News Archives - CLEVER Planets

Giant impact may have delivered Earth’s important volatile elements

January 23, 2019August 11, 2022News, Theme 2 - Delivery of Life-Essential Elements

Earth’s ability to sustain life depends a lot on volatile elements like carbon, hydrogen, sulfur and nitrogen that make up a large proportion of our atmosphere, allowing us to breathe and keep warm in cold space. In a new study from Rice University, CLEVER Planets PhD student Damanveer Grewal, Principal Investigator Rajdeep Dasgupta, Researcher Kyusei Tsuno and Postdoctoral scholar Chenguang Sun, with the help of Gelu Costin, suggest that most of these necessary elements may have been delivered to our planet when a Mars-sized planetary body smashed into early Earth more than 4.4 billion years ago. The late addition of...

Isella’s protoplanetary disk images

December 18, 2018August 11, 2022News

Physics World posted an article earlier this week outlining the findings of CLEVER Planets co-investigator Andrea Isella, from Rice University, and his colleagues, who used the ALMA observatory radio-telescope array in Chile to image protoplanetary disks (spinning disks of dust and gas that make up the building-blocks of planets). With these data, they can learn about planetary formation. The article indicates that they have discovered that gas-giants may form much faster and earlier than thought and further away from their host stars than previously believed. Read more about this research update on Physics World’s site here....

Lee on volcanism and life at HMNS

September 27, 2018August 11, 2022Events, News

Though most know volcanoes as a source of immense destruction, these vents between the Earth’s interior and exterior, on the other hand, also offer a multitude of beneficial purposes on our planet, from expelling gases that make up Earth’s atmosphere and biosphere to providing natural resources and driving the economy. With their heavily integrated relationship with humans, volcanism, a process that has been active since Earth’s formation and even extends to other planetary bodies in our solar system and beyond, is a significant factor in the origins and evolution of life. This will be the subject of a lecture...

Lenardic on CLEVER Planets on Texas radio

September 10, 2018August 11, 2022News

This summer, Rice University Earth, Environmental and Planetary Science professor and geodynamicist on the project, Adrian Lenardic, spoke to the Texas Standard’s radio show about the research that CLEVER Planets is exploring regarding the origins of “extraterrestrial life”. When asked about the necessities to support life in space, Lenardic said, “We know that life requires energy, and for a long time we’ve thought that energy from the star is critical, but there’s also energy from the interior of the planet,” such that volcanoes and mountains, for example, that are similar but not necessarily geologically identical to Earth, may contribute...

CLEVER Planets is live

September 10, 2018August 11, 2022Announcements, News

We are pleased to announce CLEVER Planets (the Cycling of Life-Essential Volatile Elements on Rocky Planets), a research project investigating the necessary chemistry for a rocky planet to host life. The project is funded by an almost $8-million grant from NASA’s Science Mission Directorate to be a part of the Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS). Research for the team project will be accomplished by Principle Investigator Rajdeep Dasgupta (Rice University) and eleven other co-investigators from around the world (Rice, NASA’s Johnson Space Center, UCLA, UC-Davis, UC-Boulder), and many more collaborators at a myriad of institutions around the world, all representing...