Carbon-boron clathrate cage with strontium inside, courtesy Tim Strobel
Matter at Extreme States
Washington, DC— A long-sought-after class of “superdiamond” carbon-based materials with tunable mechanical and electronic properties was predicted and synthesized by Carnegie’s Li Zhu and Timothy Strobel.
Matter at Extreme States
Washington, DC— Every school child learns about the water cycle—evaporation, condensation, precipitation, and collection.
Matter at Extreme States
Washington, DC— Pressure improves the ability of materials to turn heat into electricity and could potentially be used to create clean generators, according to new work from a team that includes Carnegie’s Alexander Goncharov and Viktor Struzhkin published in 
Matter at Extreme States
New materials can contribute potential solutions to many societal issues—from increasing access to clean drinking water to improving solar panel efficiency.
Department
Former-GL postdoc Sergey Lobanov received the Mineral and Rock Early Career Award from AGU.
Department
AGU announced the 2019 Fellows. Included are Bob Hazen and Mike Walter of GL.
Department
GL welcomed six wonderful interns this summer and DTM welcomed five. Their diligence and determination impressed us all summer. We know that they will do incredible things in the future.
Planetary Science
A system of categorization that reflects not just a mineral's chemistry and crystalline structure, but also the physical, chemical, or biological processes by which it formed, would be capable of recognizing that nanodiamonds from space are fundamentally different from diamonds formed in Earth's depths.
Materials
Active materials can interchange types of energy. In a new cover article in the journal molecules, Geophysical Lab Staff Scientist Ronald Cohen and his colleague Haiwu Zhang report on predictions of a new class of polar metallocene crystals, which may be useful as active materials.
Department
Geophysical Laboratory is pleased to announce the launch of the new Global Visitors Program.
Department
Congratulations to Ms. Carolyn Beaumont, a senior at the Potomac School, who won 5th place in the prestigious 78th Regeneron Science Talent Search.
Department
Students from AJAS visited the BBR campus during their time in Washington, D.C. in February.
Astrobiology
Washington, DC—Carnegie’s Andrew Steele is a member of the Earth First Origins project, led by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Karyn Rogers, which has been awarded a $9 million grant by NASA’s Astrobiology Program.
Washington, DC—The density of rock layers on the terrain that climbs from the base of Mars’ Gale Crater to Mount Sharp is less dense than expected, according to the latest report on the Red Planet’s geology from a team of scientists including Carnegie’s Shaunna Morrison.
Congratulations to Carolyn Beaumont and Peiqi Chen for being selected as top 300 scholars in the Regeneron Science Talent Search.
Students, are you interested in a career in science? Would you like an opportunity to be mentored by and work alongside world-renowned scientists? Internships correspond with the academic calendar, and cover the summer period from the end of May/June 2020 through July/August 2020. The positions offer flexible work hours and duration, but with a target of a minimum of a two-month internship.
The Geophysical Laboratory is pleased to announce the arrival of new Staff Scientist, Dr. Sally Tracy. Sally applies cutting edge experimental and analytical techniques to interrogate the fundamental physical behavior of materials at extreme conditions.
Department
The AGU Fall Meeting 2018 took place in Washington, DC from December 10-14.  Many staff members and postdoctoral associates from the Geophysical Laboratory attended.   We posted live updates on each day's science presentations here, and on Facebook, Twitter, YouTubeand Instagram.
Planetary Science
Mars’ organic carbon may have originated from a series of electrochemical reactions between briny liquids and volcanic minerals, according to new analyses of three Martian meteorites from a team led by the Geophysical Laboratory’s Andrew Steele published in Science Advances.
Department
A new Venture Grant has been awarded to the Geophysical Laboratory’s Dionysis Foustoukos and Sue Rhee of the Department of Plant Biology, with colleague Costantino Vetriani of Rutgers University for their project Deciphering Life Functions in Extreme Environments.
Matter at Extreme States
Lab-based mimicry allowed an international team of physicists including the Geophysical Laboratory’s Alexander Goncharov to probe hydrogen under the conditions found in the interiors of giant planets—where experts believe it gets squeezed until it becomes a liquid metal, capable of conducting electricity. Their work is published in Science.
Matter at Extreme States
Blue diamonds—like the world-famous Hope Diamond at the National Museum of Natural History—formed up to four times deeper in the Earth’s mantle than most other diamonds, according to new work by Carnegie’s Steven Shirey, Emma Bullock, and Jianhua Wang and published on the cover of Nature.
Matter at Extreme States
New work from a team led by the Geophysical Laboratory’s Alexander Goncharov confirms that nitrogen, the dominant gas in Earth’s atmosphere, becomes a metallic fluid when subjected to the extreme pressure and temperature conditions found deep inside the Earth and other planets. Their findings are published by Nature Communications.
Geochemistry
A team of scientists including the Geophysical Laboratory’s Michael Ackerson and Bjørn Mysen revealed that granites from Yosemite National Park contain minerals that crystallized at much lower temperatures than previously thought possible. This finding upends scientific understanding of how granites form and what they can teach us about our planet’s geologic history.
Mineralogy
A team of scientists led by the Geophysical Laboratory’s Shaunna Morrison and including Bob Hazen have revealed the mineralogy of Mars at an unprecedented scale, which will help them understand the planet’s geologic history and habitability.
Astrobiology
NASA’s Curiosity rover has discovered new “tough” organic molecules in three-billion-year-old sedimentary rocks on Mars, increasing the chances that the record of habitability and potential life could have been preserved on the Red Planet, despite extremely harsh conditions on the surface that can easily break down organic molecules.
By unanimous vote of the Carnegie Board of Trustees, Dr. Eric D. Isaacs has been appointed the 11th president of the Carnegie Institution for Science. Dr. Isaacs joins Carnegie from the University of Chicago and will succeed Interim Co-Presidents John Mulchaey and Yixian Zheng on July 2, 2018.
Department
Venkata Srinu Bhadram in Timothy Strobel’s lab at the Geophysical Laboratory (GL) will receive the ninth Postdoctoral Innovation and Excellence Award (PIE). These awards are made through nominations from the departments and are chosen by the Office of the President. The recipients are awarded a cash prize for their exceptionally creative approaches to science, strong mentoring, and contributing to the sense of campus community.
Mineralogy
A team of researchers including the Geophysical Laboratory’s Bob Hazen is using network analysis techniques—made popular through social media applications—to find patterns in Earth’s natural history, as detailed in a paper published by Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. 
Department
Carnegie Science interim Co-Presidents John Mulchaey and Yixian Zheng are thrilled to welcome experimental petrologist Michael Walter as the new Director of Carnegie's Geophysical Laboratory.  
Matter at Extreme States
The Geophysical Laboratory’s Tim Strobel and Venkata Bhadram now report unexpected quantum behavior of hydrogen molecules, H2, trapped within tiny cages made of organic molecules, demonstrating that the structure of the cage influences the behavior of the molecule imprisoned inside it.
Matter at Extreme States
The paradox of the missing xenon might sound like the title of the latest airport thriller, but it’s actually a problem that’s stumped geophysicists for decades. New work from an international team including the Geophysical Laboratory’s Alexander Goncharov and Hanyu Liu, and GL alumni Elissaios Stavrou and Sergey Lobanov, is chasing down the solution to this longstanding puzzle.
Matter at Extreme States
New work from the Geophysical Laboratory's high-pressure geophysicists Chuanlong Lin, Jesse Smith, Stanislav Sinogeikin, and Guoyin Shen found evidence of the long-theorized, difficult-to-see low-density liquid phase of water.
High Pressure
Using submicron synchrotron x-ray beam, a group of scientists led by the Geophysical Laboratory's Ho-kwang “Dave” Mao, have studied the loading behavior of the DAC up to 400 GPa. In situ high-pressure synchrotron X-ray diffraction and absorption experiments have been done to investigate the behavior of the DAC. This study provides a detailed picture of pressure loading and distribution, gasket thickness variation, and diamond anvil deformation up to 400 GPa.
High Pressure
Washington, DC — Plumes of hot rock surging upward from the Earth’s mantle at volcanic hotspots contain evidence that the Earth’s formative years may have been even more chaotic than previously thought, according to new work from the Geophysical Laboratory's Yingwei Fei and Colin Jackson published in Nature.
Materials
A team of experimental and computational scientists led by the Geophysical Laboratory’s Tim Strobel and Venkata Bhadram have synthesized a long sought-after form of titanium nitride, Ti3N4, which has promising mechanical and optoelectronic properties.
Materials
Piezoelectric materials are a class of smart materials that can convert electrical energy to mechanical energy and vice versa. Developing new piezoelectrics for novel electromechanical device applications has been a long-lasting interest, both scientifically and technologically. The negative response has been considered a rare and counterintuitive anomaly. The Geophysical Laboratory's Shi Liu and Ron Cohen showed that the negative response is not so rare after all.
Department
GL hosted a one day workshop on iron meteorites for scientists from the DC area.
High Pressure
Washington, DC— Reservoirs of oxygen-rich iron between the Earth’s core and mantle could have played a major role in Earth’s history, including the breakup of supercontinents, drastic changes in Earth’s atmospheric makeup, and the creation of life, according to recent work from an international research team published in National Science Review.
High Pressure
Washington, DC— New research by GL's Dave Mao on oxygen and iron chemistry under the extreme conditions found deep inside the Earth could explain a longstanding seismic mystery called ultralow velocity zones. Published in Nature, the findings could have far-reaching implications on our understanding of Earth’s geologic history, including life-altering events such as the Great Oxygenation Event, which occurred 2.4 billion years ago.
Mineralogy
On October 13, 2017, Geophysical Laboratory Staff Scientist and Deep Carbon Observatory Executive Director Robert Hazen was awarded Honorary Membership in the Russian Mineralogical Society (RMS) for his “outstanding contributions to crystal chemistry of minerals under extreme conditions and theor
Department
The Geophysical Laboratory and DTM went head-to-head on October 27, 2017 for the annual interdepartmental soccer match. Although a well fought match, GL had to give up their two-year reign as champions to our sister department, DTM.
Geochemistry
The Geophysical Laboratory’s Alex Goncharov and Terrestrial Magnetism’s Peter van Keken were awarded a Venture Grant to apply a novel flash-heating method for high- pressure/high-temperature experiments to measure the thermal conductivity of Mars. They will then develop new models to understand why that planet cooled so fast and early.
Department
The Geophysical Laboratory celebrated National Postdoc Appreciation Week (NPAW) September 18-22, 2017.  Together with our sister department, DTM, the Carnegie Science Broad Branch Road campus treated our postdocs to a week-long ping pong tournament, organized by postdocs Amol Karandikar and Venkat Bhadram, an ice cream social, and a Paint Nite afternoon to come together with their peers and paint a scene from their time here in DC. 
Matter at Extreme States
Washington, DC— A team of Geophysical Laboratory high-pressure physicists have created a form of carbon that’s hard as diamond, but amorphous, meaning it lacks the large-scale structural repetition of a diamond’s crystalline structure. Their findings are reported in Nature Communications.
Department
GL alum Sergey Lobanov received official confirmation from the Helmholtz Association this week that he has won the competition for the Helmholtz Young Investigator Group Leaders award. This means that he will receive 1.8 million Euro for 2018-2023 to establish a new group at GFZ (Potsdam, Germany).
Geochemistry
August 18, 2017 -- Geophysical Laboratory scientists Guoyin Shen, Yingwei Fei, Shaunna Morrison, Bob Hazen, Dan Hummer, Asmaa Boujibar, Renbiao Tao and Haijun Huang presented their research at the annual Goldschmidt conference on August 13-18, 2017 in Paris. Goldschmidt is the foremost annual, international conference on geochemistry and related subjects, organized by the European Association of Geochemistry and the Geochemical Society.
Planetary Science
GL alum Francis McCubbin is the recent recipient of the 2017 F.W. Clarke Award from the Geochemical Society, AND the Nier Prize from the Meteoritical Society. The two medals are the awards from each society for outstanding early career scientists, and Francis is only the second person to win both.
High Pressure
The properties of hydrogen at extreme pressures and temperatures are of great interest to condensed matter physics, astrophysics, and planetary science due to the element’s putative
High Pressure
Our science cannot be accomplished without state-of-the-art instruments. But sometimes the existing tools simply aren’t enough.

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