Looking for life in all the wrong places: How one project is flipping the script on the search for habitable worlds

In the 1990s, scientists discovered the first planet orbiting another star. Just thirty years later, we know of a staggering 4000+ worlds outside of our own Solar System. With a solid spread of planets to choose from, some scientists have shifted focus from the discovery of planets to something even rarer than the planets themselves—they’re looking for life.

But it turns out that to find life from light-years away, we first have to know what isn’t life.

Introducing Davemaoite: A Groundbreaking Mineral Discovery Named After Trailblazing Carnegie Geophysicist

The first-ever silicate mineral recovered from the Earth’s lower mantle has been named after emeritus Carnegie scientist Ho-kwang “Dave” Mao, an experimental geophysicist whose work redefined our understanding of how materials behave under the extreme pressure and temperature conditions found inside Earth and other planets.

How Do Ice Giants Maintain Their Magnetic Fields?

A layer of “hot,” electrically conductive ice could be responsible for generating the magnetic fields of ice giant planets like Uranus and Neptune. New work from Carnegie and the University of Chicago’s Center for Advanced Radiation Sources reveals the conditions under which two such superionic ices form. Their findings are published in Nature Physics.