Scientists working at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) at Caltech in Pasadena were part of an international science team that recently discovered the first known system of seven Earth-size planets around a single star. Three of these planets ... More »
Scientists led by a team at Caltech have developed a new method for potentially removing nearly all sulfur compounds from gas and diesel fuel. Sulfur compounds in fuels such as gasoline and diesel create air pollution when the fuel is burned. To address that c... More »
In the early 1990s, Jacqueline Barton, the John G. Kirkwood and Arthur A. Noyes Professor of Chemistry at Caltech, discovered an unexpected property of DNA—that it can act like an electrical wire to transfer electrons quickly across long distances. Later, she ... More »
This artist’s impression shows a view of the surface of the planet Proxima b orbiting the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the solar system. The double star Alpha Centauri AB also appears in the image. Proxima b is a little more massive tha... More »
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope has revealed the first known system of seven Earth-size planets around a single star. Three of these planets are firmly located in the habitable zone, the area around the parent star where a rocky planet is most likely to have li... More »
Caltech has long brought together masters from many fields to create the unimaginable. In the field of silicon photonics, in particular, the open and collaborative culture of the Division of Engineering and Applied Science has allowed for the assembly of an in... More »
People can reject food and control their thirst, but we cannot keep from falling asleep. Even though we spend a third of our lives asleep and treat the prevalence of sleep disorders, we know remarkably little about why we sleep or how sleep is regulated. On Fe... More »
A planet and a star are having a tumultuous romance that can be detected from 370 light-years away. JPL’s Spitzer Space Telescope has detected unusual pulsations in the outer shell of a star called HAT-P-2. Scientists’ best guess is that a closely orbiting pla... More »
Thought your Internet speeds were slow? Try being a space scientist for a day. The vast distances involved will throttle data rates to a trickle. You’re lucky if a spacecraft can send more than a few megabits per second (Mbps) — a pittance even by dial-up stan... More »
Chemical engineer and philanthropist Warren G. Schlinger (BS ’44, MS ’46, PhD ’49), a pioneer in the development of processes to produce clean energy from traditional fossil fuel sources, passed away on February 10, 2017. He was 93 years old. Schlinger was bor... More »
Shrinivas (Shri) Kulkarni, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Science and director of Caltech’s Optical Observatories, has been awarded the 2017 Dan David Prize, along with the late Neil Gehrels (PhD ’82) of NASA’s Godd... More »
The Louisiana coastline is sinking under the Gulf of Mexico at the rate of about one football field of land every hour (about 18 square miles of land lost in a year). But within this sinking region, two river deltas are growing. The Atchafalaya River and its d... More »
