Signs of life detectable in single ice grain emitted from extraterrestrial moons

This image shows red streaks across the surface of Europa, the smallest of Jupiter’s four large moons.

The ice-encrusted oceans of some of the moons orbiting Saturn and Jupiter are leading candidates in the search for extraterrestrial life. A new lab-based study led by the University of Washington in Seattle and the Freie Universität Berlin shows that individual ice grains ejected from these planetary bodies may contain enough material for instruments headed there in the fall to detect signs of life, if such life exists. 

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80 mph speed record for glacier fracture helps reveal the physics of ice sheet collapse

Illustration of an iceberg with a rift extending from the above water surface to well below under the water

There’s enough water frozen in Greenland and Antarctic glaciers that if they melted, global seas would rise by many feet. What will happen to these glaciers over the coming decades is the biggest unknown in the future of rising seas, partly because glacier fracture physics is not yet fully understood. A critical question is how warmer oceans might cause glaciers to break apart more quickly. 

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Earth and Space Sciences professor Fang-Zhen Teng elected as a Geochemistry Fellow

Fang-Zhen Teng of the Department of Earth and Space Sciences has been elected as a 2024 Geochemical Fellow of the Geochemical Society and the European Association of Geochemistry. This international award, established in 1996, is bestowed upon outstanding scientists who have made a major contribution to the field of geochemistry. Nearly 380 geochemists worldwide have been honored with this esteemed recognition. 

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