Notes from the Field

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.

ENIGMA is led by Principal Investigator Professor Paul Falkowski, and EPS Professors Nathan Yee and Juliane Gross are Co-Investigators.

This NAI team will explore catalysis of electron transfer reactions by prebiotic peptides to microbial ancestral enzymes to modern nanomachines, integrated over four and a half billion years of Earth’s changing geosphere. Theme 1 focuses on the synthesis and function of the earliest peptides capable of moving electrons on Earth and other planetary bodies. Theme 2 focuses on the evolutionary history of “motifs” in extant protein structures. Theme 3 focuses on how proteins and the geosphere co-evolved through geologic time.

For more information and to learn about opportunities to get involved, check out the ENIGMA webpage at https://enigma.rutgers.edu/

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.

Click here to learn more:
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-10/ru-mwa100318.php

EPS Professor Robert Kopp (http://www.bobkopp.net/) was a lead author of volume 1 of the Fourth US National Climate Assessment (https://science2017.globalchange.gov/), which was released in 2017 and focused on the physical science of climate change. Volume 2 of the Fourth National Climate Assessment (https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/), focused on human and ecological impacts of and responses to climate change, was released in November 2018, on the Friday following Thanksgiving. Bob was interviewed by many outlets following the second volume’s release, including by WHYY’s Radio Times and WNYC’s Science Friday. He was also profiled in a column in E&E News.

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.

To learn more, read the full Rutgers Today story here.

Our very own Dr. Lauren Neitzke Adamo has been selected for a PolarTREC Expedition to the Swiss Alps to study the sliding rate of glaciers!

PolarTREC (Teachers and Researchers Exploring and Collaborating) is a program that selects formal and informal educators to spend 3 to 6 weeks participating in hands-on research in the Arctic and Antarctic with the goal of increasing interest and awareness of polar science. The program, funded by the Arctic Research Consortium of the United States (ARCUS), began about 10 years ago and has already provided more than 150 teachers with hands-on field research experience.

Read more: Adamo embarks on PolarTREC in the Alps

Welcome Aboard the Research Vessel Atlantis, Cruise AT40-03

Welcome the not-so-regular daily blog we're keeping aboard the R/V Atlantis. "We" are 19 members of a science and technical team contributing to a research cruise that's the prelim to drilling by the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP). Images of seafloor topography and sub-seafloor layering we collect will enable us to choose sites to be drilled by the IODP, using the D/V JOIDES Resolution 2 to 3 years from now. That effort will recover records of Earth history that can be acquired in no other way than by putting out to sea and drilling hundreds of meters into the seafloor at key locations. We expect the sediments brought up from the depths will reveal ocean-atmosphere-biosphere interaction spanning the last 70 million years. The goal will be to improve knowledge of past climate variations and the factors that regulate the flow of deep ocean water that begins in the North Atlantic and circles the globe.

Atlantis Image Courtesy of WHOI

Read more: Rutgers faculty and students on the R/V Atlantis research cruise

Congratulations to Prof. Dennis Kent and coauthors on their recent paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. To learn more, click here to read the press release in Rutgers News

Click here for the full article...

Congratulations to Emeritus Professor Richard Olsson and co-authors on their recent book, Atlas of Oligocene Planktonic Foraminifera!  This is the third book in a larger series, and follows atlases on the Paleocene (by Olsson and others, 1999) and the Eocene. This Special Publication provides updates the taxonomy, paleoecology, phylogeny, and biostratigraphy of the diverse groups of Oligocene planktonic foraminifera, and will serve as an invaluable guide for paleontologists focusing on this epoch in Earth history.

On March 19th and 20th, Rutgers seismology group attended the Northeastern sectional meeting of GSA, held in Burlington, Vermont. In the session aiming to integrate geology and geophysics, our undergraduates, Stephen Elkington and Janine Hlavaty, contributed results from their research investigating the upper mantle rock textures beneath New England. The talk was masterfully presented by Steve. The study was done in conjunction with the Aresty Research Assistant Program (https://aresty.rutgers.edu/our-programs/research-assistant-program), and will be presented by Janine and Steve once again at the Annual Undergraduate Research Symposium in April.

Chondrules are melt spherules in meteorites. Whether chondrules are universally primitive condensates from the solar nebula or spherules produced by planetesimal collisions during planetary accretion is uncertain. Emeritus Professor Roger Hewins and Ph.D. alumna Claire Condie defined the formation conditions of some unusual chondrules, which partially remelted during cooling (see Condie’s 2012 EPS Ph.D. thesis). Melissa Morris’ group at SUNY Cortlandt used Condie’s data to conduct 3D modeling of an impact plume with the adaptive mesh refinement code FLASH4. They found heating spikes in compressed parcels of gas like those in crystallization experiments. The agreement between the geological experiments from Rutgers and the astrophysical models from SUNY Cortlandt supports formation of these chondrules by collision of planetesimals

Read more: First EPS Publication in The Astrophysical Journal Letters