Content with the tag: “nai ucla team”
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Organic Haze, Glaciations and Multiple Sulfur Isotopes in the Mid-Archean Era
Shawn D. Domagal-Goldman (NAI PSU team), J.F. Kasting (NAI PSU team), D. T. Johnson (NAI CIW team), and J. Farquhar (NAI CIW and UCLA teams) have just published an article Organic haze, glaciations and multiple sulfur isotopes in the Mid-Archean era in Earth and Planetary Science Letters. The team used sulfur isotope signatures within ancient sediments and a photochemical model of sulfur dioxide photolysis to interpret the evolution of...
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Water Vapor Observed in Young Star System
NAI Postdoctoral Fellow Elise Furlan from NAI’s UCLA Team is co-author on a new paper in Nature this week reporting the development of a protoplanetary disk. Using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, observations were made of water vapor within the emerging system’s natal cloud. Lead author Dan Watson of the University of Rochester said, “For the first time, we are seeing water being delivered to the region where planets will most likely form.”
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Exoplanet Weather
Researchers from NAI’s UCLA, Carnegie Institution of Washington, and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Teams published this week in Science Express what may well be the first “Interstellar Weather Report.” Focusing on the innermost planet orbiting the star Upsilon Andromeda b, a hot Jupiter, the team used NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope to make measurements indicating that the temperature variation between the planets light and dark sides is 2,550 degrees Fahrenheit.
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Akilia Revisited
Scientists from NAI’s UCLA and University of Colorado, Boulder Teams recently published their new geologic and geochemical analysis of the ancient rocks on Akilia Island in West Greenland which were the subject of a controversial Nature paper ten years ago. This new study includes a thorough geologic map of the area, and, using the ion-microprobe to analyze carbon inclusions in the rock, outlines a carbon isotopic ratio indicative of life’s signature. Their work appears in the current issue...
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Imaging the Unseen
Researchers from NAI’s University of California, Los Angeles Team have pioneered a new imaging technique which allows them to non-destructively produce 3D images of ancient fossils. The technique, combining confocal microscopy and Raman spectroscopy, could be used on samples returned from Mars by future NASA missions. Their work on 650 million year old fossils from Kazakhstan is published in the February, 2006 issue of Astrobiology.
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A Window into the Subsurface Microbial Population
A new paper this week in PNAS highlights a collaboration between NAI Lead Teams at Penn State, University of Rhode Island, UCLA, and the Marine Biological Laboratory. Their research reveals that heterotrophic Archea dominate the scene in a variety of biogeochemically distinct sedimentary regions, and may constitute a significant portion of the prokaryotic biomass in Earth’s subsurface. Ecosystem-level carbon budgets suggest that community turnover times are on the order of 100-2,000 years.
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Dust Around an Old Star?
Investigators from NAI’s UCLA and* Carnegie Institution of Washington* Lead Teams observed dust orbiting an old, relatively dead star, GD 362, and published their results in the_ Astrophysical Journal_ this month. This enigmatic observation could form the basis for predictions about the end of our own solar system.
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A Solar Analogue Explored
Astronomers from NAI’s Lead Teams at UCLA and the Carnegie Institution of Washington describe in this week’s issue of Nature their observations of large quantities of warm dust debris surrounding a Sun-like star some 300 light years from Earth. The dust is orbiting close to the star, and is similar in composition to dust in the Solar System. The composition and quantity of the dust may indicate massive and/or frequent collisions of large objects, perhaps similar to the...
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A Cause for Methane on Mars
Members of NAI’s UCLA Lead Team published a paper in this month’s Geophysical Research Letters describing how hydrothermal fluid processes driven by a small subsurface magmatic intrusion can produce methane on Mars.
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Characterizing the Early Solar Nebula
A recent Nature paper from Jim Lyons and Ed Young of NAI’s UCLA Lead Team postulates a cause for oxygen isotope anomalies in meteorites that overthrows a long accepted explanation. They propose CO photodissociation due to a far ultraviolet flux caused by a nearby O or B star as a mechanism to produce the isotope fractionation that is consistent with the anomalies observed in the meteorites. The postulated presence of a nearby second star (within one parsec) means...
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A Mild, Habitable Hadean?
NAI’s Mark Harrison of the UCLA team co-authored a study published in this week’s Science describing a titanium thermometer technique used to measure the temperature at which ancient zircons from the Jack Hills in Western Australia formed. The results paint a mild picture of the Hadean, complete with an atmosphere and liquid water.
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