MIKE WILLIAMS – FEBRUARY 19, 2021 Terror, be gone! This happy landing was pure delight. It remains to be seen how well the Perseverance rover and its helicopter, Ingenuity, perform as they traverse the surface of Mars, but for the moment NASA and Rice geologist Kirsten Siebach are getting a moment to celebrate with the spacecraft’s long-awaited successful landing on Feb. […]
Thursday February thee 18th was a big day. From her office in the Keith Wiess Geological Laboratories, EEPS planetary scientist Kirsten Siebach led a Mars 2020 mission virtual landing party. More than 120 participants were treated to a first-hand account of the upcoming landing from one of only 13 scientists chosen to operate the […]
JADE BOYD – FEBRUARY 12, 2021 Early-career honor goes to fourth Rice U. geochemist in 12 years Rice University’s Mark Torres has won the Geochemical Society’s top honor for early-career scientists, the F.W. Clarke Award, becoming the fourth Rice faculty member to win the award since 2009. Mark Torres with water samples collected from Iceland’s Efri […]
MIKE WILLIAMS, Rice News – JANUARY 21, 2021 Rice-led study shows two distinct origins of life-essential element in present-day planet HOUSTON – (Jan. 21, 2021) – Where did Earth’s nitrogen come from? Rice University scientists show one primordial source of the indispensable building block for life was close to home. The solar protoplanetary disk was separated […]
MIKE WILLIAMS – JANUARY 20, 2021 Crater study offers window on temperatures 3.5 billion years ago HOUSTON – (Jan. 20, 2021) – Once upon a time, seasons in Gale Crater probably felt something like those in Iceland. But nobody was there to bundle up more than 3 billion years ago. The ancient Martian crater is the focus of […]
JADE BOYD, Rice News Study: Nanocrystals may explain staggering number of bubbles in erupted lava HOUSTON – (Jan. 19, 2021) – Microscopic bubbles can tell stories about Earth’s biggest volcanic eruptions and geoscientists from Rice University and the University of Texas at Austin have discovered some of those stories are written in nanoparticles. In […]
Steamboat Geyser in Yellowstone National Park is active again! Considered the worlds tallest active geyser, the 400 foot jet of water can be tough for the average tourist to witness, with quiescent periods lasting as long as 50 years. Yet since 2018, Steamboat has erupted more times than it has in the last half century. […]
Mineralogical Society of America has selected EEPS postdoctoral researcher Dr. Chenguang Sun for the society’s 2021 MSA Award. The Mineralogical Society of America Award is intended to recognize outstanding published contributions to the science of mineralogy by relatively young individuals or individuals near the beginning of their professional careers. The work must have been accomplished […]
MIKE WILLIAMS Martian geologist Kirsten Siebach among 13 chosen by NASA for rover mission Kirsten Siebach has to persevere a little longer, waiting for her ship to come in. That ship is in space, carrying a rover called Perseverance to Mars. And Siebach, a Martian geologist at Rice University, is now one of 13 scientists recently selected by NASA to help […]
JADE BOYD – NOVEMBER 16, 2020 Study offers clues about the fate of tectonic plates that sink deep in Earth’s mantle In a study that gives new meaning to the term “rock bottom,” seismic researchers have discovered the underside of a rocky slab of Earth’s surface layer, or lithosphere, that has been pulled more than […]
Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences
Rice University
MS-126
6100 Main Street
Houston, TX 77005 USA
Phone: 713.348.4880
Fax: 713.348.5214
Email: geol@rice.edu
