Press Coverage on Our Research Results:
Results from my group are often featured in online and printed media, as well as on TV. Below are some examples for press coverage on our work.
Read KNAU Earth Notes: Carbon-Capturing Algae by Rose Houk (June 1, 2022) on our Atmospherica project!
Watch the KOLD13 news coverage on Atmospherica:
Excellent report on Atmospherica by Ryan Fish on KGUN9 on April 27, 2022. Check out the video for a short summary of our project.
Read the UA News story on Atmospherica!
Small but mighty: How UArizona professors are harnessing the power of algae to capture carbon
The Alien Earths team selected for major new NASA Astrobiology award!
Read the NASA Press Release and the UArizona Press Release!
Visiting the Planets in the tau Ceti Systems
Read our article on TheConversation on finding new worlds in nearby planetary systems – and, specifically, around tau Ceti, a favorite of sci-fi fans!
The Nautilus Space Observatory Concept:
Optics & Photonics News: A Different Kind of Eye on the Cosmos by Stewart Wills
Science Daily: A new lens for life-searching space telescopes
Hubble fortuitously discovers a new galaxy in the cosmic neighborhood
January 31, 2019
Astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to study some of the oldest and faintest stars in the globular cluster NGC 6752 have made an unexpected finding. They discovered a dwarf galaxy in our cosmic backyard, only 30 million light-years away. The finding is reported in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters.
Zones, Spots, and Planetary-scale Waves in Brown Dwarfs
Aug 18, 2017
In a paper published in Science we presented evidence for zonal circulation in brown dwarfs and the beating of planetary-scale waves within these bands that drive the brightness modulations observed in these objects. Our study opens the field of atmospheric dynamics in brown dwarfs and showed that the circulation in these objects is in many ways similar to that in Jupiter and Neptune, but with exciting and unexpected differences.
Our work was covered in various media outlets, including a Spitzer Space Telescope press release, a Science editor’s note, a Gizmodo article, space.com article, an Astronomy.com article, a cosmosmagazine article, a Science Magazine podcast.
I also covered this news in a DistantEarths blog post.
Spiral Arms Discovered in Planet-forming Disk
October 9, 2015
According to a new paper co-authored by UA researchers, an ultra-rare spiral structure lives inside a planet-forming disk, some 400 light-years from here.
NASA’s NExSS Coalition to Lead Search for Life on Distant Worlds
April 21, 2015
NASA is bringing together experts spanning a variety of scientific fields for an unprecedented initiative dedicated to the search for life on planets outside our solar system. The Nexus for Exoplanet System Science, or “NExSS”, hopes to better understand the various components of an exoplanet, as well as how the planet stars and neighbor planets interact to support life.
Our UA-led team Earths in Other Solar Systems is one of the two largest projects funded in the new program. For more information on our EOS program see the project website https://otherearths.org
Some of the related news coverage:
UA. ASU teams to search for alien life (AZ Daily Star)
Hubble Gets Best View of a Circumstellar Debris Disk Distorted by a Planet
February 19, 2015
STScI Press Release
Astronomers have used NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope to take the most detailed picture to date of a large, edge-on, gas-and-dust disk encircling the 20-million-year-old star Beta Pictoris.
Check out our Google Hangout session discussing the results!
Got Planets? Smaller Stars Are Best Bet
February 17, 2015
In the search for Earth-size planets elsewhere in the Milky Way, lower-mass stars make for more promising hunting grounds, UA astronomers have discovered.
Extrasolar Storms: How’s The Weather Way Out There?
January 12, 2015
Like galactic storm chasers, UA astronomers are leading an effort to discover how clouds and weather systems change over time on other worlds.
Stormy Stars? NASA’s Spitzer Probes Weather on Brown Dwarfs
January 7, 2014
Swirling, stormy clouds may be ever-present on cool celestial orbs called brown dwarfs. New observations from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope suggest that most brown dwarfs are roiling with one or more planet-size storms akin to Jupiter’s “Great Red Spot.”
Scientists Peer Into a Brown Dwarf, Find Stormy Atmosphere
Pointing the Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes simultaneously at a brown dwarf, a UA-led team of astronomers has obtained detailed images of the stormy atmosphere that enshrouds these strange objects, which are not quite planets and not quite stars. Their forecast shows planet-sized clouds and showers of sandy and iron rain.
Hubble and Spitzer See Weather Patterns in Brown Dwarf
Astronomers using NASA’s Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes have probed the stormy atmosphere of a brown dwarf, creating the most detailed “weather map” yet for this class of cool, star-like orbs. The forecast shows wind-driven, planet-sized clouds enshrouding these strange worlds.
Exoplanet Caught on the Move
For the first time, astronomers have been able to directly follow the motion of an exoplanet as it moves from one side of its host star to the other. The planet has the smallest orbit so far of all directly imaged exoplanets, lying almost as close to its parent star as Saturn is to the Sun. Scientists believe that it may have formed in a similar way to the giant planets in the Solar System. Because the star is so young, this discovery proves that gas giant planets can form within discs in only a few million years, a short time in cosmic terms.
Cool Stars May Have Different Prebiotic Chemical Mix
Life on Earth is thought to have arisen from a hot soup of chemicals. Does this same soup exist on planets around other stars? A new study from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope hints that planets around stars cooler than our sun might possess a different mix of potentially life-forming, or “prebiotic,” chemicals.
Disks around Failed Stars – a Question of Age
A team of European astronomers have observed eight Brown Dwarfs, i.e., small and faint objects also known as “failed stars”, with the TIMMI2 infrared sensitive instrument at the ESO 3.6-m telescope on La Silla. From two of these, mid-infrared radiation is detected – for the first time ever from such objects with a ground-based telescope . While the younger Brown Dwarf, aged a few million years, is found to be surrounded by a dusty disk, no warm dust is present around the older ones. The new observations support the following formation hypothesis for Brown Dwarfs: they are born in the same way as “real” stars, by contraction in interstellar clouds of gas and dust . During the later stages of this process, the infalling material is transferred onto the star via a gas and dust disk . This disk – in which planets may possibly form – then disperses with time.
Education and Training in Press:
Scientists from around the world exchange ideas on space exploration at Oro Valley conference
Biology Students Learn to Scan the Stars for Signs of Life
You have to learn to crack eggs if you’re going to cook an omelet. You have to jump in the water if you’re going to learn to swim. And you have to get your hands on telescopes that can search for signs of life beyond Earth if you’re going to study extraterrestrial biology.
Videos / Recorded Lectures:
2012:
Exploring New Worlds (Webcast, STScI)
2015: Hubble Hangout: