Nov 3, 2007| Audubon Society of RI
Discover Rhode Island’s fascinating geologic origins with a lecture by Jan Tullis, Explore the Audubon Society of Rhode Island’s Hathaway Library of Natural History fossil and mineral collection. Event occurs on 11/3/07 from 1pm-3pm at 12 Sanderson Road in Smithfield, RI. Reservations are suggested. Call (401) 949-5454 ext. 3041.

Oct 25 , 2007 | Brown University Release
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has elected three Brown University professors – Mary Carskadon, Stephen McGarvey and Carle Pieters – fellows for their significant contributions to the life and physical sciences.

Sept 28 , 2007 | New Scientist
Planetary geologist Peter Schultz comments on some of the puzzling details left at the site where meteorite hit in Peru earlier this month. Image: Lionel Jackson/Geological Survey of Canada

Sept 25 , 2007 | Boston Globe
Wooly mammoths, giant sloths, saber-toothed cats, and dozens of other species of megafauna may have become extinct when a disintegrating comet or asteroid exploded over North America with the force of millions of hydrogen bombs, according to research by an international team of scientists, including Peter Schultz. Image: Boston Globe

June 8 , 2007 | Living on Earth
Living On Earth, the weekly environmental news program distributed by Public Radio International, reports on how Arvid Tomayko-Peters, '07 transformed geological data into sound using a computer program he created. Text transcript and audio link available.

May 3 , 2007 | Nature
James Head discusses his new theory of how diamonds survive the high-temperature, low-pressure conditions of a volcanic eruption to make it to the Earth's surface.

Image: JAXA

April 24, 2007 | National Geographic News
Images of the near-Earth asteroid Itokawa may shake up conventional ideas about what the space rocks are made of and how they "weather" over time. Takohiro Hiroi, a researcher unaffiliated with the study, comments on the recent Itokawa paper that appeared in Science.

March 30, 2007 | Science Magazine
Coverage of Jim Head's NSF/NASA supported research in Antarctica, presented at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in March 2007.
Photo: James Head

March 16, 2007 | Science Magazine
Lunar science is poised for its biggest boost in a generation. NASA managers, however, have made it clear that research will be the tail on the exploration dog. Professor of Geological Sciences Carle Pieters comments on NASAs decision. Photo: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

March, 2007 | arvidtp.net
Senior Geo Concentrator, Arvid Tomayko-Peters, presents his unique music honors thesis at a variety of locales: his interactive installation plays back 5.3 million years of climate data from deep ocean sediment cores as sound...

March 7, 2007 |Brown News Bureau
Brown University has received $3 million grant from NSF. It will support fellowships for physics, geology and engineering graduate students to lead after-school activities in six area high schools and classroom activities in three elementary schools. Tim Herbert is the PI.

March, 2007 |Popular Science
Pete Schultz's research is highlighted as an answer to a reader's question, "Is the moon volcanically active?" Image courtesy of NASA

Dec. 7-16 , 2006 |Boston Globe
Professor John Mustard is among the scientists commenting on the announcement that liquid water appears to have flowed on Mars within the last seven years. Similar articles appear in National Geographic, San Francisco Chronicle and Astronomy Magazine. Image courtesy of NASA

Dec. 6 , 2006 |Brown News Bureau
New chemical evidence sheds light on the physical constraints of hotspots locations where upwellings of Earth's mantle material form seamounts and island chains. Alberto Saal contributed data from the Galapagos Islands, complementing information from other researchers. Image courtesy of NOAA

Nov. 23, 2006 |Brown News Bureau
Professors Donald Forsyth, Alberto Saal and students from Brown University on a routine ocean-floor mapping cruise jumped into action when they realized that many of the seafloor seismometers they were supposed to collect had been buried by a recent lava flow. See also 11/29/06 San Francisco Chronicle.

Nov. 10, 2006 |United Press Intn'l
A team of scientists including Professors Peter Schultz and Carle Pieters says a study of Apollo-era and recent spectral data suggests the moon may have produced interior gas eruptions more recently than thought. This wire service article appeared in media outlets around the world. Image courtesy of NASA.

Nov. 8, 2006 |Brown News Bureau
Professors Peter Schultz, Carle Pieters and colleagues report that water and carbon dioxide are still altering the Earths moon, a finding that challenges some long-held assumptions. Image courtesy of NASA.

October 26, 2006 |New Scientist.com
Michael Wyatt, Assistant Professor of Geological Sciences, comments on new findings suggesting that an ocean of water once wrapped around Mars. Image courtesy of NASA.

Sept. 30, 2006 |Providence Journal
The ProJo looks at the three-decade role Brown University's Department of Geological Sciences has played in the exploration of Mars, and focuses primarily on the work of Michael Wyatt, who works with robotic rovers digging and drilling into the planets surface. Image courtesy of NASA.

September 19, 2006 |ScienceNOW
The National Research Council (NRC) of The National Academies has released a report, sought by NASA, regarding the science NASA should conduct when it returns humans to the moon. Professor Carle Pieters, a member of the NRC, comments about the reports recommendations. Image courtesy of NASA.

September 12, 2006 | New York Times
Using data collected by a Japanese space probe in a rendezvous with an asteroid, senior research associate Takahiro Hiroi and collaborators have demonstrated that space weathering occurs even on small asteroids. The findings were published in the journal Nature.Image courtesy of JAXA.

September 1, 2006 | Geotimes
Geotimes, a publication of the American Geological Institute, profiles Donald Forsyth. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Forsyth has sought to understand how Earth works - trying to solve difficult puzzles, he says, such as investigating the processes that form Earths ocean crust, drive heat flow within the mantle and control the motion of tectonic plates.

August 22, 2006 | Technology Review
Future missions to Earths moon could lead to an improved understanding of its composition. One mission, designed by Brown students, may answer fundamental questions about meteorite impacts that occur on the moon, on Earth, and on other planets. Image courtesy of European Space Agency.

August 2006 | NASA
The Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) will carry out a lunar collision mission and experiment when a large NASA rocket smashes into one of the moon's polar regions in early 2009. Read about Pete Schultz's involvement. Image courtesy of NASA.

August 12, 2006 | Providence Journal
In an article about Narragansett Bay water quality, Warren Prell, who helps conduct periodic testing of the bay, offers his perspective.

August 9, 2006 | Scientific American Podcast
Host Steve Mirsky explores the latest developments in science and technology through interviews with leading scientists and journalists.  This week, he talks with Peter Schultz about his chosen method of learning about the universe--smashing stuff.

August 5, 2006 |Providence Journal
Teams from Brown University participated in sampling Narragansett Bay to measure levels of dissolved oxygen (hypoxia) in the water. Professor Warren Prell says the timing of the sampling was deliberate so that researchers could see how extensive the hypoxia was.

July 2006 | Pasadena Star News
Scientists, including John Mustard, have begun mulling where to send a hefty robotic geologist in its quest to learn whether life could have existed on the Red Planet. Mustard offers his thoughts about why the the Nili Fossae Trough in Mars' northern hemisphere would be ideal.
Image courtesy of NASA.

June 2006 | Space News
Professor Carle Pieters is vice chair of an ad hoc National Academy of Science committee charged with preparing a report, The Scientific Context for the Exploration of the Moon. To begin the work, she and the other 14 members of the committee met with a chief scientist from NASA June 20-22. Image courtesy of NASA.

Image courtesy of JAXA

May 2006 | Science
A team of scientists has determined the mineral makeup and surface characteristics of asteroid Itokawa and published their findings in Science. Takahiro Hiroi, a senior researcher/analyst and the operations manager of Browns NASA-funded Reflectance Experiment Laboratory, helped determine that the mineral composition of the surface of Itokawa was similar to that of a common class of stony meteorites relatively low in metallic iron.

May 2006 | Nature
Previously, geologists believed glaciers formed in Antarctica long before they appeared in the Arctic. The new evidence clears up this climate mystery and underscores the role that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases play in climate change, according to Steven Clemens, associate professor (research) and a co-author of the Nature papers.

May 2006 | NASA
Professor Peter Schultz, is a co-investigator on NASA’s Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite mission. Launching in 2008, the spacecraft will slam into the Moon’s South Pole, leaving a plume of debris that scientists will study for evidence of water ice. Image courtesy NASA.

April 2006 | The National Academies
Don Forsyth, the James L. Manning Professor of Geological Sciences, was named one of 72 new members and 18 foreign associates, elected to the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.

April 2006 | AAAS
Geologist James Head, playwright Paula Vogel, and poet Rosmarie Waldrop have been elected fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a distinction of excellence in science, scholarship, business, public affairs and the arts. Head and Vogel are professors at Brown; Rosmarie Waldrop is a visiting scholar.

Hemisphere view of Mars with one of the regions rich in phyllosilicate (clay) minerals outlined in box.

April 2006 | Brown News Bureau
An international team of scientists, including Professor John Mustard, has created the most comprehensive mineral record of Mars to date. Using data from the European Space Agency’s Mars Express mission, the record shows three distinct geological eras on the Red Planet, with the earliest marked by the presence of water. Results are published in Science.

April 2006 | Brown News Bureau
Using chemical clues mined from sediment cores Brown geologists have created the longest continuous record of a region of ocean surface temperatures, dating back 5 million years. The research, led by graduate student, Kira Lawrence, and published in Science, describes slow, steady cooling in the eastern equatorial Pacific, a finding that challenges the theory that the Ice Ages alone sparked a global cooling trend.

March 2006 | NASA/JPL
Minerals on Mars: Helping to design and build the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars, Jack Mustard will also analyze its findings when it enters the Martian orbit March 10. Image courtesy of NASA/JPL.

March 2006 | MSNBC.com
Saturn Moon Geysers: Liquid water has been discovered on one of Saturn's moons. Jim Head, offers his remarks about the findings. Image courtesy of NASA/JPL/SSI.

March 2006 | San Francisco Chronicle
Professor Carle Pieters is overseeing the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3), one of two instruments NASA is contributing to India’s first mission to the Moon. M3 will provide the first high-resolution mineral map of the entire lunar surface. Image courtesy of NASA/JPL.

February 2006 | Brown Office of Media Relations
A team that includes both Brown researchers (Pete Schultz) and Brown graduates reports the first evidence of surface ice on a comet. Their findings appear in an advanced online edition of Science.

January 2006 | Brown Office of Media Relations
Recent images beamed from Mars reveal intriguing evidence of glacial deposits in the tropics of the Red Planet. But how did this Martian ice form so far from the poles? Ancient snows, according to new research by Jim Head and other Mars experts, appearing in Science.

November 2005 | Inside Brown
The Geological Society of America awarded Donald Forsyth a major honor - the Arthur L. Day Medal - in Salt Lake City at its annual meeting. The Day Medal is awarded for outstanding work in applying physics or chemistry to solve geologic problems.

October 2005 |
Prof. Jan Tullis was honored during the campaign kick-off through the "Stories of Brown" event. Alumni Maria Zuber '83 Sc.M., '86 Ph.D. was honored as the 2005 recipient of the Horace Mann Medal.

October 2005 | GSA News Release
New high-resolution images of mid-latitude Mars are revealing glacier-formed landscapes far from the Martian poles, says a leading Mars researcher, Professor James W. Head, III. Image courtesy of NASA

September 2005 | Houston Chronicle
A NASA spacecraft orbiting Mars is revealing subtle signs of seismic activity on the Red Planet and possibly a slow warming trend. "These images reveal a dynamic surface that is of the type we might experience while hiking on the Earth," said Jack Mustard. "The difference is, this is not the Earth. This is Mars."

September 2005 | Nature
In the first joint interpretation of data from the landmark MELT study, a team of scientists including Donald Forsyth has found unexpected changes in the patterns of seismic velocity and electrical conductivity near the East Pacific Rise, changes due to dehydration and cooling.

September 2005 | News Bureau | Science
“...Comet Tempel 1 is a fine-grained, loosely glued layer of organic powder and ice,” said Brown’s Peter Schultz, a co-investigator on the Deep Impact mission team. Graduate students, Clara Eberhardy and Carolyn Ernst, helped analyze the data. The mission’s first results are published in the Sept. 9 Science. Image courtesy of "FirstCoastNews"

return to top

---

August 2005 |
The Graduate School was pleased to announce that Maria Zuber '83 Sc.M., '86 Ph.D. has been selected by a committee of Graduate School alumni as the 2005 recipient of the Horace Mann Medal. Zuber will be on campus October 21 and 22 to receive the award and give a public lecture.

August 2005 | Discovery Channel | Journal Geophysical Research Letters
Caleb Fassett, a doctoral graduate student at Brown University, co-authored a paper with Brown professor James Head on the latest evidence of a Martian crater lake in the Nili Fossae region of Mars. Image courtesy of GRL/NASA

August 2005 | NASA |
Geological Sciences Professor John Mustard helped design the most powerful spectrometer ever sent into space on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which launched August 12. [Watch] Image courtesy of NASA

August 2005 | Nature |
Research led by Geoligical Science graduate student Catherine Rychert makes a fundamental contribution to what is known about the lithosphere, Earth’s cool, rigid upper layer. The research, published in the current Nature, and funded by the National Science Foundation, runs counter to what some scientists believe is true about the ground beneath our feet.

return to top

---

July 2005 |AP, Washington Post, NY Times|
"Our experiment went very, very well," said co-investigator Pete Schultz of Brown University, who seemed to be brimming with enthusiasm. "We touched a comet and we touched it hard." Image courtesy of NASA

March 2005 |USA Today|
Ask Carle Pieters, a planetary scientist in the Department of Geological Sciences at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, what's left to do on the Moon and she's quick to answer... Image courtesy of NASA

March 2005 |ABC News/Reuters|
"We're now seeing geological characteristics on Mars that could be related to life," said James Head of Brown University... "But we're a long way from knowing that life does indeed exist." Image courtesy of NASA

February 2005 |Brown News Service|
Data freshly gathered by the Mars Express mission and analyzed by a team of scientists, including Brown University professor John Mustard, offer new insight into the mineral composition of Mars. Image courtesy of European Space Agency

return to top

---

February 2005 |Providence Business News|
NASA’s Planetary Geology and Geophysics program has awarded Brown University $1.08 million in grants, which will support research and data collection in the study of the formation of Earth and the solar system.

return to top

---

February 2005 |NASA|
NASA chose the Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) to fly as part of the scientific payload for the Indian Space Research Organization's (ISRO) Chandraayan-1 mission. The principal investigator for M3 is Carle M. Pieters of Brown University, Providence, R.I.