Life, Earth And Space

Gregory Benford, a physicist at UC-Irvine and a noted science fiction author, is giving a free public lecture titled "Our Next Century in Space" that will describe steps that could see the opening of the solar system to productive use and colonization. Read More

Recent experiments at the world's largest atom smashers are producing liquid drops so small that they raise the question of how small a droplet can be and still remain a liquid. Read More

Kelly Holley-Bockelmann, associate professor of physics and astronomy, has been named director of the Fisk-Vanderbilt Master’s-to-Ph.D. Bridge Program, College of Arts and Science Dean Lauren Benton announced. Read More

Jessica Oster is a member of a small group of earth scientists pioneering the use of mineral cave deposits in stalagmites, collectively known as speleothems, as proxies for the prehistoric climate. Read More

The Earth's first mass extinction event 540 million years ago was caused not by a meteorite impact or volcanic super-eruption, but by the rise of early animals that dramatically changed to prehistoric environment. Read More

Recent microbiological research has shown that plants and animals, including humans, are not autonomous individuals but are holobionts: biomolecular networks that consist of visible hosts plus millions of invisible microbes. Read More

A new map of the Milky Way has discovered that 30 percent of the galaxy's stars are wanderers, making major shifts in their orbits during their lifetimes. Vanderbilt post-doc Jonathan Bird played a major role in the study. Read More

Astronomer David Weintraub, who is an expert on Pluto, reacts to the new images of the distant world and its twin, Charon, coming back from the New Horizons spacecraft. Read More

A Vanderbilt team of scientists have developed a new formulation for cosmic viscosity which strongly favors the "Big Rip" end of the universe. Read More

Vanderbilt biologist Julián Hillyer is this year's recipient of the H.B. Ward Medal given by the American Society of Parasitologists. Read More

Chemists Brian Bachmann and John McLean have shown that creating bacterial "fight clubs" is an effective way to discover natural biomolecules with the properties required for new drugs. Read More

Vanderbilt biologist Laurence Zwiebel has received a Gates Foundation Grand Challenges Exploration grant to create a wrist-band device that devises a personal "no-fly zone" offering protection from mosquitoes. Read More

Three Vanderbilt physicists who are members of a scientific team at the Large Hadron Collider appeared in a BBC News photo taken when the giant particle smasher was restarted. Read More

Vanderbilt researchers have made the world’s smallest spirals and found they have unique optical properties that are nearly impossible to counterfeit. Read More

Jessica Oster and her colleagues have shown that the analysis of a stalagmite from a cave in north east India can detect the link between El Nino conditions in the Pacific Ocean and the Indian monsoon. Read More

Vanderbilt biologists have localized the seasonal light cycle effects that drive seasonal affective disorder to a small region of the brain called the dorsal raphe nucleus. Read More

Explainer: the mysterious dark energy that speeds the universe’s rate of expansion Read More

In his new blog “Cosmic Yarns,” Robert Scherrer, who is both chair of the Astronomy and Physics Department and a published science fiction author, explores the intersection between science and science fiction. Read More

Vanderbilt researchers have identified the role that a key protein associated with autism and the co-occurrence of alcohol dependency and depression plays in forming the spines that create new connections in the brain. Read More

Bob O'Dell reflects on the challenges of building the Hubble Space Telescope, launched 25 years ago. Read More