roadsides and school playgrounds can dramatically reduce children’s exposure to traffic-related particle pollution. The research, a collaboration with Lancaster University, found that hedges can act as protective barriers against air pollution from major city roads by soa…

This week sees the launch of Cambridge’s new MPhil qualification in Planetary Sciences and Life in the Universe. The new programme will be jointly taught and led by astronomers, chemists, zoologists, plant biologists, and earth scientists. Applications for the course are now open. The MPhil is a 10-month cross-departmental programme designed to del…

This summer, a group of intrepid students headed down to Provence for our first environmental geochemistry field trip. The students received training that will prepare them for their geochemistry-focussed final year project; an alternative to the longstanding and successful traditional mapping project. According to Ed Tipper, co-director of undergr…

Oscar Branson and his research group are on Green Island, Taiwan, for the next month, studying how a type of plankton called forams make their shells. The team, including PhD students Madi East, Winnie Fang and Alice Ball, will be diving off the coast of Green Island to collect forams by hand each day.  Back in their make-shift lab, they will then …

Around 1.1 million years ago extreme glacial cooling likely caused an extinction of early humans in Europe, according to a study led by UCL and involving scientists from the University of Cambridge.The oldest known human remains in Europe have been recovered from Iberia and suggest that early humans had arrived from southwest Αsia by about 1.4 mill…

The move from fossil fuels toward renewables is underway. But the energy transition requires large amounts of raw materials — such as copper, nickel and lithium — for use in anything from wind turbines to car batteries. How can research at Cambridge help in locating these critical supplies? Charlie Beard, postdoctoral research associate working on …

Ancient rocks from the Isle of Rum in northwest Scotland are playing an important role in an international space mission to discover more about Mars.A group of scientists, including from the University of Cambridge, have this week been collecting samples of rock from the NatureScot National Nature Reserve (NNR) as part of the NASA and European Spac…