54 min
Over the past few years, Dr. Sheppard and his team have been performing the largest and deepest survey ever attempted of our Solar System’s fringes. In December 2018, he announced the most-...
1:20 hr
Earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, hurricanes, and volcanoes—they all stem from the very same forces that give our planet life. It is only when these forces exceed our ability to withstand them...
Washington, DC—Former-Energy Secretary and nuclear physicist Ernest Moniz received Carnegie’s inaugural Richard A. Meserve Public Service award Thursday in recognition of his “...
5:09 min
In honor of Women's History Month, we're revisiting some discussions we shared with scientific experts from a variety of disciplines who visited our flagship building in Washington, DC,...
1:14 hr
Drs. Peter and Rosemary Grant
Professors emeriti, Princeton University
Charles Darwin said evolution was too slow to be observed, but modern studies have corrected this assertion. The Grants...
Dr. James E. Rothman - How Vesicles in Our Cells Allow Communication in the Body and the Brain
For more than four decades, Jacques-Yves Cousteau’s beloved research vessel, Calypso, explored the world’s oceans. And on Monday night, we explored his journey from inventor and...
1:18 hr
“I’m an engineer by training, but a scientist at heart,” Stanford University’s Kwabena Boahen told the crowd at our DC headquarters last week during the final public program...
On Tuesday night, George Church told us that a fascination with animatronic Abraham Lincoln at the 1964 World’s Fair partially inspired him to become a scientist.
This seems fitting, somehow,...
6:06 min
On Saturday, Carnegie scientists, families, and friends took to the streets and marched to support science in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Pasadena, and the nation’s capital.
Andrew Carnegie...
People often call dogs “man’s best friend.” But after Elaine Ostrander’s presentation at our Washington, DC, headquarters Thursday, we think that moniker should probably be...
0:32 min
It isn’t often that our Capital Science Evening speaker hints at soon-to-be-breaking news right from the stage.
Tuesday night, Pierre Cox, Director of the Atacama Large Milimiter/submillimeter...
1:37 min
“Scientists are my best friends,” wildlife photographer Frans Lanting said during a retrospective program at Carnegie’s Washington, DC, headquarters last week.
He added that without...
If you want to work with DNA nanotechnology, you should study art.
That was the advice given by the field’s creator, Nadrian “Ned” Seeman, at our Washington, DC, headquarters...
2:07 min
Learning about photosynthesis is fun! Life as we know it on Earth couldn't exist without this amazing process. And what better way to understand and appreciate everything that plants and algae...
3:05 min
Plants have tiny pores on their leaves called stomata—Greek for mouths—through which they take in carbon dioxide from the air and from which water evaporates. New work from the lab of...
0:14 min
Carnegie’s Mark Seibert, Barry Madore, Jeff Rich, and team have discovered that what was believed since the 1960s to be a relatively boring, small elliptical galaxy ...
At left, in optical light, UGC 1382 appears to be a simple elliptical galaxy. But spiral arms emerged when astronomers incorporated ultraviolet and deep optical data (middle). Combining that with a...
Andrew Carnegie understood that science is unpredictable. He created the institution to support individuals of exceptional ability and passion and gave them the independence to pursue high-risk, high...
2:50 min
New work from an international team including Carnegie’s Ken Caldeira demonstrates that the planet’s remaining fossil fuel resources would be sufficient to melt nearly all of Antarctica...
2:37 min
A team of scientists led by Carnegie’s Rebecca Albright and Ken Caldeira performed the first-ever experiment that manipulated seawater chemistry in a natural coral reef community in order to...
17:16 min
This video was part of the 2015 Open House at the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, CA,.
We show plates from 1894 to 1971, how they were made at Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatories, and it...
8:49 min
Read this new flipbook of Carnegie Science to find out how experts in STEM education believe STEM professionals can advance STEM. Sign up for communications.
3:16 min
Karl Reid the Executive Director of the National Society of Black Engineers, What works for the Underrepresented. Sign up for communications
5:09 min
STEM Education: STEM Experts Reflect on the mentors who made a difference in their lives.Sign up for communications
2:58
Kids Talk STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) at Carnegie Science. Sign up for communications
3:19 min
Share this video with the hashtag #chlamy
Get your very own Sammy The Chlamy plush doll!! www.livedreamcreate.com
Learn more about research in the Jonikas Lab: http://bit.ly/jonikas
This video was...
Scientists, including researchers from the Carnegie Institution for Science, discuss the search for extrasolar planets.
This video is provided courtesy of NASA.
2:04 min
Impacts of Large Herbivores on Vegetation: publications from the journals Ecography and Publications of the National Academy of Sciences
3:22 min
New work from a team including Carnegie’s Christopher Glein has revealed the pH of water spewing from a geyser-like plume on Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Their findings are an important step...
4:49 min
New research from a team led by Carnegie’s Robert Hazen predicts that Earth has more than 1,500 undiscovered minerals and that the exact mineral diversity of our planet is unique and could not...
3:05 min
New work from Carnegie's Alan Boss and Sandra Keiser provides surprising new details about the trigger that may have started the earliest phases of planet formation in our solar system.
5:21 min
Ben Shappee, Hubble, Carnegie-Princeton Fellow, summarizes results for the Shappee et al. paper, "The Young and Bright Type Ia Supernova ASASSN-14lp: Discovery, Early-Time Observations, First-...
5:17 min
3:50 min
With the New Horizons historic flyby of Pluto next week, imagine how excited we were a few weeks ago to unearth a set of plates from 1925 in our vault that include Pluto--five years before Pluto was...
4:21 min
Continuing current carbon dioxide (CO2) emission trends throughout this century and beyond would leave a legacy of heat and acidity in the deep ocean. These changes would linger even if the...
5:27 min
2:44 min
Scientists, including Carnegie’s David Ehrhardt and Heather Cartwright, have exploited a way to watch protein trafficking to make cellulose in the formation of plant cell walls in real time.
2:43 min
Climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions will alter the way that Americans heat and cool their homes. By the end of this century, the number of days each year that heating and air...
4:11 min
New work from an international team of researchers including Carnegie’s Lara Wagner improves our understanding of the geological activity that is thought to have formed the Rocky Mountains. It...
5:10 min
Tiny beads of volcanic glass found on the lunar surface during the Apollo missions are a sign that fire fountain eruptions took place on the Moon’s surface. Now, scientists from Brown...
3:05 min
Colossal magnetoresistance is a property with practical applications in a wide array of electronic tools including magnetic sensors and magnetic RAM. New research from a team including Carnegie...
3:14 min
New work from Carnegie’s Alan Boss offers a potential solution to a longstanding problem in the prevailing theory of how rocky planets formed in our own Solar System, as well as in others. The...
3:48 min
The interiors of several of our Solar System’s planets and moons are icy, and ice has been found on distant extrasolar planets, as well. But these bodies aren’t filled with the...
1:12 hr
Dr. Matthew P. Scott
President,
Carnegie Institution for Science
Carnegie Astronomy is also part of Carnegie Science and the study of all living species. From ancient single-celled organisms evolved...
1:11 hr
Dr. John Mulchaey
Staff Scientist
Carnegie Observatories
The light we see with our eyes only tells a small part of the Universe's story. To get a complete picture of how the Universe works,...
3:02 min
New work from Carnegie’s Russell Hemley and Ivan Naumov hones in on the physics underlying the recently discovered fact that some metals stop being metallic under pressure.
3:00 min
The heat generated by burning a fossil fuel is surpassed within a few months by the warming caused by the release of its carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, according to new work from Carnegie’...
This artwork shows the Giant Magellan Telesope at Carnegie's Las Campanas Observatory in Chile.
4:24 min
New work from a multidisciplinary team of scientists used massive DNA sequencing of bacterial populations that grow in the hot springs in Yellowstone National Park to determine their genetic...
3:16 min
In the face of global climate change, increasing the use of renewable energy resources is one of the most urgent challenges facing the world. Further development of one resource, solar energy, is...
3:00 min
To combat global climate change caused by greenhouse gases, alternative energy sources and other types of environmental recourse actions are needed. There are several proposals that involve using...
4:13 min
You know the old saying: Location, location, location? It turns out that it applies to the Amazon rainforest, too. New work illustrates a hidden tapestry of chemical variation across the lowland...
3:56 min
Type Ia supernovae are violent stellar explosions that shine as some of the brightest objects in the universe. But there are still many mysteries surrounding their origin—what kind of star...
1:56 hr
A Carnegie Evening Lecture
Dr. Allan Spradling, Director
Department of Embryology, Carnegie Institution for Science
Eggs are uniquely important animal cells. Only eggs can support the development of...
Deputy Principal Investigator on NASA’s MESSENGER mission to Mercury, Carnegie’s Larry Nittler is playing a leading role in determining the chemical composition of the Solar System’...
2:19 min
A team has, for the first time, discovered how to produce ultra-thin "diamond nanothreads" that promise extraordinary properties, including strength and stiffness greater than that of today...
4:41 min
Some scientists have suggested that global warming could melt frozen ground in the Arctic, releasing vast amounts of the potent greenhouse gas methane into the atmosphere, greatly amplifying global...
0:54 min
Wednesday, April 29, 2015
Washington, D.C—The MESSENGER Education and Public Outreach (EPO) Team, coordinated through Carnegie Science, announces the winning names from its...
3:39 min
A plant's roots grow and spread into the soil, taking up necessary water and minerals. The tip of a plant's root is a place of active cell division followed by cell elongation, with different...
1:24 min
Andrew Carnegie founded the Carnegie Institution to support individuals of exceptional ability and passion and give them the independence to pursue high-risk, high-reward science.
3:38 min
Cells often face low-oxygen conditions at night. When this happens, some organisms such as the single-cell alga Chlamydomonas are able to generate cellular energy from the breakdown of sugars...
5:20 min
Two new papers from members of the MESSENGER Science Team provide global-scale maps of Mercury’s surface chemistry that reveal previously unrecognized geochemical terranes — large regions...
4:03 min
The 2000-2003 drought in the American southwest triggered a widespread die-off of forests around the region. A Carnegie-led team of scientists developed a new modeling tool to explain how and where...
4:20 min
In the face of global climate change, increasing the use of renewable energy resources is one of the most urgent challenges facing the world. Further development of one resource, solar energy, is...
2:50 min
Nutrition and metabolism are closely linked with reproductive health. Several reproductive disorders have been linked to malnutrition, diabetes, and obesity. Furthermore, fasting in numerous species...
4:09 min
A Carnegie-based search of nearby galaxies for their oldest stars has uncovered two stars in the Sculptor dwarf galaxy that were born shortly after the galaxy formed, approximately 13 billion years...
3:34 min
Silicon dioxide, commonly called silica, is one of the most-abundant natural compounds and a major component of the Earth’s crust and mantle. Silica’s various high-pressure forms...
1:19 hr
March 4, 2015
The Curiosity Mission is exploring Mars in a whole new way, with discoveries that are providing a more vivid picture of current and ancient Mars. The rover's search for habitable...
2:54 min
February 25, 2015
Quasars--supermassive black holes found at the center of distant massive galaxies--are the most-luminous beacons in the sky. These central supermassive black holes actively accrete...
1:07 hr
February 11, 2015
Dr. Douglas Koshland,
University of California Berkeley, Department of Molecular & Cell Biology
Remarkable organisms exemplify extremes in the spectrum of life, like transparent...
3:00 min
February 4, 2015
A team of Carnegie scientists have found “beautifully preserved” 15 million-year-old thin protein sheets in fossil shells from southern Maryland. The team—...
3:23 min
Fast radio bursts are quick, bright flashes of radio waves from an unknown source in space. They are a mysterious phenomenon that last only a few milliseconds, and until now they have not been...
3:44 min
Lake Erie just can’t catch a break. The lake has experienced harmful algal blooms and severe oxygen-depleted “dead zones” for years, but now a team of researchers led by Carnegie...
4:28 min
We would not expect a baby to join a team or participate in social situations that require sophisticated communication. Yet, most developmental biologists have assumed that young cells, only recently...
3:20 min
December 12, 2014
Hydrogen is the most-abundant element in the cosmos. With only a single electron per atom, it is deceptively simple. As a result, hydrogen has been a testing ground for theories of...
3:24 min
December 8, 2014
Natural gas power plants produce substantial amounts of gases that lead to global warming. Replacing old coal-fired power plants with new natural gas plants could cause climate...
3:23 min
December 8, 2014
Natural gas power plants produce substantial amounts of gases that lead to global warming. Replacing old coal-fired power plants with new natural gas plants could cause climate...
2:14 min
December 3, 2014
The climate warming caused by a single carbon emission takes only about 10 years to reach its maximum effect. This is important because it refutes the common misconception that today...
4:43 min
New work from a team led by Carnegie’s Greg Asner shows the limitations of long-used research methods in tropical rainforest ecology and points to new technological approaches for understanding...
2:51 min
As animals age, their immune systems gradually deteriorate, a process called immunosenescence. It is associated with systemic inflammation and chronic inflammatory disorders, as well as with many...
2:09 hr
November 6, 2014
Inflationary cosmology gives a very plausible explanation for many features of our universe, including its uniformity, its mass density, and the patterns of the ripples that are...
56 min
September 29, 2014
An AxS Festival Program
presented by The Carnegie Observatories and Pasadena Conservatory of Music
AxS [ak-sis] is a two-week citywide festival produced by the Pasadena Arts...
2:49 min
A team of researchers working on a Carnegie expedition in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef has documented that coral growth rates have plummeted 40 percent since the mid-1970s. The scientists...
4:14 min
Astronomers have discovered an extremely cool object that could have a particularly diverse history—although it is now as cool as a planet, it may have spent much of its youth as hot as a star...
1:09 hr
September 16, 2014
Speaker: Dr. Matthew P. Scott
Why do we look like our parents? We inherit particular versions of genes that shape our growth. For a long time these genes were unknown and it was...
3:05 min
New work has for the first time elucidated the atomic structures of the bacterial prototype of sugar transporters, termed “SWEET” transporters, found in plants and humans. These bacterial...
2:20 min
July 12, 2014
Eating meat contributes to climate change, due to greenhouse gasses emitted by livestock. New research finds that livestock emissions are on the rise and that beef cattle are...
1:11 hr
April 22, 2014
Dr. Maria T. Zuber
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Since before the first single-celled organisms, the Moon has...
57 min
March 27, 2014
Dr. José R. Dinneny, Carnegie Institution for Science, Department of Plant Biology
We see plants everywhere in our daily lives, but half of the plant, the root system, is hidden...
57 min
February 20, 2014
Dr. Robert Hazen, Carnegie Institution for Science, Geophysical Laboratory
The story of Earth is a 4.5-billion-year saga of dramatic transformations, driven by physical, chemical,...
1:20 hr
January 16, 2014
Dance on a Volcano: A Quarter Century of Experimental First Ascents
Dr. Donald B. Dingwell, Secretary General of the European Research Council, President of the European...
3:05 min
Life originated as a result of natural processes that exploited early Earth's raw materials. Scientific models of life's origins almost always look to minerals for such essential tasks as the...
2:47 min
December 9, 2013
In researching neural pathways, it helps to establish an analogous relationship between a region of the human brain and the brains of more-easily studied animal species. New work...
2:54 min
October 28, 2013
For the first time, researchers have been able to map the true extent of gold mining in the biologically diverse region of Madre De Dios in the Peruvian Amazon. The team, led by Greg...
2:49 min
November 7, 2013
Inside every plant cell, a cytoskeleton provides an interior scaffolding to direct construction of the cell’s walls, and thus the growth of the organism as a whole....
1:27 hr
October 24, 2013
Dr. Mildred Dresselhaus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Physics
Nanoscience research investigates the behavior of materials at the atomic level. It has led to a...
1:30 min
October 8, 2013
A new planet-hunting survey has revealed planetary candidates with orbital periods as short as four hours and so close to their host stars that they are nearly skimming the stellar...
2:44 min
September 30, 2013
A great deal of research has focused on the amount of global warming resulting from increased greenhouse gas concentrations. But there has been relatively little study of the pace...
1:06 hr
April 28, 2010
Speaker: Raymond Jeanloz
Diamonds and lasers are used to re-create the extreme conditions present when planets are born – conditions that remain, billions of years later, deep...
1:02 hr
March 18, 2010
Speaker: Robert Hazen
Evolution has long been a lightning rod for anti-science rhetoric. Such attacks are usually reserved for discussions of Darwinian evolution by natural selection,...
1:07 hr
January 28, 2010
Jenny Graves The Australian National University, Research School of Biological Sciences
Comparisons between distantly related mammals and other vertebrates – including...
1:02 hr
February 12, 2009
Saturn’s moon, Titan, is covered by a thick organic haze that completely shrouds the surface from view. Such a mysterious haze might have also been present on Earth billions...
24:07 min
January 27, 2009
A documentary film about Eric Kandel by Petra Seeger FilmForm Köln, 2008
Join us for a screening of producer/director Petra Seeger’s documentary film about the life and...
1:13 hr
January 20, 2009
Speaker: Steven Beckwith
Do you ever question the Big Bang? The Hubble Space Telescope has now looked far enough back in time to reveal the universe when it was very young and shows...
1:23 hr
September 25, 2008
Speaker: Eric Roston and James Gustave Speth
Eric Roston - Duke University, The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, Author of The Carbon Age: How Life’s...
58 min
January 17, 2008
Michael Brown
California Institute of Technology, Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences
Pluto is no longer a planet. Did it really have it coming or are astronomers...
1:03 hr
January 1, 2008
Speaker: Simon Levin
A sustainable future for humanity will require finding a way to share our complex environment. Learn about the evolution of cooperation in non-human populations,...