By Bhargabi Banerjee Julia Brodsky is a STEM education researcher and affiliate of the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science, a former NASA astronaut instructor, and an independent school teacher. She is also the co-founder of Earthlings Hub, which addresses the educational needs of families and orphanages displaced as a result of the war in Ukraine.  Julia was five when her grandfather, a well-known professor of physics and a wonderful storyteller, introduced her to the structure of the solar system […]

By Jenna Cammerino If you could pick one object that would stand to sum up life here on Earth, what would you choose? How about a song? Maybe even a word? We’ve all stopped to wonder whether or not we are alone in this Universe and many efforts have been devoted to searching for other life out there, but not nearly as many have been focused on what we’d do after we’ve encountered that other life. It is these kinds […]

By Jenna Cammerino One might not expect to find a glimpse of Mars here on Earth, but in the burnt orange peaks and plateaus of the Atacama Desert, located in Chile, we may catch an up close look of what life could be like on our celestial neighbor. Boasting various terrains, from salt flats to dry valleys and snowy volcanoes, the desert is home to much of the same diverse topography and extreme conditions found on Mars.  The Atacama, considered […]

By Harvey Sapigao October 20, 2022 After more than a month of traversing through Paraitepuy Pass, I’ve arrived at a region of Mount Sharp my team on Earth call the “sulfate-bearing unit.” The view here is majestic; streaks of light and dark strata cover the hills, sand ridges form crescents of cerulean and rust, and oblique rocks of all shapes and sizes litter the terrain. But enough of sight-seeing — I’ve come here to investigate and unravel Mars’ watery past. […]

By Bhargabi Banerjee “The universe is a place of mystery and wonder,” ~ Martin Rees.  Our very existence on this planet is an enormous mystery, and one key to unlocking the enigma of our origins and our place in the cosmos is space exploration. The best word to describe the link between the outcome of space exploration and our lives on Earth is mutualism. The money spent on space exploration directly benefits human society and advances our understanding of the […]

Ruvan de Graaf (he/him) is a current graduate student at College of the Atlantic, Maine, USA, pursuing a MPhil in Human Ecology, and he is our newest Visiting Scholar at BMSIS, taking on work with Dr. Shawn McGlynn. Born and raised in South Africa and Eswatini, he completed his baccalaureate at United World College Southern Africa in 2017, and continued to complete his undergraduate program in Human Ecology in Maine. His work focuses on a metabolism first theory for the […]

We’re excited to be welcoming Jake Lowe back to BMSIS. Jake was one of our YSP Research Associates previously, and is now joining us as a Visiting Scholar. Read below to learn more about Jake! My name is Jake, I’m 23, and I’m an aspiring astrobiologist. I’ve received my B.S. in microbiology with minors in earth science and astronomy from the University of Utah, USA, and I am continuing my studies as a master’s student in the biology of extreme […]

by Jonathan Keathley Victor Hess was born in Styria, Austria on June 24th, 1883. He conducted his undergraduate studies at the University of Graz, where he got his Bachelor’s in 1905 and his Ph.D. in physics in 1910. Hess went on to discover cosmic rays in 1912 by using enhanced ion detectors invented just three years earlier. During his experiments in 1912, Hess produced a series of 7 hydrogen balloon experiments to figure out if some of the high-energy particles […]

Graham Lau, Research Investigator with Blue Marble Space Institute of Science, joins Builder Nation’s Podcast host Elisa Muñoz to share his thoughts on space exploration and its potential benefits to humanity: “There’s so much that we get from space. It’s not just the investment that we get in business and the return financially. There’s so much that we get from material science, biological science, medicine and technology as well.” Graham Lau, PhD What is Builder Nation? A community of engineering […]

By Angela Murphy It is believed that John Colter, former member of the Lewis and Clark expedition, was one of the first European explorers to set foot in the area we now know as Yellowstone. One can only imagine the surprise Colter or other early explorers felt upon entering this strange landscape for the first time. After arriving home, these explorers would eagerly tell friends and family stories of “boiling rivers,” “spouting waterfalls,” and  “noxious steam,” stories which, unfortunately, were […]