Life, Earth And Space

We can go to Mars—soon. But should we? Astronomy Professor David Weintraub asks the ethical questions in his new book, "Life on Mars: What to Know Before We Go." Read More

Vanderbilt’s Keivan Stassun serves as a deputy principal investigator on the mission and is tasked with identifying the most promising stars to target in its search for habitable nearby planets. Read More

Before the Industrial Age, the Mississippi Delta grew at a rate of two to three square miles per year, suggesting that, even with current reclamation efforts, it is unlikely that it will be possible to offset the current rate of loss--15 to 20 square miles per year Read More

Is the mystery of human speech hidden in the song of a finch? Vanderbilt researchers in the Music, Mind and Society TIPs program are analyzing the songs of zebra finches to study the development and nuance of spoken language. Learn more in this fascinating VUBreakThru blog post written by Ph.D. candidate Kate T. Snyder. Read more about TIPs grants and other internal faculty funding programs—including University Courses, Discovery Grants and Research Scholar Grants—at the VU BreakThru blog. Read More

Vanderbilt geologist Dan Morgan and undergraduate Andrew Grant took immersion to an extreme, trekking all the way to Antarctica to hunt for the oldest ice ever found. Read More

The newly discovered planets appear to have too much water to sustain life but provide hints at what sorts of planets might do so. Read More

Sandra Rosenthal, the Jack and Pamela Egan Professor of Chemistry and director of the Vanderbilt Institute for Nanoscale Science and Engineering, is being recognized for her development of nanocrystal probes for neuroscience and white-light emitting nanocrystals as well as her leadership in the NSF-funded TN-SCORE program. Read More

Astrophysicist Keivan Stassun has been named mentor of the year by AAAS for his efforts in increasing the number of underrepresented minorities in STEM Ph.D. programs. Read More

Vanderbilt biologist Nicole Creanza is the guest editor of a new themed issue of "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B" highlighting interdisciplinary approaches to understanding human evolution. Read More

A dozen Vanderbilt students went on a monthlong science adventure of a lifetime, studying super-eruptions, glaciers and earthquakes in New Zealand. Read More

Vanderbilt junior Dara Craig is studying the squirrel population on campus as a project for an earth and environmental sciences class. Read More

Astronomers have come up with a new and improved method for measuring the masses of millions of solitary stars, especially those with planetary systems. Read More

Keivan Stassun was named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Million-Dollar Professor for promotion of minorities in the physical sciences. Read More

Vanderbilt astronomers will carry out detailed studies of nearby stars orbited by planets with the potential to harbor or sustain life. Read More

A Vanderbilt astrophysicist has been elected chair of a scientific study team that will advise NASA on science issues related to the international Laser Interferometer Space Antenna program. Read More

Seven outstanding Ph.D.’s with diverse backgrounds and experiences have come to Vanderbilt to pursue postdoctoral training with an eye toward academic careers. Read More

Filling the universe with knots shortly after it popped into existence 13.8 billion years ago provides a neat explanation for why we inhabit a three-dimensional world. That is the basic idea advanced by an out-of-the-box theory developed by an international team of physicists. Read More

In subatomic collisions, physicists have found the signature of primordial cosmic soup, from which all the stuff in the universe formed, at lower energies and in smaller volume than ever before. Read More

Matthew Feldman, a graduate research assistant in physics and astronomy, is one of only 195 students nationwide who have been awarded a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellow Read More

Ken Catania stuck his arm into a tank with an electric eel 10 times -- the only way to get accurate measurements of the circuit created by animal, arm and water. Read More