News & events
Awards
Dr. Henner Busemann
The ETH Board awarded the title of Professor to Senior Scientist Henner Busemann. Article in ETH News
Prof. Dr. Maria Schönbächler
Recipient of the inaugural external pageMeteoritical Society Jessberger Award
Recent news
Do we have cosmic dust to thank for life on Earth?
It might be that what set prebiotic chemistry in motion and kept it going in the early days of the Earth was dust from outer space accumulating in holes melted into ice sheets. Researchers at ETH Zurich and the University of Cambridge have used a computer model to test this scenario.
LunarLeaper - a big leap for human mankind
Anna Mittelholz and Simon Stähler from the Department of Earth Sciences, together with Hendrik Kolvenbach from D-MAVT, are leading an international team that is proposing a cost-effective method for exploring lava tubes on the Moon.
Why olivine and diamonds are best friends
Hardly any gemstone is more difficult to find than diamonds. Geologists from ETH Zurich and the University of Melbourne have now established a link between their occurrence and the mineral olivine. This could make the search for diamonds easier in the future.
Unveiling the origin of Earth's richest cobalt resource: insights from the unique Bou Azzer orebody
ETH earth scientists have developed a new method for determining the age of cobalt mineralisation.
The rocky road to the beginning
Craig Walton is the first NOMIS Fellow at the Centre for Origin and Prevalence of Life at ETH Zurich. With an unconventional idea, he wants to find out the conditions under which life originated on Earth.
Tom Dooley and the young, active sun
Just about 4.5 billion years ago, our sun went through an active phase during which it shone much more brightly than it does today – a conclusion researchers reached after taking measurements at ETH Zurich using a truly unique instrument.
Gulf Stream eddies as a source of iron
ETH researchers have fortuitously discovered that Gulf Stream eddies are rich in iron, and these eddies transport this essential micronutrient to the iron-poor North Atlantic Gyre. Before this discovery, the typical assumption was that this part of the ocean received iron primarily from Saharan dust.
Jesper Suhrhoff has been awarded the Willi Studer Prize
Congratulations to Jesper Suhrhoff, a Master's student in the Earth Surface Geochemistry group, who has been awarded the Willi Studer Prize for the best Master's student in Earth Sciences (D-ERDW) in 2017.
The Golden Owl 2017 has been awarded to Prof. Dr. Derek Vance
“Goldene Eule” of VSETH: The Golden Owl is awarded by the students and honours lecturers who have provided exceptional teaching.
New insights into Earth's formation
New measurements carried out by an international research team allow new conclusions to be drawn about the Earth's formation: there were phases with an abundance of volatile elements on the Earth's surface right from the start, not just after it was subsequently bombarded with meteorites from outer space.
Collision with neighbour
According to theory, the moon was created during a gigantic collision between the earth and another celestial body called Theia. But where did this body come from?
Sunbathing meteoroids
When a meteoroid travels in space, solar radiation leaves distinctive imprints on its outer layer. Together with colleagues, ETH researcher Antoine Roth has developed novel analytical techniques to detect these imprints, allowing the team to reconstruct meteorites’ space journeys.
The mighty Southern Ocean microbe that controls ocean chemistry
A new study led by scientists in the Earth Surface Geochemistry group at ETH Zurich, and just published in Nature Geoscience, shows that a single-celled algal organism in the Southern Ocean controls ocean trace metal chemistry.
Scientists from the Surface Earth Geochemistry group at ETH participate in the Antarctic Circumpolar Expedition
PhD student Matthias Sieber, and post-doctoral researchers Greg de Souza and Nolwenn Lemaitre are braving the rough seas of the Southern Ocean to take part in a remarkable expedition to study the environment of the Southern Ocean, the sea surrounding Antarctica.