The Solar Supercharge: Using Systems Biology to Reconstruct How the Invention of Photosynthesis Transformed Biochemistry and the Ancient Biosphere

The invention of photosynthesis is often cited as one of the keystone events in the evolution of life on Earth. Roughly 2.5 billion years ago, oxygenic photosynthesis—the type of photosynthesis most of us are familiar with—provided the first major pulse of oxygen into a microbial world that was essentially anaerobic and ill-equipped to cope with what was effectively poisonous gas.

Earths In Other Solar Systems: The Formation of Habitable Zone Earth-Like Planets With Biocritical Ingredients

The past decade has revealed the unexpected and dramatic diversity of the physical properties of exoplanetary systems. The different planetary architectures and physical planet properties argue for formation pathways that are in many ways different from the Solar System's formation. The physical differences also foreshadow possible major compositional and dynamical differences between our own planetary system and those in which we will search for biosignatures.

Mineral Signatures of Glacial Environments and Implications for Past Climates on Mars

Observations of widespread rivers and lakes on early Mars have been interpreted as indicating that the martian climate was once warmer and wetter than it is today. However, climate models suggest that only cold and icy climates are possible on early Mars. One avenue for resolving this paradox may be through chemical indicators of climate, as recorded in the weathering mineralogy of the martian surface.

The School of Earth and Space Exploration is proud to honor our Emeritus faculty for their distinguished service to the school. We’re fortunate for their continued involvement and guidance in our research, programs, events, and student activities.

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Meet the School of Earth and Space Exploration Community

We are a talented and passionate group of people dedicated to combining the creative strengths of science, engineering and education to set the stage for a new era of exploration.

If you are unable to find an individual from the list below, try searching the ASU iSearch Directory.

Massive Emissions of Carbon During Continental Rifting: Implications for the Carbon Cycle and Climate

Active volcanoes are arguably the main pathways for mantle volatiles, including carbon, to enter the hydrosphere and atmosphere. Carbon return to the mantle via subduction results in a deep carbon cycle that appears balanced within current flux uncertainties.

Titan: an Organic World of Two Oceans

The Cassini mission has demonstrated that Titan is an organic world of two oceans: the large hydrocarbon seas at Titan’s North Pole and the global deep salty water ocean predicted to be squeezed between an icy crust and a layer of high-pressure ice. The talk first summarizes the observations that lead to our present understanding of Titan’s organic cycle and its interior structure and composition.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope

Northrop Grumman is proud to lead the industry team building NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Alberto Conti (Innovation Manager and Astrophysicist on the JWST program) will briefly discuss the science and give a status update on the engineering and construction of this revolutionary observatory. After its launch in 2018, the Webb Telescope will look back at a time where the first stars were formed, observe the epoch of galaxy formation, and enhance the search for unexplored planets that might harbor life around other stars.

Thinking in the Field: How Experts and Novices Make a Geologic Map

Fieldwork is considered essential to undergraduate education in the geosciences. Nearly all U.S. geology students participate in some form of fieldwork during their undergraduate years, with most attending a field-based course or camp focused at least in part on geologic mapping.

New Horizons in Experimental Astrophysics: Exoplanets and the Cosmic Dawn

Six years ago, the US astrophysics community decided to focus on three big ideas for the future of the field: the birth of the first stars, the nature of exoplanets, and the physics probed by extreme objects.  In this talk, I will outline two revolutionary new experiments underway at ASU, HERA and SPARCS, that are pushing deep into the first two questions and uniting two seemingly disconnected fields.  HERA is a massive new radio interferometer -now taking shape in the remote Karoo desert of South