Category: August 2019

SMU researchers could help determine if Saturn’s icy moon – Titan – has ever been home to life long before NASA completes an exploratory visit to its surface by a drone helicopter.
NASA announced in late June that its Dragonfly mission would launch toward Saturn’s largest moon in 2026, expecting to arrive in 2034. The goal of the mission is to use a rotorcraft to visit dozens of promising locations on Titan to investigate the chemistry, atmospheric and surface properties that could lead to life.
SMU was awarded a $195,000 grant, also in June, to reproduce what is happening on Titan in a laboratory setting. The project, funded by the Houston-based Welch Foundation, will be led by Tom Runčevski, an assistant professor of chemistry in SMU’s Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences. SMU graduate student Christina McConville also was awarded a fellowship by the Texas Space Grant Consortium to help with the project.
Before the rotorcraft lands on Titan, chemists from SMU will be recreating the conditions on Titan in multiple glass cylinders — each the size of a needle top — so they can learn about what kind of chemical structures could form on Titan’s surface. The knowledge on these structures can ultimately help assess the possibility of life on Titan — whether in the past, present or future.
Read more at SMU Research.

Scientists from SMU, The University of Texas at Austin and Stanford University found that the majority of faults under the Fort Worth Basin are sensitive to changes in stress, which could cause them to slip. The good new is: None of the faults shown to have the highest potential for an earthquake are located in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area.
Though the majority of the faults identified on this map have not produced an earthquake, understanding why some faults have slipped and others with similar fault slip potential have not continues to be researched, says Heather DeShon, SMU seismologist and study co-author who has been the lead investigator of a series of other studies exploring the cause of the North Texas earthquakes.
“The SMU earthquake catalog and the Texas Seismic Network catalog provide necessary earthquake data for understanding faults active in Texas right now,” she says. “This study provides key information to allow the public, cities, state and federal governments and industry to understand potential hazard and design effective public policies, regulations and mitigation strategies.”
Read more at SMU Research.