University of Arizona in the News

The Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History put on public display for the first time a sample from Bennu, the carbon-rich, near-Earth asteroid brought back to Earth by the University of Arizona-led OSIRIS-REx mission. Additional material from Bennu will go on display later this month at the University of Arizona Alfie Norville Gem and Mineral Museum in the historic Pima County Courthouse.

In May, Fort Gordon in Georgia became Fort Eisenhower to honor Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th President who, as an Army general, led the allied invasion of Europe in World War II, and to complete the process of renaming nine U.S. Army bases originally dedicated to Confederate generals. "Learning history is always the practice of making choices, choices of what we pay attention to," said University of Arizona professor of history Susan Crane. "What we think is more significant or less significant, what we think is more important or not.

University of Arizona professor of information Barney Maccabe, executive director of the Institute for Computation and Data Enabled Insight, discusses President Biden's recent executive order which attempts to address the risks posed by artificial intelligence.

The James Webb Space Telescope this summer discovered evidence that a surprising number early galaxies, which to observers appear as red specks in the darkness, possessed supermassive black holes similar to the one at the heart of the Milky Way. That finding is both expected – Webb was designed to find such ancient objects – and perplexing, because few astronomers expected to find so many of them forming so soon after the Big Bang. "Everybody is talking about these little red dots," said University of Arizona professor of astronomy Xiaohui Fan.

"For the first time we will be able to measure the abundances of all 20 protein-forming amino acids from an asteroid sample untouched by life on Earth," said Sawsan Wehbi, an astrobiologist at the University of Arizona. "My goal is to compare the amino acids we find on Bennu to Earth's early life. I'm hoping to answer this question: 'Did early life use the building blocks that were delivered from outer space?'"

The University of Arizona announced the public phase of its $3 billion fundraising campaign, Fuel Wonder. The launch, coinciding with Homecoming celebrations, included the announcement of $118.65 million in gifts that will ignite the aspirations and goals of students, faculty and staff. Collectively, these gifts bring the overall total raised so far to more than $2 billion.

A new analysis finds the United States' stewardship of groundwater relies on a patchwork of state and local rules so lax and outdated that in many places, oversight is all but nonexistent with the majority of states having little to no idea how many wells they have. Some also divide oversight among several agencies, making it difficult to glean comprehensive information about groundwater use. "There are layers and layers of rules and regulations," said Sharon Megdal, director of the Water Resources Research Center at the University of Arizona.

University of Arizona professor of English Manuel Muñoz, who last month earned a prestigious MacArthur Fellowships for his stories centering on the lives of Mexican-American communities in California's Central Valley, discusses how his experiences growing up in that region influence his work.

NASA's Lucy mission on Wednesday revealed the asteroid Dinkinesh, first identified by University of Arizona researchers in 2010, has its own "moon" – a smaller space rock in orbit around it.

Mark Barton, director of the University of Arizona Lowell Institute for Mineral Resources; Misael Cabrera, director of the School of Mining and Mineral Resources; Carmie Garzione, dean of the College of Science; David Hahn, dean of the College of Engineering; and Kray Luxbacher, department head for Mining and Geological Engineering, write that in just the first 12 months of its existence, the university's School of Mining and Mineral Resources is proving itself to be a high-value, long-term benefit to the mining industry and has engaged more than 50 faculty, researchers, students and s