Collaboration Meets Inspiration to Advance Planetary Science Share By Heising-Simons Foundation on 10/25/2023 on 10/25/2023 Hot Jupiters. Super-Earths. There is nothing like these types of exoplanets in our own solar system—which makes them an ideal focus for Dr. Songhu Wang’s research. His goal is to explore how our solar system fits into the grander scheme of the cosmos.
Rebecca Gomez Op-Ed Urges Congress to Invest in Child Care as $39 Billion in Federal Funding Expire Share By Heising-Simons Foundation on 9/26/2023 on 9/26/2023 A vast majority of voters believe it’s important for working parents to be able to find and afford quality child care for young children. When Congress lets $39 billion in federal child-care funds made available through the American Rescue Plan Act expire at the end of this month, the consequences for providers, educators, families, and workers will be catastrophic.
51 Pegasi b Fellow Dr. Samantha Trumbo Identifies Internal Carbon Source on Europa Share By Heising-Simons Foundation on 9/22/2023 on 9/22/2023 Jupiter’s moon Europa has a subsurface ocean thought to contain twice the amount of water of Earth’s oceans. But scientists had not been able to confirm if the ocean contains biologically essential chemicals for life as we know it, particularly carbon, until now.
Looking to Clouds in the Search for Habitable Exoplanets Share By Heising-Simons Foundation on 9/8/2023 on 9/8/2023 What can clouds on distant planets tell us in our search for habitable planets elsewhere? How could the next generation of telescopes amplify our understanding of exoplanet atmospheres?
Multi-Donor Initiative to Award More than $500 Million to Revitalize Local News Share By Heising-Simons Foundation on 9/7/2023 on 9/7/2023 The Heising-Simons Foundation is joining a coalition of 21 other donors to create Press Forward, a new national grantmaking initiative with the goal to strengthen local news and information with a combined more than a half-billion dollars over the next five years.
Imagery that Moves Planets and People Share By Heising-Simons Foundation on 8/21/2023 on 8/21/2023 A glowing dot passes behind a blackened circle and reappears on the other side. Four luminous pin pricks orbit a dark central body. These moving images are not models. They are real exoplanets: directly observed, recorded, and time-lapsed, inviting people around the world to glimpse distant solar systems and their dynamics over more than a decade—in just seconds.
A Year After Inflation Reduction Act Passage, Race to Accelerate Clean Energy Is On Share By Heising-Simons Foundation on 8/17/2023 on 8/17/2023 There are reasons for both grave concern and optimism in our fight to avoid a climate catastrophe. While each day brings news of the rapidly worsening impacts of climate change, I have hope at the one-year anniversary of the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the most consequential climate law in U.S. history.
The Carceral Carousel: Q&A with Grantees Immigrant Legal Resource Center and Detention Watch Network Share By Heising-Simons Foundation on 7/21/2023 on 7/21/2023 Over the past three decades, the federal immigration and criminal legal systems have become increasingly intertwined. Using the criminalization of Black and brown people as a tool, these two systems, working in tandem, have driven up rates of arrest, incarceration, and deportation, fueling the growth of the prison industry and leading to the separation of both citizen and noncitizen families.
Heising-Simons Foundation Funds Six Scientists Looking for Signatures of Life in the Universe Share By Heising-Simons Foundation on 7/14/2023 on 7/14/2023 The Heising-Simons Foundation’s Science program has made a suite of grants totaling $550,000 to support six exoplanet scientists working on projects that originated in a Scialog program entitled “Signatures of Life in the Universe,” convened by Research Corporation for Science Advancement.