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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…

Could slag from steel production be used to soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and fight global warming? Over the last decade, scientists have been exploring whether slag heaps can hoover up and lock away carbon dioxide through a process known as sequestration. Research presented at this year’s Goldschmidt conference explores the carbon cap…

An ancient patch of rock lying beneath the English Midlands and South Wales is giving scientists a window into the processes happening deep below mountain ranges like the Himalayas.  The analysis of rocks from the so-called Midlands Microcraton reveals how anomalous chunks of thick, strong rock in Earth’s outer layer can shape mountain chains. The …

A geophysicist from Cambridge Earth Sciences is part of an international expedition that will drill beneath the seabed near Iceland in order to investigate how the slow stirring of the Earth’s deep interior affects the surface we live on.The International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) expedition will target the flanks of the Reykjanes Ridge, where…

Research led by PhD student Olivia Hogg explores how the water content of magma can impact the formation of ore deposits around volcanoes.The results, published last month in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, show that magma containing more water is most likely to produce the metal-rich fluids essential for ore formation.Most of the metals we us…

As the Arctic warms, shrinking glaciers are exposing bubbling groundwater springs which could provide an underestimated source of the potent greenhouse gas methane, finds new research published today in Nature Geoscience.The study, led by researchers from the University of Cambridge and the University Centre in Svalbard, Norway, identified large st…

We are thrilled to congratulate Helen Williams, Jerome Neufeld, Sanne Cottaar, Daniel Field and Oli Shorttle on their promotions to Professor. The promotion recognises their valuable contributions to research and teaching in the Department of Earth Sciences and across the wider University.Helen joined the Department in 2016. Her research explores h…

Trees were making a clear impact on the landscape as far back as the Late Devonian, around 360 million years ago, according to a new study from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences.The researchers studied fossil trees preserved at Ireland’s oldest fossil forest site, in County Wexford. The fossilized remains show that trees influenced rivers by…