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") // About Scientific AreasScientists Projects Events Events News DONATE Secondary menu Why Carnegie Contact HR Search DONATE FollowAbout Scientists Projects Events News To encourage discovery and the application of knowledge to the improvement of humankind Carnegie Institution for Science Statement on Eugenics Research × COVID-19 Updates for Carnegie Employees ×Homepage Explore this Story Latest News and Events Space Earth Life All News Events Public Lecture Archives life Unraveling a mystery of dinoflagellate genomic architecture New work from a Stanford University-led team of researchers including Carnegie’s Arthur Grossman and Tingting Xiang unravels a longstanding mystery about the relationship between form and function in the genetic material of a diverse group of algae called dinoflagellates. Their findings, published in Nature Genetics, have implications for understanding genomic organizational principles of all organisms. space Record-breaking flare from Sun’s nearest neighbor Washington, DC— A team of astronomers including Carnegie’s Alycia Weinberger and former-Carnegie postdoc Meredith MacG Carnegie Science mourns the death of Vartan Gregorian "Vartan was a very good friend to Carnegie Science and to me, personally, as I know he was to many of you. Among his many remarkable accomplishments, Vartan’s commitment to the Carnegie family of organizations stands out," said Carnegie Science President Eric D. Isaacs earth Early indicators of magma viscosity could help forecast a volcano’s eruption style The 2018 eruption of Kīlauea Volcano in Hawai‘i provided scientists with an unprecedented opportunity to identify new factors that could help forecast the hazard potential of future eruptions. earth Deep diamonds contain evidence of deep-Earth recycling processes Diamonds that formed deep in the Earth’s mantle contain evidence of chemical reactions that occurred on the seafloor. Probing these gems can help geoscientists understand how material is exchanged between the planet’s surface and its depths. earth Martian meteorite mineral named after Carnegie’s Yingwei Fei Carnegie’s Yingwei Fei is the namesake of an iron-titanuim oxide mineral discovered in a meteorite that originated on Mars. Caltech’s Chi Ma announced the find this week at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. Called Feiite with a composition of Fe3TiO5, the mineral formed during a violent impact on the Red Planet that sent the rock hurtling into space. life Algae growing on dead coral could paint a falsely rosy portrait of reef health Algae colonizing dead coral are upending scientists’ ability to accurately assess the health of a coral reef community, according to new work from a team of marine science experts led by Carnegie’s Manoela Romanó de Orte and Ken Caldeira. It’s long been thought that measuring calcium carbonate production could be linked directly to the health of a coral community,” Romanó de Orte said. But our findings show that as algae increasingly succeed in overgrowing dead coral, it is going to be more difficult to rely on a once tried-and-true method for assessing whether a reef community is thriving.” space Discovered: the most distant known quasar with a bright radio emission The Magellan Baade telescope at Carnegie’s Las Campanas Observatory played an important role in the discovery of the most-distant known quasar with a bright radio emission, which was announced by a Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg and European Southern Observatory-led team and published in The Astrophysical Journal . One of the fastest-growing supermassive black holes ever observed, it is emitting about 580 times the energy as the entire Milky Way galaxy. earth Apollo rock samples capture key moments in the Moon’s early history Volcanic rock samples collected during NASA’s Apollo missions bear the isotopic signature of key events in the early evolution of the Moon, a new analysis found. Those events include the formation of the Moon’s iron core, as well as the crystallization of the lunar magma ocean—the sea of molten rock thought to have covered the Moon for around 100 million years after the it formed. space Large proto-cluster of galaxies discovered in the midst of clearing the cosmic fog An international team of astronomers grouped in the LAGER consortium (Lyman Alpha Galaxies in the Epoch of Reionization), integrated by Leopoldo Infante, Director of Carnegie’s Las Campanas Observatory, and postdoctoral researcher Jorge González-López, discovered the most-distant cluster of galaxies, or protocluster, of high density ever observed. This study, published in Nature , opens new avenues for understanding the evolution of high-density regions in the universe and the galaxies that compose them. life A plant’s nutrient-sensing abilities can modulate its response to environmental stress Understanding how plants respond to stressful environmental conditions is crucial to developing effective strategies for protecting important agricultural crops from a changing climate. New research led by Carnegie’s Zhiyong Wang, Shouling, Xu, and Yang Bi reveals an important process by which plants switch between amplified and dampened stress responses. Understanding how plants make cellular decisions by integrating environmental and internal information is important for improving plant resilience and productivity in a changing climate,” Wang concluded. space Solar System’s most distant known member confirmed A team of astronomers, including Carnegie’s Scott Sheppard, David Tholen from the University of Hawaiʻi Institute for Astronomy, and Chad Trujillo from Northern Arizona University have discovered discovered the most distant object ever observed in our Solar System. Officially called 2018 AG37, the object is nicknamed Farfarout for just how far away from the Sun it is orbiting—about 132 AU, where 1 AU is the distance between the Earth and Sun. At that distance, it takes an entire millennium to orbit the Sun. earth Can super-Earth interior dynamics set the table for habitability? New research led by Carnegie’s Yingwei Fei provides a framework for understanding the interiors of super-Earths—rocky exoplanets between 1.5 and 2 times the size of our home planet—which is a prerequisite to assess their potential for habitability. Planets of this size are among the most abundant in exoplanetary systems. For decades, Carnegie researchers have been leaders at recreating the conditions of planetary interiors by putting small samples of material under immense pressures and high temperatures. But sometimes even these techniques reach their limitations. The he world’s most powerful, magnetically-driven pulsed power machine at Sandia National Laboratories enabled a breakthrough. life Engineering light availability for crop production—a solution for coming challenges? Palo Alto, CA— What if we could increase a plant’s productivity by modifying the light to which it is exposed? space Dwarf galaxy’s suburban” sprawl confirms ancient galaxies formed in dark matter halos An MIT-led team of astronomers that includes Carnegie’s Joshua Simon, Lina Necib, and Alexander Ji has discovered an unexpected outer suburb of stars on the distant fringes of the dwarf galaxy Tucana II. Their detection, published by Nature Astronomy, confirms that the cosmos’ oldest galaxies formed inside massive clumps of dark matter—what astronomers refer to as a dark matter halo”. space Mistaken identity: A presumed supernova is actually something much rarer In a case of cosmic mistaken identity, an international team of astronomers revealed that what they once thought was a supernova is actually periodic flaring from a galaxy where a supermassive black hole gives off bursts of energy every 114 days as it tears off chunks of an orbiting star. Six years after its initial discovery—reported in The Astronomer’s Telegram by Carnegie’s Thomas Holoien—the researchers, led by Anna...