Professor Nathan Yee explores the possibility of life on Mars and beyond
Nathan Yee, a Rutgers University–New Brunswick professor of geomicrobiology and geochemistry and a co-investigator at Rutgers ENIGMA, a NASA-funded research team focused on discovering how proteins evolved to become the catalysts of life on Earth. Yee co-created and teaches Rutgers’ first course on astrobiology, an interdisciplinary field that seeks to understand whether life arose elsewhere and whether we can detect it. read more here
Returning from JOIDES Resolution Expedition 379T, the science team has sought to study the oceanographic and hydrologic history of the northern margin of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and the South American continent. The aim was to collect six 100 meters long sediment cores from ocean water depths of 829-3858 m near the Chilean margin (36-46°S) to understand variability of the Patagonian icefields. The next step in the research will be to evaluate rapid (100 to 1000 year) changes in ocean water chemistry, composition, and temperature that will not only help reconstruct climate over the last 200,000 years but also inform us about how Earth will respond to a warmer than present climate. Rutgers postdoc Samantha Bova and professor Yair Rosenthal served as co-chief scientists, and were joined by Hailey Riechelson (graduate student, Rutgers), Mark Yu (graduate student, Rutgers), Vincent Clementi (graduate student, Rutgers), Anya Hess (graduate student, Rutgers), Stanley Ko (graduate student, Rutgers), William Biggs (undergraduate student, Rutgers), and Jim Wright (professor, Rutgers). More info at:
NASA has offered Professor Juliane Gross an 18 month IPA (Intergovernmental Personnel Act) position to help open the Apollo Moon samples that were sealed 50 years ago. She will be the new "Deputy Apollo Sample Curator" at NASA JSC in Houston and will work in curation next to Dr. Ryan Zeigler (Apollo Sample Curator and the Branch Chief of the Astromaterials Acquisition and Curation Office) to oversee the preparations to open the samples and assist in the preliminarily examination, as well as assist in the curation of all other Apollo samples. As well as working in the Apollo lab, Professor Gross will be conducting experiments at NASA JSC, which also will allow Rutgers students a prestigious opportunity to help conduct research a NASA facility. Additionally, Professor Gross recently was interviewed for the special "50 years ago - One Giant Leap" magazine, jointly published by National Geographic and USA Today. In the article "Rocks unlocked", she is quoted together with NASA civil servant Sarah Noble about the importance of the samples collected during the Apollo mission and how study of lunar basalt rocks can help understand the origins of Earth. For further reading, check out his link: 
How did life commence on the early Earth, and where else might it have developed in our universe? These are the fundamental questions being addressed by a team of researchers spanning the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and others here at Rutgers University. The science team, entitled "ENIGMA" for Evolution of Nanomachines in Geospheres and Microbial Ancestors is exploring these questions with support from a highly competitive ~$6M grant from the NASA Astrobiology Institute.
Congratulations to EPS Assistant Research Professor Jiacan Yuan on her new publication "Response of subtropical stationary waves and hydrological extremes to climate warming in boreal summer" in the Journal of Climate. Yuan and coauthors (including Professor and Director of EOAS Robert Kopp) studied subtropical stationary waves in northern summers using CMIP5 climate models in various climate scenarios. These waves consist of high pressure systems over the North Atlantic and North Pacific which lead to more dry weather, and low pressure systems over Eurasia and North America that lead to more wet weather. The study suggests that the intensity of subtropical stationary waves increases in response to global warming. The intensification will partially explain the increase in heavy rainfalls over south and Southeast Asia, and extremely dry weathers over United States and Mexico in projections of future climate.
Recently published in JGR-Planets is a new joint University of California, Berkeley (Dr. Doug Hemingway) and Rutgers University (Prof. Sonia Tikoo) study that explores the origins of lunar swirls. Lunar swirls are enigmatic bright and dark patterns on the lunar surface that that resemble clouds or squiggles. The geometry of the optical anomalies associated with swirls resemble the predicted morphologies of magnetic field lines emanating from a subsurface geological source body. Indeed, most swirls are also co-located with strong localized magnetic fields within the lunar crust, suggesting that the magnetic fields play a role in producing the swirl markings, either by solar wind standoff or electromagnetic sorting of fine grains within the lunar regolith. In their paper, Hemingway and Tikoo describe how the magnetic sources of lunar swirl source bodies should ideally be narrow and shallow - a morphology consistent with magmatic dikes or buried lava tubes in the lunar subsurface.
EPS Professor Robert Kopp (
Wright-Rieman Laboratories