August 10, 2023

Ancient craters teach us Earth’s history, but scientists can’t find them

A new study in JGR Planets investigates one of the oldest known craters to learn how to find even older ones. Sean Gulick and Nicola…

January 19, 2023

Impacts Diverted Watersheds on Early Mars

A billion years ago, a massive rock slammed into Mars and gouged a crater into the surface the size of Houston. Back then, rivers flowed…

September 28, 2022

Meet the Mars Student Researcher Who Wants to Rewrite Fluid Dynamics

The Center for Planetary Systems Habitability provides research fellowships and travel grants that help students like Eric Hiatt make groundbreaking research about life on other…

March 24, 2022

On Jupiter’s Moon Europa, ‘Chaos Terrains’ Could be Shuttling Oxygen to Ocean

Salt water within the icy shell of Jupiter’s moon Europa could be transporting oxygen into an ice-covered ocean of liquid water where it could potentially…

April 7, 2019

Evolution Imposes “Speed Limit” on Recovery after Mass Extinctions

It takes at least 10 million years for life to fully recover after a mass extinction, a speed limit for the recovery of species diversity that is well known among scientists. Explanations for this apparent rule have usually invoked environmental factors, but research led by The University of Texas at Austin links the lag to something different: evolution.

April 12, 2018

Newly Discovered Salty Subglacial Lakes Could Help Search for Life in Solar System

Researchers from the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG) have helped discover the first subglacial lakes ever found in the Canadian High Arctic.

The two new lakes are a potential habitat for microbial life and may assist scientists in the search for life beyond Earth, particularly on Jupiter’s icy moon Europa. The findings, published April 11 in Science Advances, were made possible by airborne radar data acquired by UTIG and NASA.