Forget those shepherding moons. Gravity and the odd shapes of asteroid Chariklo and dwarf planet Haumea – small objects deep in our solar system – can be credited for forming and maintaining their own rings, according new research in Nature Astronomy.“Rings appear around Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune and Uranus, but scientists found rings around Chariklo and Haumea within the last few years. Chariklo…
When rains fell on the arid Atacama Desert, it was reasonable to expect floral blooms to follow. Instead, the water brought death.An international team of planetary astrobiologists has found that after encountering never-before-seen rainfall three years ago at the arid core of Peru’s Atacama Desert, the heavy precipitation wiped out most of the microbes that had lived there.“When the rains came…
After a half-century singing songs you know, the Cornell Hangovers offer a harmonic convergence to celebrate their golden anniversary. The group’s Fall Tonic concert will be Nov. 10 at 8 p.m. at Bailey Hall“The Hangovers keep getting better and better. They’re so musically sophisticated, it’s been a pleasure to watch the evolution over these 50 years,” said Rick Dehmel ’68, a founding member of…
The Cornell University Glee Club, the university’s oldest, continuously operating student organization, will celebrate its sesquicentennial with a free concert. The group will sing pieces from different eras Nov. 3 at 7 p.m. in Sage Chapel. The event is open to the public.“We realize we’re celebrating the importance of the Glee Club’s rich history – dating back 150 years ago – as we want to…
One hundred and fifty years ago, the “radical” idea that was Cornell University became a reality.At the inaugural ceremonies Oct. 7, 1868, university founder Ezra Cornell reinforced new educational concepts. “I hope that we have laid the foundation of an institution which shall combine practical with liberal education, which shall fit the youth of our country for the professions, the farms, the…
By looking at Earth’s full natural history and evolution, astronomers may have found a template for vegetation fingerprints – borrowing from epochs of changing flora – to determine the age of habitable exoplanets.
“Our models show that Earth’s vegetation reflectance signature increases with coverage of our planet’s surface, but also with the age of our planet,” said co-author Jack O’Malley…
For couples hoping for a baby via in vitro fertilization, chances have improved. A process that once took hours now takes minutes: Cornell scientists have created a microfluidic device that quickly corrals strong and speedy sperm viable for fertilization.Conventional methods to separate vigorous, motile sperm is tedious and may take up to several hours to perform. “Trying to find the highly…
Robert A. Plane, a professor emeritus of chemistry who served as the university’s eighth provost during the tumultuous late 1960s and early 1970s, later becoming an innovative Finger Lakes vintner, died Aug. 6 at his home in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He was 90.He also served as president of Clarkson University and Wells College, co-authored a widely used collegiate chemistry textbook, and directed…
To root out the scientific complexities between nitrogen-fixing soil bacteria and its close alliance with plants, the National Science Foundation has awarded a $1.1 million Dimensions of Biodiversity grant to the Cornell-affiliated Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI). Unlocking the genetic and ecological detail behind this symbiotic relationship may help reduce agricultural dependence on synthetic…
In an era that swirls with government distrust, national political cynicism and questions of character among authorities, public service can rescue us, said New York State Supreme Court Justice Debra James ’75, J.D. ’78, at the June 8 Olin Lecture in Bailey Hall during Reunion Weekend.The justice explained that corruption among government officials is what Americans fear most, citing a 2017…
For Gabriela Matos-Ortiz, scientific knowledge leapt from the pages of biology textbooks into reality.Matos-Ortiz arrived from hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico to a snow-covered Ithaca in January, but soon warmed to the idea of shadowing other students in the laboratory – thanks to an opportunity from the Cornell Undergraduate Research Board’s (CURB) mentorship program.“From the first day, I learned…
Cheers of encouragement, heartfelt love and exuberance punctuated each award presented at the annual Office of Academic Diversity Initiatives’ (OADI) Honors ceremony May 4, at the Statler Hotel ballroom.Dainelle Allen ’18 epitomized the room’s buoyant atmosphere when she provided the student keynote address in which she described early academic difficulties as she adjusted to Cornell. “What I’d…
In our solar system – diameter, about 11 billion miles – moons stay relatively close to their home planets. But beyond the stable confines of our cosmic neighborhood, lunar bodies around exoplanets can become castaways and carom across galaxies, according to Cornell astronomers in The Astrophysical Journal.
Colliding and jostling are among the mechanisms that can disrupt the orbits of…
Far above the busy humming of the bustling town, the hill on which Cornell sits is steep – and steeped in history.Learn stories and Cornell lore from Corey Ryan Earle ’07 as he resumes teaching Cornell: The First American University on Monday nights this semester, 7:30 to 8:45 p.m.Earle teaches the essentials of Cornell history all the way from M.H. Abrams to Theodore Zinck. He explains how Ezra…
An international group of astronomers has found that the Cornell-discovered fast radio burst FRB 121102 – a brief, gigantic pulse of radio waves from 3 billion light years away – passes through a veil of magnetized plasma. This causes the cosmic blasts to “shout and twist,” which will help the scientists determine the source.
The research is featured on the cover of Nature, Jan. 11.
The …
Rachel Bean, professor of astronomy and senior associate dean of undergraduate education for the College of Arts and Sciences, is among a team of 27 scientists who won a share of the $3 million 2018 Breakthrough Prize in fundamental physics Dec. 3.
Bean served on NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) satellite team, which observed cosmic microwave background radiation to…
On the world stage, Etinosa Obanor ’18 minced no words. Representing global youth constituencies at the high-level segment at the Conference of the Parties (COP23) in Bonn, Germany, Nov. 6-17, the student delivered a strong statement to the convention delegates as they negotiated and wrestled with climate change.“In the past, you’ve never stopped promising action,” Obanor said. “But there is no…
Josue San Emeterio – a doctoral student in physics – is part magician, a wedge of wizard and fraction of illusionist. At the Science Cabaret Nov. 14 at Ithaca’s Coltivare restaurant, he held a packed room rapt for one hour.San Emeterio and a merry band of graduate student physicists – thanks to the Cornell educational outreach group XRaise – demonstrated electricity with Van de Graaf generators…
Cornell’s Kevin M. McGovern Family Center for Venture Development in the Life Sciences business incubator graduated three companies at a ceremony in Weill Hall Nov. 13. Embark, Lionano and Sterifre Medical join the McGovern Center’s previous two graduates, Agronomic Technology Corp. and ArcScan.
Provost Michael Kotlikoff gave the commencement address and conferred certificates. “Incubation…
A pair of massive, hyper-luminous galaxies are merging in front of astronomer’s eyes for the first time and revealing secrets of cosmic creation.
“Discovering a hyper-luminous starburst galaxy is an extraordinary feat, but discovering two – this close to each other – is amazing,” said Dominik Riechers, assistant professor of astronomy and lead author on new research published Nov. 13 in…
Four decades after NASA’s twin Voyager spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral, about 800 Cornellians gathered at Bailey Hall Oct. 19 to celebrate the unprecedented mission, its famous Golden Record and the university’s role in the mission.
A panel focused on the Golden Record – a 12-inch, gold-covered copper record containing salutations to the universe, international music and images of life…
For three decades, astronomers thought that only Saturn’s moon Janus confined the planet’s A ring – the largest and farthest of the visible rings. But after poring over NASA’s Cassini mission data, Cornell astronomers now conclude that the teamwork of seven moons keeps this ring corralled.
Without forces to hold the A ring in check, the ring would keep spreading out and ultimately disappear. …
After 360 engine burns, 2.5 million executed commands, 635 gigabytes of gathered data, 162 moon flybys, 4.9 billion miles traveled and 3,948 published papers, NASA’s 20-year Cassini spacecraft ran the last lap of its historic scientific mission Sept. 15.
Cornell students, faculty, researchers and members of the public observed Cassini’s grand finale from the Space Sciences Building early in…
NASA is calling the Cassini mission’s last hurrah the Grand Finale. After cruising seven years to Saturn and spending 13 years strolling its neighborhood, on Sept. 15 the spacecraft ends its mission by plunging into the ringed planet’s atmosphere, breaking into fiery shards.
Cornell researchers helped bring the world Saturn in high resolution. Using the mission’s data, the scientists helped to…
On the eve of fall semester classes starting, Cornellians spied the sky – with special safety glasses – to view the partial solar eclipse Aug. 21 over Ithaca. From Libe Slope to the Fuertes Observatory to Collegetown, students, faculty and staff paused in the afternoon to appreciate the cosmic wonder.Karen Perez ’19, outreach coordinator for the Cornell Astronomical Society, enjoyed her first…
Give your medicine a jolt. By using a technique that combines electricity and chemistry, future pharmaceuticals – including many of the top prescribed medications in the United States – soon may be easily scaled up to be manufactured in a more sustainable way. This new Cornell research appears in Science Aug. 11.
Currently, making pharmaceuticals involves creating complex organic molecules…
Cornell chemists have uncovered a fresh role for nitric oxide that could send biochemical textbooks back for revision.They have identified a critical step in the nitrification process, which is partly responsible for agricultural emissions of harmful nitrous oxide and its chemical cousins into the atmosphere, contributing to global climate change.Current biochemical models hold that inorganic…
Cornell astronomers gathered atop Mount Pleasant at sunset June 25 to honor one of their own. The 25-inch reflecting telescope at the university’s Hartung-Boothroyd Observatory was named in memory of the late James R. Houck.Houck, a Cornell professor of astronomy, who was a major contributor in developing infrared spectroscopy for astrophysics, died in September 2015. He was part of NASA’s first…
Disappearing ozone, rising seas and a world of environmental strife have forced all of the globe’s citizens to great underground cities – powered by renewable energy. It’s quite the fictional vision.For Cornell’s 2017 Imagining Energy Futures: Undergraduate Science, Art and Design competition, the fictional short story “Underground: Project Gaia” by Reade Otto-Moudry ’17, Kayla Aulenbach ‘19 and…
Enceladus – a large icy, oceanic moon of Saturn – may have flipped, the possible victim of an out-of-this-world wallop.
While combing through data collected by NASA's Cassini mission during flybys of Enceladus, astronomers from Cornell, the University of Texas and NASA have found the first evidence that the moon’s axis has reoriented, according to new research published in Icarus.
Examining…
Lord Martin Rees, who has probed deep into the cosmos, studied gamma-ray bursts and galactic formations, spoke May 8 at Cornell’s David L. Call Alumni Auditorium on issues closer to home: the preservation of our “pale blue dot.”“Extinction rates are rising. We’ve destroyed the Book of Life before we’ve read it. Biodiversity is a crucial component for long-term human well-being,” said Rees,…
More than 80 students unveiled their scholarly work at the 32nd annual Spring Research Forum hosted April 27 by the Cornell Undergraduate Research Board (CURB).“The annual forum is a very useful event, because in previous years I gained experience presenting my research in a formal setting, which is representative of international research conferences,” said Kelsey Sklar ’17, who now serves as…
We’re gonna need a bigger poster session.Alexis Cousins-Culver ’17 presented her research into the tales of two sea creatures, the whale in “Moby-Dick” and the great white shark in “Jaws,” as part of the Hunter R. Rawlings III Research Scholars Senior Expo, April 19.“I grew up in Orlando, near Universal Orlando, so I grew up with the ‘Jaws’ ride, which, sadly, no longer exists,” she said. Her…
Galactic hitchhikers take note: The restaurant at the end of the universe may be closer than we think.After probing data from NASA spacecraft Cassini’s flight through the watery plume of Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus, scientists from the Southwest Research Institute, Johns Hopkins’ Applied Physics Lab and Cornell confirm the presence of molecular hydrogen – a potential microbial food source and an…
After traveling through Vietnam’s Mekong Delta in January, examining climate change through the lens of another country, four Cornell students toured the halls of Congress in late March to tell legislators all about it.“Society is facing huge problems with a changing climate, and it’s important to remind representatives that their actions not only affect Americans and the world today, but these…
Astronomy meets gastronomy: NASA’s Cassini spacecraft flew by and photographed a close-up of Saturn’s small moon Pan, never before seen in high resolution. Those images – as science hungered for joviality – revealed this moon looks like ravioli.
NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory officially get credit for taking the picture, but Cornell astronomers – Mike Evans, research associate; Paul…
Cornell’s wide-ranging, interdisciplinary expertise in global sustainability issues will be front and center when the university hosts a conference about sustainability research, community engagement and opportunities for collaboration in Asia, April 6-7 in Hong Kong.
“Sustainability in Asia: Partnerships for Research and Implementation” – organized by Cornell’s Atkinson Center for a…
In a warming environment, visible climate change meets the “invisible hand” of economics, according to economist Kaushik Basu.“You can feel it. Two years ago … I visited Beijing and Delhi back-to-back,” said Basu, Cornell’s C. Marks Professor of International Studies and professor of economics, in the College of Arts & Sciences. “You look up at the sky in both places and you realize that this…
Theodore Jay Lowi, the charismatic Cornell professor of government whose dream of an undergraduate program in Washington became reality and whose seminal books – “The End of Liberalism,” “American Government” and “American Political Thought: A Norton Anthology” (co-edited with Isaac Kramnick) – became standards in political science discourse, died Feb. 17 in Ithaca, New York. He was 85.“Ted was…
For the past few decades, scientists had believed that Mars’ carbon dioxide-filled atmosphere – chemically memorialized in its sedimentary outcrops – helped melt the planet’s bountiful ice into flowing rivers, streams and ponds billions of years ago.
Now there is doubt. In a new Martian mystery, the rover Curiosity detected no evidence of carbonate within the red planet’s rocks.
“A higher…
Thanks to the Cornell Astronomical Society, Cornell’s Fuertes Observatory has a new museum featuring vintage observatory instruments, many collected in the 19th century by Estevan Fuertes, founding dean of Cornell’s civil engineering department.“This place has come alive. It used to be a storage facility. It’s no longer a storage closet with telescopes on top, this museum has a heartbeat,” said…
Forget Rome. Ignore Madrid. Overlook tropical islands. Cash in your frequent flier miles and book a cruise to far-flung, exotic exoplanets.
Lisa Kaltenegger, professor of astronomy and director of Cornell’s Carl Sagan Institute, lead author Stephen Kane of San Francisco State University and other scientists have written “A Catalog of Kepler Habitable Zone Exoplanet Candidates,” which will…
Klarman Hall – the College of Arts and Sciences’ light-filled humanities building that opened last semester – was certified LEED Platinum July 29.The U.S. Green Building Council, which certifies LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) structures, awarded the university 87 out of 110 points, the highest total Cornell has ever received.“Klarman Hall introduced many new green-building…
NASA’s Cassini and Huygen’s missions have provided a wealth of data about chemical elements found on Saturn’s moon Titan, and Cornell scientists have uncovered a chemical trail that suggests prebiotic conditions may exist there.
Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, features terrain with Earthlike attributes such as lakes, rivers and seas, although filled with liquid methane and ethane instead of…
If you’re expecting to hear from aliens from across the universe, it could be a while.
Deconstructing the Fermi paradox and pairing it with the mediocrity principle into a fresh equation, Cornell astronomers say extraterrestrials likely won’t phone home – or Earth – for 1,500 years.
“We haven’t heard from aliens yet, as space is a big place – but that doesn’t mean no one is out there,” said…
Cornell’s Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future(ACSF) has given $1.5 million from its Academic Venture Fund to a record 14 new university projects. This marks the third consecutive year ACSF has granted more than $1 million.“Our Academic Venture Fund (AVF) program, now in its ninth year, continues to enable faculty from across campus to form new collaborative teams offering innovative…
In the face of scientific dogma that faults the population decline of monarch butterflies on a lack of milkweed, herbicides and genetically modified crops, a new Cornell study casts wider blame: sparse autumnal nectar sources, weather and habitat fragmentation.“Thanks to years of data collected by the World Wildlife Fund and citizen-scientists across North America, we have pieced together the…
The geologic shape of what were once shorelines through Mars’ northern plains convinces scientists that two large meteorites – hitting the planet millions of years apart – triggered a pair of mega-tsunamis. These gigantic waves forever scarred the Martian landscape and yielded evidence of cold, salty oceans conducive to sustaining life.“About 3.4 billion years ago, a big meteorite impact…
Searching vast cosmic communities like real estate agents rifling through listings, Cornell astronomers now hunt through time and space for habitable exoplanets – planets beyond our own solar system – looking at planets flourishing in old star, red giant neighborhoods.Astronomers search for these promising worlds by looking for the “habitable zone,” the region around a star in which water on a…
Meeting weekly this semester for the Astronomy 6500 seminar, Cornell undergraduate and graduate students are conducting research – with six other universities – to help NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory determine a rover landing site for the Mars 2020 mission.
The course is a hybrid experiment that combines research with discussion among schools via teleconferences and electronic…
