A special issue of the geochemistry journal Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta is a tribute to Professor Lawrence Taylor, a founding figure in what would become UT’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences.
A new study could help explain the driving force behind the largest mass extinction in the history of Earth, known as the End-Permian Extinction.
Lawrence “Larry” Taylor, a faculty member who was founder and director of UT’s Planetary Geosciences Institute, passed away September 18. He was 79. A prolific researcher, Taylor had a career at UT that spanned 46 years. He was one of the geoscientists based at the Johnson Space Center during Apollo 17, NASA’s last manned mission
Larry Taylor, known for his research on planetary rocks from the Moon, Mars, and asteroids, as well as terrestrial rocks and diamonds from deep within the Earth, has been elected an honorary fellow of the Russian Mineralogical Society and Russian Academy of Sciences.
The Chicago Daily Herald interviewed Larry Taylor for a story exploring how the moon may have once been part of earth.
Diamonds are beautiful and enigmatic. Though chemical reactions that create the highly coveted sparkles still remain a mystery, a professor at UT is studying a rare rock covered in diamonds that may hold clues to the gem’s origins.
LiveScience and the Knoxville News Sentinel featured findings by Earth and Planetary Science Professor Larry Taylor. Taylor studied a rock that contained 30,000 tiny diamonds and shades of red and green. According to Taylor, the astonishing amount of diamonds, and the rock’s unusual Christmas coloring, will provide important clues to Earth’s geologic history as well
Larry Taylor, distinguished professor of earth and planetary sciences, has samples of the meteor which exploded over Russia. He is studying them to see what insight they can provide into the rare impact by a space rock, and other stories they may have to tell.
Three years ago UT researchers helped to discover water on the surface of the moon. Now, they are piecing together the origin of that water: solar wind. A new study published in this month’s “Nature Geoscience” confirms solar wind as a source for water embedded in the lunar surface.
For six weeks, a team of four UT students worked with old bicycle parts, scrap metals and little engineering expertise inside a garage to build a moonbuggy, a simulation of the lunar rovers used by the Apollo 15, 16 and 17 astronauts. The students raced their moonbuggy in NASA’s 19th annual moonbuggy race at the
The discovery of water on the moon by a team of researchers including UT Knoxville’s Larry Taylor has had global impact. Almost 1,000 news outlets around the world have reported on the discovery of water in the lunar soil, distributed across much of the surface of the moon.
When Apollo astronauts returned from the moon 40 years ago, they brought back souvenirs in the form of moon rocks to be used for scientific analysis, and one of the chief questions was whether there was water to be found in the lunar rocks and soils. The problem they faced was complicated by the fact