Paul Voosen

Washington, D.C.

Earth, climate, and planetary science reporter @ScienceMagazine. This account is no longer active. Now at @[email protected].

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Articles

Trump administration fires staff for flagship U.S. climate assessment

2 weeks ago | science.org | Paul Voosen

The assault on climate science by President Donald Trump’s administration has been taken to a new level, as NASA has terminated the contract that supports two dozen technical staff at the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), the White House office that coordinates research among the federal agencies.
Curiosity rover detects long-chain carbon molecules on Mars

1 month ago | science.org | Paul Voosen

NASA’s Curiosity rover has detected what could be a chemical relic of long-ago life on Mars: long-chain organic molecules. Found after painstaking reanalysis of data on a sample drilled from a lake that dried up billions of years ago, the molecules likely derived from fatty acids, a common building block of cell membranes on Earth.
Impact that formed the Moon struck a practically newborn Earth

1 month ago | science.org | Paul Voosen

The Woodlands, Texas—For nearly as long as Earth has existed, the Moon has been with it. That’s the conclusion of several studies suggesting the Moon formed some 65 million years after the start of the Solar System—and only tens of millions of years after Earth.
NASA to eliminate chief scientist position

1 month ago | science.org | Paul Voosen

NASA announced today it will eliminate its Office of the Chief Scientist, along with offices advising the agency on technology, strategy, and coordinating its diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) efforts. The reductions, which will eliminate two dozen jobs, come as part of the agency’s “reduction in force,” mandated by the White House.
Earth’s rocks hold whiffs of air from billions of years ago

1 month ago | science.org | Paul Voosen

Earth’s atmosphere, the veneer of gases that makes most life possible, has changed dramatically over time. Bubbles of ancient air trapped in polar ice cores provide reliable archives of the past 6 million years—but that’s less than 0.002% of Earth’s history. For the eons before that, which saw the origin and proliferation of life, researchers have had to infer the atmosphere’s composition from evidence of its chemical effects on metals and minerals preserved in ancient rocks.
NOAA firings hit the birthplace of weather and climate forecasting

1 month ago | science.org | Paul Voosen

When news of his firing came late last week, Kai-Yuan Cheng, an atmospheric scientist at one of the crown jewels of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), had one thought in mind: He had 1 hour to tie up his research on severe storm forecasting. “I worked to the last minute of my federal employment,” he says.
NASA cuts off international climate science support

1 month ago | science.org | Paul Voosen

The world’s nations convened this week in Hangzhou, China, to plan the next major international assessment of climate science—but without the United States. Late last week, President Donald Trump’s administration denied officials permission to travel to the meeting and cut off a technical support contract for the report, the seventh assessment of the United Nations’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
ScienceAdviser: Shock-absorbing armor protects the mantis shrimp from its own bad vibes

2 months ago | science.org | Christie Wilcox |Sarah Crespi |Paul Voosen

Today’s Deep Dive delves into how mantis shrimp can shatter glass without breaking their claws. But first, catch up on the latest science news, including a devastating look at the Arctic’s likely future and the weirdness scientists are finding deep within our planet. Linguistics | News from Science Whale song is structured like human language Whales and babies might learn to communicate the same way, according to new research.
How the mantis shrimp builds its powerful club, and mysteries of middle Earth

2 months ago | science.org | Sarah Crespi |Paul Voosen

Paul Starosta/Getty Images First up this week, Staff Writer Paul Voosen joins host Sarah Crespi to discuss mapping clogs and flows in Earth’s middle layer—the mantle. They also talk about a recent policy story by Voosen on NASA’s reaction to President Donald Trump’s administration’s executive orders. Next, the mantis shrimp is famous for its powerful club, a biological hammer it uses to crack open hard shells. The club applies immense force on impact, but how does it keep itself together blow...
New complexity emerges in Earth’s ‘boring’ middle region

2 months ago | science.org | Paul Voosen

Earth’s middle depths are dull, or so geophysicists thought. The crust is fractured and convulsed by plate tectonics; in the core, churning liquid iron generates the planet’s magnetic field. In between is the mantle, 2900 kilometers of hot, pressurized rock, convecting feebly like a superslow lava lamp.