High Pressure
Making Diamond at Atmospheric Pressure
Producing materials by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) has become an important means of synthesis, in which high-energy molecular and atomic species generate a kinetically stable phase trapped in local energy minimum.
Geochemistry
Origins of Liquid-to-Glass Transition Decoded
If you freeze a liquid fast enough, it becomes a glass, something that is structurally similar to liquid but incapable of flow. This concept holds true even for metals.
Department
Mudcup 2015 - GL Defeats DTM After 7 Years Stuck in the Mud
Who said soccer was boring? This year’s annual MudCup was a thrilling game that featured a loaded, hungry GL team and a feisty, determined DTM team. The game started off with a bang, as within a few minutes, GL was on the board with a goal by GL captain Sergey Lobanov.
Department
Kebukawa Receives Geochemical Society of Japan Award
Geophysical Laboratory alum Yoko Kebukawa was awarded the Geochemical Society of Japan Award for Young Researcher.  This award honors outstanding contributions to the advancement of geochemistry, cosmochemistry and environmental sciences. 
High Pressure
Iron Melting Controversy Resolved
Iron makes up most of the Earth's core, which is very hot and exists under extreme pressures.
Mineralogy
Earth’s mineralogy unique in the cosmos
Washington, DC—New research from a team led by Carnegie’s Robert Hazen predicts that Earth has more than 1,500 undiscovered minerals and that the exact mineral diversity of our planet is unique and could not be duplicated anywhere in the cosmos.
High Pressure
CMR induced in pure lanthanum manganite
Washington, DC—Colossal magnetoresistance is a property with practical applications in a wide array of electronic tools including magnetic sensors and magnetic RAM.
Department
Rozsa Receives DOE-NNSA Fellowship
Former Carnegie Summer Scholar at the Geophysical Laboratory, Viktor Rozsa, currently a graduate student at the University of Chicago, has been awarded a DOE-NNSA graduate fellowship. 
Department
Inaugural BBR Poster Gathering
June 26, 2015 marks the inaugural Geophysical Laboratory (GL) and DTM poster gathering at the Broad Branch Road campus.  The Geophysical Laboratory's own Charles Le Losq, Ileana Perez-Rodriguez and Zachary Geballe were the masterminds behind the poster gathering, organizing the event and encouraging everyone on campus to participate. 
High Pressure
Is salt the key to unlocking the interiors of Neptune and Uranus?
Washington, DC—The interiors of several of our Solar System’s planets and moons are icy, and ice has been found on distant extrasolar planets, as well.  But these bodies aren’t filled with the regular kind of water ice that you avoid on the sidewalk in winter.
High Pressure
Lab mimicry opens a window to the deep interiors of stars and planets
Washington, DC— The matter that makes up distant planets and even-more-distant stars exists under extreme pressure and temperature conditions.
High Pressure
Linking superconductivity and structure
Washington, DC— Superconductivity is a rare physical state in which matter is able to conduct electricity—maintain a flow of electrons—without any resistance.
High Pressure
Probing iron chemistry in the deep mantle
Washington, DC— Carbonates are a group of minerals that contain the carbonate ion (CO32-) and a metal, such as iron or magnesium.
Geochemistry
Geochemical process on Saturn’s moon linked to life’s origin
Washington, DC— New work from a team including Carnegie’s Christopher Glein has revealed the pH of water spewing from a geyser-like plume on Saturn’s moon Enceladus.
Department
Panorama: A New View of the World
Washington, DC, 28 April 2015—The high-resolution mass spectrometer “Panorama” built by Nu Instruments, Ltd. was installed in the Department of Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences, UCLA in March.
High Pressure
From metal to insulator and back again
Washington, DC— New work from Carnegie’s Russell Hemley and Ivan Naumov hones in on the physics underlying the recently discovered fact that some metals stop being metallic under pressure. Their work is published in Physical Review Letters.
High Pressure
Improving Models of the Moon's Core
Washington, DC, 14 April 2015— The cores of terrestrial planets and satellite bodies, including our own Moon, all contain large quantities of iron.
High Pressure
New transitory form of silica observed
Washington, DC— A Carnegie-led team was able to discover five new forms of silica under extreme pressures at room temperature. Their findings are published by Nature Communications.
High Pressure
Novel Carbon Bonding at High Pressure
Only a small fraction of our planet’s total carbon is found at the surface.
High Pressure
Fullerene-Graphene Composite Material
Carbon exists in a variety of structural motifs as a result of its ability to adopt sp-, sp2-, and sp3-type bonding modes.
Department
Carnegie’s Hazen receives $1.4 million Keck grant
Washington, DC—Carnegie’s Robert Hazen has been awarded a $1.4 million grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation for a three-year data-driven research project on the co-evolution of the planet’s biology and geology.
Geochemistry
15 Million-year-old Mollusk Protein Found
Washington, DC, 5 February 2015— A team of Geophysical Laboratory scientists have found “beautifully preserved” 15 million-year-old thin protein sheets in fossil shells from southern Maryland.
Department
Anat Shahar Awarded the Clarke Award of the Geochemical Society
Anat Shahar was awarded the Clarke Award of the Geochemical Society. It is awarded to an early-career scientist for " a single outstanding contribution to geochemistry or cosmochemistry, published either as a single paper or a series of papers on a single topic. "
Department
AGU 2014 Fall Meeting
The AGU Fall Meeting 2014 will take place in San Francisco, CA from December 14-21.  Many staff members and postdoctoral associates from the Geophysical Laboratory will attend this year.  Check here daily for live updates on each day's science presentations. For a live stream of conference photos, click here or follow along below!
High Pressure
The simplest element: Turning hydrogen into “graphene”
Washington, DC, December 16, 2014—New work from Carnegie's Ivan Naumov and Russell Hemley delves into the chemistry underlying some surprising recent observations about hydrogen, and reveals remarkable parallels between hydrogen and graphene under extreme pressures.
Department
Major Milestones for Carnegie-hosted Deep Carbon Observatory
Recent advances in our understanding of the quantities, movements, forms and origin of carbon in Earth are summarized in a just-published report. The research represents fast-paced progress on the depths of the biosphere, Earth, what erupts from volcanoes and leaks from sea floors, what descends back into Earth’s great depths, and the nature of carbon-bearing materials within planets.
Materials
Revolutionary Solar-friendly Form of Silicon Shines
Washington, DC—Silicon is the second most-abundant element in the earth's crust. When purified, it takes on a diamond structure, which is essential to modern electronic devices—carbon is to biology as silicon is to technology.
High Pressure
Does Dark Magma Lurk In Deep Earth?
Washington, DC —A key to understanding Earth’s evolution is to look deep into the lower mantle—a region some 400 to 1,800 miles (660 to 2,900 kilometers) below the surface, just above the core.
Geochemistry
Plate Tectonics Changed the Air We Breathe
Washington, DC, 27 October 2014—Compared to its nearest planetary neighbors, Venus and Mars, Earth’s atmosphere is unusually enriched in nitrogen relative to primordial noble gases.
High Pressure
Wild Molecular Interactions in a New Hydrogen Mixture
Washington, DC— Hydrogen—the most abundant element in the cosmos—responds to extremes of pressure and temperature differently. Under ambient conditions hydrogen is a gaseous two-atom molecule.
Department
Steele Joins Rosetta Team as Co-Investigator
The Geophysical Laboratory's Andrew Steele joins the Rosetta team as a Co-Investigator working on the COSAC instrument aboard the Philae lander (Fred Goesmann Max Planck Institute - PI). On 12 November 2014 the Philae system will be deployed to land on the comet and begin operations.
High Pressure
Smallest-possible Diamonds Form Ultra-thin Nanothread
Washington, DC— A team including Carnegie’s Malcolm Guthrie and George Cody has, for the first time, discovered how to produce ultra-thin "diamond nanothreads" that promise extraordinary properties, including strength and stiffness greater than that of today's strongest nanotubes and polymer fibers.
High Pressure
Solar cell compound probed under pressure
Washington, DC— Gallium arsenide, GaAs, a semiconductor composed of gallium and arsenic is well known to have physical properties that promise practical applications.
Department
Postdoc Appreciation Week
In celebration of National Postdoc Appreciation Week, the Geophysical Laboratory and DTM held an ice cream social on Wednesday, 17 September 2014 in Tuve Hall. 
High Pressure
New Discovery in High Pressure Diamond Creation
Washington, DC — A team of scientists led by Carnegie’s Lin Wang has observed a new form of very hard carbon clusters, which are unusual in their mix of crystalline and disordered structure. The material is capable of indenting diamond.
Department
Somayazulu Brings Science in Society to Children of India
Torredu, India---Geophysical Laboratory research scientist Maddury Somayazulu visited Torredu, India this month and gave a talk to the children of the village in telugu (a South-Central Dravidian language) about how science impacts society.
High Pressure
Pressure probing potential photoelectronic manufacturing compound
Audio
Mineralogy
Dehydration Melting in the Lower Mantle
The high water storage capacity of minerals in Earth’s mantle transition zone (410- to 660-kilometer depth) implies the possibility of a deep H2O reservoir, which could cause dehydration melting of vertically flowing mantle.
Department
Michelle Scholtes Invited to Japan for Administrative Support Consulting
Sendai, Japan—The Geophysical Laboratory's webmaster and departmental assistant, Michelle Scholtes, was invited to the Advanced Institute for Materials Research at Tohoko University in Sendai, Japan for a foreign exchange of information regarding administrative support in a scientific research institution.  The visit included the exchange of opinions and experiences regarding research support systems at each institute.  
Department
Carnegie Awarded $10 Million for Innovative Energy Research
Washington, DC—The Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded Carnegie $10 million over four years for basic research that could lead to the discovery of new energy materials through its program to support Energy Frontier Research Centers.
Department
Dr. Matthew P. Scott Named 10th President of the Carnegie Institution for Science
By unanimous vote of the Carnegie Board of Trustees, Dr. Matthew P. Scott has been appointed the 10th president of the Carnegie Institution for Science.
High Pressure
Lower mantle chemistry breakthrough
Washington, DC—Breaking research news from a team of scientists led by Carnegie’s Ho-kwang “Dave” Mao reveals that the composition of the Earth’s lower mantle may be significantly different than previously thought. These results are to be published by Science.
Department
USA Science and Engineering Festival
The Geophsyical Laboratory presented various topics at the third annual USA Science & Engineering Festival, the largest science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education event of its kind in the United States!
Department
Building the Broad Branch Road Campus in 1914
Written by Shaun J. Hardy “Perhaps no building being erected at the present time has excited so much interest ... as has the new edifice in progress [at Broad Branch Road].  Certainly no structure has required so much precise care in workmanship and a thorough knowledge of building to meet the delicate needs of a building of this character.  It is the last word in scientific building.”
Department
LPSC 2014
Week in Review:
Department
A Digital “Experiment” in Online Collaboration
A Digital “Experiment” in Online Collaboration Opens its Doors at Carnegie’s Broad Branch Road Campus
Department
Giant Magellan Telescope Looking Toward Construction
Pasadena, CA, 19 February 2014–The international consortium of the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) project has passed two major reviews and is positioned to enter the construction phase.
Department
GL Named Top 10 Materials Science Article
Washington, DC, 4 February 2014—An article by the Geophysical Laboratory's Reinhard Boehler and Malcolm Guthrie has been named one of Taylor & Francis' Top 10 Materials Science articles for 2013.  
High Pressure
Diamond Defect Boosts Quantum Technology
Washington, DC—New research shows that a remarkable defect in synthetic diamond produced by chemical vapor deposition allows researchers to measure, witness, and potentially manipulate electrons in a manner that could lead to new “quantum technology” for information processing.
Department
Mars Curiosity Named #1 Science Story for 2013 in Discover Magazine
Research made by the Curiosity science team made Discover Magazine's number one science story of 2013.

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