Oak Ridge Today

Physics professor to give sun-Earth astronomy talk at Grove on Wednesday

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High Places Community Church

The Grove Theater at High Places Community Church is pictured above.

An adjunct physics professor in east Tennessee will give a basic astronomy talk in Oak Ridge on Wednesday that focuses on “Selected Topics on the Sun-Earth Connection.”

John C. Mannone will give his talk to the ORION astronomy club at the Grove Theater at 7 p.m. Wednesday.

“Emphasis will be placed on the role of magnetic fields in the formation of our sun, the nature of sunspots, and their role in solar and terrestrial weather,” a press release said. [Read more…]

UT professor receives more than $880,000 in DOE funding for carbon cycle research

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UT Students Measure Soil Carbon Flux

Doctoral candidate Jessica Bryant, left; Associate Professor Aimee Classen, middle; and University of Tennessee undergraduate student Kelsey Richesin use Li-Cor 6400, a machine that measure carbon flux from soil. (Photo courtesy UT)

KNOXVILLE—Carbon dioxide is key to life on Earth, but too much of the good thing can overheat the Earth’s surface and hurt the very things it supports. Thus, understanding how carbon cycles through the atmosphere is crucial to predicting its effects.

A University of Tennessee professor in Knoxville has received more than $880,000 from the U.S. Department of Energy to investigate often-overlooked carbon cycle players.

Aimee Classen, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, and her team, which includes Oak Ridge National Laboratory staff members, will examine factors that influence carbon cycling below the ground and are not included in today’s carbon-cycle models.

“We know that tiny things that live in soil, like fungi, can regulate carbon processes in forests. However, our current soil models don’t consider what role fungal and plant root activity may play in soil carbon dynamics. Our project aims to fill this knowledge gap,” Classen said. [Read more…]

New director named at Climate Change Science Institute at ORNL

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Jack Fellows

Jack Fellows

Jack D. Fellows, who oversaw a $110 billion federal science portfolio under two U.S. presidents and co-founded the U.S. Global Change Research Program integrating all federal Earth system science research programs, has been appointed director of the Climate Change Science Institute at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Martin Keller and Jeff Nichols, leaders of the Energy and Environmental Sciences Directorate and the Computing and Computational Sciences Directorate respectively, announced Fellows’ appointment.

“Jack Fellows is a welcome addition to our climate change science program,” said ORNL Director Thom Mason. “His extensive experience in directing research and education programs, most recently as vice-president for the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, will be particularly valuable as CCSI moves forward in its work of advancing the understanding of the Earth system, describing the consequences of climate change, and evaluating and informing policy on the potential outcomes of responses to climate change.” [Read more…]

UT professor helps discover near-Earth asteroid really a comet

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Don Quixote Orbit

This image displays Don Quixote’s orbit. (Image courtesy University of Tennessee)

KNOXVILLE—Some things are not always what they seem—even in space. For 30 years, scientists believed a large near-Earth object was an asteroid. Now, an international team including Joshua Emery, assistant professor of earth and planetary sciences at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, has discovered it is actually a comet.

Called 3552 Don Quixote, the body is the third largest near-Earth object—mostly rocky bodies, or asteroids, that orbit the sun in the vicinity of Earth. About 5 percent of near-Earth objects are thought to be “dead” comets that have shed all the water and carbon dioxide in the form of ice that give them their coma—a cloud surrounding the comet nucleus—and tail. [Read more…]