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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
